Karin AltenbergReseñas

The Orange Prize longlist always seems to have a few of these real-life-translated-to-novel books on it. The problem with them, I think, is that when one tries to directly translate real life to a novel, the narrative arc can't help but be messy and ultimately unsatisfying. (Unless you're Hilary Mantel.) So this is a well-written, interesting book with a messy and ultimately unsatisfying plot arc. I did like the main character, though, although I thought that the husband was unrealistically cold and harsh.

The Orange Prize longlist always seems to have a few of these real-life-translated-to-novel books on it. The problem with them, I think, is that when one tries to directly translate real life to a novel, the narrative arc can't help but be messy and ultimately unsatisfying. (Unless you're Hilary Mantel.) So this is a well-written, interesting book with a messy and ultimately unsatisfying plot arc. I did like the main character, though, although I thought that the husband was unrealistically cold and harsh.

"At last the firm ground of Hirta, our lost Eden!", 21 January 2016

This review is from: Island of Wings (Kindle Edition)
Based on a real-life Scottish minister and his wife who came to serve in the remote outpost of St Kilda in 1830, this is an eminently readable work, exposing the reader to the primitive conditions endured by the people on this tiny island, whose main source of food is seabirds. Their custom of ploughing bird carcasses into the soil as manure led to 60% neonatal deaths, while the difficulty of reaching the archipelago often meant deliveries of food were rare and the inhabitants nearly starved.
This is not an action novel: the reader imbibes the atmosphere, follows a difficult marriage and the personal struggle of the minister, determined to bring the word of God to a superstitious flock (but whose traditional lifestyle of working together for the common good, ironically enough, could teach the 'civilised' world something.)
I didn't feel I could somehow quite get into Lizzie, the long-suffering wife, as a real person, but the social history was so interesting that I enjoyed reading the book.

As a lover of historical fiction, I picked up this book based on the cover without really knowing much about it. What an interesting story of such a little known place as the St. Kilda islands. Having never even heard of them, I did a bit of Google research and found that the story was based on the life of a real minister and his wife. There are really two sides of this novel. First, the experiences of ministering to the native Scottish people living on a remote and barren archipelago provide the basic plot line. These people are taught the words of the Scripture and doctrine of the church but continue to understand much of the world through their own superstitions and pagan beliefs. Secondly, this is the story of a man and woman. They are young, enthusiastic, naive, and hopeful when they land on the islands. The reality of hardship, death, and sorrow soon shape their relationship into one of fear, distrust, and misunderstanding. It's an age old story of how the lack of being able to speak from the heart one to another causes so much sorrow.

This book is obviously well researched and I found the descriptions of the islands and the daily lives of those living there to be very interesting. At the same time, I found the tension between Rev. MacKenzie and his wife Lizzie to be very believable, tension wrapped up with sadness, tenderness, confusion, fear, anger, and love.

I've spent several holidays on the Hebrides and have always found the story of St Kilda fascinating, so this book, set on the St Kilda of the mid- nineteenth century, seemed likely to appeal. The most isolated inhabited island of the British Isles, at least until 1930 when the remaining inhabitants requested to be resettled elsewhere, it was one where the task of eking out a living was incredibly difficult. Cut off from even the remote islands of the Outer Hebrides for a large part of every year, the inhabitants depended on the huge colonies of seabirds which nested on the islands, and on the tiny amount of arable land on which they could grow crops. And it was also an existence which was blighted by incredibly high infant mortality rates, with mothers routinely losing child after child within a week or so of birth.

Unfortunately, though, this story of the first minister of St Kilda, Neil MacKenzie and his wife Elizabeth, did not engage my attention as I expected. Island of Wings tells the story of their first arrival as a young married couple in 1830, to their eventual departure in 1843. The book does succeed in conveying the isolation of Elizabeth's position in particular, as an English speaking town bred woman from the Scottish mainland, but for me at no point did the characters or the narrative really come alive. The most interesting part of the book was learning about the social conditions of the St Kildans, which were extraordinarily basic even when compared with the Hebridean Islands which were their nearest neighbour. But I had already come across much of this information, and so not much of this was new. So while I would recommend this book to someone who is not familiar with the St Kildan story and is interested to learn more, I didn't find it particularly gripping apart from this.

