The Islands is the debut novel of Australian author Emily Brugman. It is set on the Abrolhos islands, 80km off the coast of Western Australia, where a group of Finnish families emigrated in the 1950s to work fishing and catching crayfish. The story is inspired by the lives of her grandparents.

Onni Saara and his wife Alva arrive on Little Rat Island in the late 1950s. Life is meagre, living in the tin-roof fishing huts on the windswept island, but they bring their own Finnish customs and traditions with them and soon become part of the simple island life and community. After Alva gives birth to baby Hilda in Geraldton she is back on the island within four weeks, missing the saltwater life that has become part of her.

This is a fairly gently paced story which creates a great sense of place, with the islands being vividly depicted. The simple fishing community life is in the foreground and the mysterious spectre of the Batavia mutiny and shipwreck story lurks in the background. There wasn’t much actual story here but I enjoyed the atmosphere and the ride. ( )

hortlisted for the 2020 Vogel Award, Emily Brugman's novel The Islands is a striking debut. It's the absorbing story of a Finnish migrant family who settle on Little Rat Island, off the Western Australian coast in the Abrolhos Islands. Today this cluster of 122 islands 60km from Geraldton is home to WA's lucrative western rock lobster fishing industry and a tourist destination famed for its exquisite coral reefs, unique wildlife, and intriguing shipwreck history. But in the mid-1950s when the novel begins, life was rugged, precarious and lonely.

The story starts with Onni Saari's sombre realisation that his brother Nalle has been lost at sea. Nalle was the adventurous, ambitious one, a somewhat reckless man willing to take a chance in pursuit of a fortune. While Onni was labouring in the mines at Northampton on the mainland, Nalle had set up a rudimentary hut on Little Rat Island and become part of the small community of Finnish migrants setting lobster pots during the season, with sojourns on the mainland for the rest of the year.

Twenty-one corrugated-iron camps now lined the island's eastern flank, from which a series of topsy-turvy jetties extended like fractured finger bones. It resembled a small, ramshackle village. During the fishing season, for almost six months every year, it became a small, bustling community, way out here on the verge of the Indian Ocean. For the other half of the year, when most of the fishermen and their families moved back to the mainland, it was a floating ghost town. There were only a few solitary types, like Latvian Igor, who remained on the island year round. (p.15)

Onni arrives in time to join the search for Nalle, but it's called off after two days. These men are pragmatic...

On the third morning, Onni waited again at Sulo's boat. He noted the slow habitual movements of the island folk. He saw fishermen sculling out to their moorings. Cray boats being loaded with gear. The distant sound of motors grumbling to life, a skipper calling to his deckhand. Onni understood that the fishermen were returning to their work. As he waited by Sulo's boat, he felt like a forgotten child.

Some time passed before Sulo turned up, his hands in his pockets, an apologetic look on his corrugated face.

The search was over.

And as the sun moved over the sky, and Onni allowed himself to calculate the days since Nalle had gone missing, he understood that all this searching business, those long stretches adrift on the boat, were likely for his sake more than Nalle's. (p.10-11)

In homage to his brother's memory, Onni decides to take up Nalle's lease, bringing his wife Alva with him. Although the story moves through three generations of this family, it is the characterisation of these two, Onni and Alva which is the core of the novel. Though the lifestyle is harsh, both are entranced by the beauty of the landscape, and they feel more at home among the Finnish community than they do on the mainland. With the island community they share stories, song and superstitions, and — never confident in English as their bilingual daughter Hilda is — they feel comfortable retaining some of their traditions.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2022/05/01/the-islands-by-emily-brugman/ ( )

“A wreck. That was what they called it, when they washed up like that. A wreck of shearwaters. To travel so far, thought Onni, and all for nothing.”

Emily Brugman’s debut, The Islands, is a beautifully told, poignant tale of loss, migration and belonging. Unfolding over several decades, beginning in the late 1950’s, it relates the events in the lives of the Saari family, revealing key moments of adversity and growth, tragedy and joy.

Set largely amongst the Abrolhos Islands off the coast of Western Australia, Finnish immigrants, Onni Saari and and his wife Alva, join the tiny seasonal cray fishing community on Little Rat Island after Onni’s brother is lost at sea.

Onni works hard to provide for his family, though always wary of meeting the same fate as his brother.
Alva easily takes to life on the island, she enjoys making their small corrugated iron hut a home, helping her husband when needed, and the friendship of the crayfisher’s wives, all of them Finns, but never learns to swim.
To Hilda, Little Rat is home, but when she is five, she and Alva are forced to spend most of each year in Geraldton so that Hilda can attend school. It’s a difficult transition for them both, and when, citing injury, Onni sells the fishing lease in 1975, and moves the family to NSW, their dreams of returning to the Islands are shattered.

Flashbacks reveal the Finnish childhoods of Onni and Alva, marred by war and struggle, desirous of security and prosperity.

Enhanced by snippets of Finnish poems and songs, Brugman shares the unique culture of the Finnish immigrants, drawing on her own family’s background.

The author explores the interconnectedness of the Island community, no one is unaffected by another. She also touches on the xenophobia of mid century Australia, and the awkwardness sometimes experienced by the children caught between cultural expectations.

Brugman weaves the history of the cray fishing industry and the varying landmasses that make up the Abrolhos Islands archipelago, which includes the tragic story of the Batavia shipwreck, artfully into the story.

The prose is lyrical, yet uncomplicated, effortlessly evoking character and landscape.
Descriptions of the Islands and the ocean that surrounds them, both terribly beautiful and terribly dangerous, are entrancing.

Eloquent, meditative and atmospheric, The Islands is a captivating novel. ( )