A “banger” is compositor’s slang for an exclamation point, and I must exclaim, after just finishing BARTER ISLAND, that author Peter Scott banged this book. I inserted an exclamation point onto the verso of the back cover before I closed it. It was that good.

Don’t believe I have ever read such exquisite character development in fiction, and I’ve read a gazillion books, at last count. This book was all about the people, and these particular people were all about life in America.

I became afraid, before the ending, that the author would let me down by failing to fict a climax into the fiction, that he would be true to life and would abandon the characters as normal as in real life, in which most conundrums are never resolved. Yet in the ending I was pleased, satisfied, climaxed, yet empowered to wonder even more, especially to wonder whether war veterans are heroes or victims or cowards or more in war and afterlife, as most warriors, I can only suppose, must wonder long after warring. And to wonder about whether love will be requited, as we ~should~ wonder, wonder if her scent will sail him back into nurse again.

The book moves so well in the present tense!

The language was real poetry. A song of the Northeast. Lyrical. I really enjoy reading the writing of an author who glories in the composition, the punctuation, the phrasing, the updiagramming of the sentence to put it all into place for the reader, into sequence for the reader’s breathing while reading. Each page was loaded with provocative thoughts, the thoughts that make moments of life more than steps in time: the creative comparisons, the unlikely insight, the notice. This is imaginative storytelling and fulfilling reading.

I would complain that there was too much drinking. Maybe the characters did, but is it important enough to tell so often? Later I found myself thankful that the author was true to the prevalence of alcohol as a potion to calm the rough waters of war veterans’ memories.

Now, multiply all the above comments by a thousand to the positive. I will think about these characters for a long time, and now I can truly imagine life on the Maine islands, where the sea serves as a moat against convention, even though it is always breached, and the tide brings semidiurnal promise of safe haven. I was enthralled by this book.
Rating: 5 / 5