Wild Dark Shore. I was hooked on this story after the first chapter. A woman, close to death by drowning and hyperthermia, washes up on the Arctic shore of a remote island. The woman, Rowan, is dragged up to the lighthouse and cared for by Dominic Salt and his three children. She has grave injuries requiring stitches where jagged rocks tore her body open.
When Rowan awakens the little boy, Orly Salt, asks her name.
"I'm Orly Salt. And you're on an island in the middle of the Southern Ocean, fifteen hundred kilometers from any other landmass. Closest is Antarctica. So my question for you is: How did you get here Rowan?"
She is on Shearwater island, an island one hundred and twenty kilometers squared. It's a tundra climate with many species of plants and hundreds of sea lions, seals and the last colony of royal penguins in the world. It's also a research island where millions of seeds are stored to repopulate the earth after flooding.
All of them have secrets and as soon as you think one has sinister intentions, you get their backstory. You've heard the saying - don't-judge-a-book-by-it's-cover - and the reveals of all the characters took me by surprise, just when I thought I was figuring them out.
Rowan does not reveal her husband Hank is a reseacher who sent alarming emails to her while she was in their Australian home. Dominic Salt, the father, doesn't know she is Hank's wife (at first) and there is quite a story there about Hank. Other researchers seem to have vanished, the children (Raff, Fen and Orly) have lived on the island for the last eight years with their widowed father and I don't think any of them are thrilled to be leaving for civilization. You are plunged into the cold, the storms and I hate to use this overused descriptor but it's atmospheric.
I will be reading more by this Australian author. 5 stars.
The Quiet American
The setting is Vietnam in the 1950's and there is fighting between the Vietnamese and the French. France wants to hold on to the power they have, with the help from American govenment. As we all know, when France pulls out the Americans were involved in the war. This one was on my Classics Club list I knocked out in a few days.
Aiden Pyle is the American who isn't in Vietnam to absorb the culture or as a journalist to report on the conflict. He is an agent of the United States with the intent of bringing a better government and way of life to the Vietnamese people. That's one point of view because imposing American "values" to restructure is to ignore the the intact culture and regard as inferior.
Thomas Fowler is the British opium addicted journalist who befriends Pyle. Fowler was basically living with the lovely young Vietnamese woman named Phuong. She would prepare his opium pipe in the evenings and was quite devoted. Then Pyle became infatuated with her and promised her marriage, Was he trying to save her from the middle-aged married Brit as well as "saving" her country?
Pyle is naive and ingenuous. Fowler has no moral compass.
This is a classic but not one I personally found fantastic. I am obviously in the minority. In the past I have enjoyed some of Graham Greene's novels but this one was just meh for me. Knocking another off for my Classic Club list. 3 stars