A strangly compelling book. I almost felt that something supernatural was going to happen but it never did. There was an errie feeling throught the whole book that kep me turing the page.
this is the story of a minister of the church of schotland who went to one of the western isles (well the residents spoke galic) and tried to get them to be more christian. He also attempted to improve the conditions in which they lived. He did have some sucess, though the island was later abandoned.
this book is well worth the read

Meticulous research is the foundation of this narrative-heavy historical novel, based on the true lives of the Reverend and Mrs McKenzie, sent as missionaries to the Scottish island of St Kilda in the mid-19th century.

The plentiful descriptions perfectly evoke the harsh barrenness of the land, and the fictionalised characterisations of this real family were interesting; at times, I would have enjoyed a tighter focus on Neil & Lizzie.

An interesting and well-written portrayal of an historical era, which seemed so primitive it's hard to remember the story was set only 150 years ago, and is based on fact.

I was attracted to this novel as it concerned one of the most intriguing and remote, formerly inhabited islands, St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides, with which I have been interested for some years. This book centres around the real life story of a Church minister, Neil McKenzie, who served on the island in the 1830s-40s, attempting to convert the "uncivilised" inhabitants to the unbending Christianity of the Scottish Kirk. The descriptions of the island, its wildlife, topography and the simple and harsh, yet also refreshingly natural tempo of life of the inhabitants, are well described and quite captivating. The story moves slowly at times and McKenzie himself is an unbending and largely unsympathetic character, though his wife Lizzie comes across as more human and natural. The attitude of many of the tourists and aristocrats who visit the islands is patronising in the extreme, but Lizzie in particular comes to identify with the locals and appreciate the dignity in their simple way of life. However, the islanders themselves are always depicted through the McKenzies' eyes, so we never get to see them from the inside, so it is a passive perception of their way of life. An interesting read, though a bit slow, but that reflects the ethos of the island.

“At last the firm ground of Hirta, our lost Eden!”

Neil McKenzie is a minister, called to serve the people of St Kilda, the most remote part of the British Isles, in 1830. His new and pregnant wife Lizzie follows him, despite speaking no Gaelic and having no company when her husband is away. Can they ever be happy in such an abandoned place?

The writing about nature is undeniably beautiful and skilful; I cannot imagine writing like this in my first language, never mind a second (Altenberg is Swedish). However, the book is so, so bleak and dreary. No end of childhood births, no particular plot progression within 120 pages (at which point I stopped); everything is as grey as the sky and sea which surrounds the island.

The political environs of the time were somewhat alien to me and not explained at all, so I think you need a decent background in Scottish and church history around 1830, as well as an understanding of missions.

loving this book, sad but beautiful, nearly finished it after 1 nights reading! highly recommended.

In July, 1830, the Reverend Neil MacKenzie and his wife Lizzie arrive at the islands of St Kilda, on which an isolated community of Gaelic-speaking live in isolated splendour. Neil wishes to convert these people, whom he views as benighted pagans, to the Scottish kirk. Lizzie, in the advanced stages of pregnancy, is uncomfortable and sick on board ship, and also apprehensive about the new life ahead of her. When Neil and Lizzie arrive on the island, they are shocked by the lack of development on the island. Neil, who has grown up with the ideas of the Scottish Enlightenment, wants to help the people rise from their backward status, but he also brings a missionary zeal to his appointment. Lizzie is less sure of her role on the island – unable to speak Gaelic, she initially has no-one except her husband to converse with. Nor does she feel assured in the role of wife of the Reverend.

The new challenges the couple faces on the island form the backbone to the story. Neil carries a terrible burden: he survived a sinking ship as a young man, while his friend drowned. Now, he blames himself for this, but projects his uncertainties into fundamentalism and harshness to his young wife. This manifests itself most clearly in the beginning when Lizzie loses their first child – Neil blames her for this, as she ‘disobeys’ him by going for a walk on the cliffs near their new home, where she is attacked by skuas (a type of bird), falls, and has a miscarriage. Neil never allows her to forget this calamity. She also loses the next two children to a sickness the locals call the ‘eight-day sickness’ (actually neonatal tetanus), but later bears Neil six healthy children. As Neil struggles to convert the local St Kildans from their superstitions, the couple slowly grow estranged, with Neil becoming more withdrawn and fanatical, and Lizzie growing to accept her role as mother. There are, however, moments of renewed passion and love between the couple, but these are few and far between. The breakdown of a marriage is never pleasant reading, but Altenberg maintains a fine balance between complete dreariness and homily by focusing on the changes that time enacts on her cast of characters.

This book is very sorrowful; one can almost feel the cold Atlantic wind blowing its indifference over the characters and their individual lots. Despite this, Altenberg includes beautiful and bracing descriptions of the wind-swept, bird-infested islands. Perhaps there is even a beauty to sorrow well described, which it certainly is in this book. The fact that the book is based on real events is even more extraordinary, as one would not think that anyone could survive in the conditions that the islanders lived through. Altenberg never sentimentalises the islanders and their plight – she has some truly horrifying descriptions of their dwellings, which consisted of manure-packed hovels filled with the carcasses of dead birds, their main source of nutrition. There is, however, beauty even here, as the islanders sympathise with Lizzie and her plight, and Lizzie begins to return the sympathy. Neil remains an enigmatic character throughout the book; he loves his wife, but this love changes, even degenerates, with time. He is not a blind zealot, but he can be uncompromising towards his children and the islanders (whom he also views as children).

The questions of faith and superstition were interesting, as were Altenberg’s musings on civilisation and ‘barbarity’. Obviously, things are not presented in such straight-forward dichotomies. The only real negatives in the book for me were Altenberg’s overuse of explanative adverbs, which is excusable in a first novel, and her sometimes questionable reasoning: characters sometimes seem to make unsupported conceptual leaps, and utter some questionable non sequiturs. But I enjoyed the book, and would recommend it to those looking for a read based in an exotic location which is still concerned with basic human questions.

I enjoyed reading this, and I'd recommend it, but I should point out that what I most liked about it were the "nonfiction" parts: the history and the natural history of the amazing setting, the island of St. Kilda. I had some quibbles with the writing, particularly whenever there were several point-of-view shifts within a single paragraph. And the characters didn't exactly come alive for me (but it was sort of a relief whenever something sad occurred to realize I didn't care enough to cry).

Fictionalised true story of islanders on St Kilda, hard life, interesting

Island of Wings by Karin Altenberg is a darkly beautiful read.

Newly married couple, Lizzie and Reverend Neil MacKenzie, travel by boat to an outlying island of the Scottish Hebrides, St. Kilda. In the 1830's, when this novel begins, St. Kilda is characterized by extreme isolation, rugged cliffs, a terrible lack of sanitation, and a small Norse population. The inhabitants of St. Kilda speak only Gaelic. Reverend Mackenzie speaks both English and Gaelic, but wife Lizzie, speaks only English, which serves to increase her isolation.

Reverend MacKenzie arrives at St. Kilda with a sense of misson, to convert the heathens to Christianity and also to improve their lot in life. He is also driven by a mysterious incident in his past, as well as his own personality weaknesses. In contrast, young bride Lizzie is initially driven to please and support her husband, despite is his frequent bouts of bad temper and his habit of turning away from her.

Life of the indigenous St. Kidan's is intriguing in itself .Most notable to me was the neonatal death rate of about 60 %, usually caused by a strange " 8 day sickness." The St Kildan's lived communally off the land. Knowing the story is loosely based on historical fact I found both the story and the way of life on St. Kilda to be fascinating.

As time goes on, Rev. Mackenzie's character flaws become more evident. Even as he chastises the people for worshiping idols , he regards himself as " the minister - and master - of the island." page 148.

Conversely, young Lizzie, initially intimidated by her husband, and extremely isolated, gradually makes friends with the Islander's and recognizes her husband for what he is. Neil and Lizzie's marriage shows much strain , as does Neil's relationships with his "subjects." Despite Rev. Neil's self- importance, personal weakness, he is portrayed as a well rounded character, who occasionally questions himself and shows tenderness to his wife.

Beautifully atmospheric, an unblinking look at a difficult marriage, a fascinating look into a primitive culture and a meditation on faith, this is a wonderful, compelling novel. 4.5 stars½

I struggled with this book, and not because of the writing – but rather because of the story and the conviction it laid on my heart.

I’ve not made any secret of the fact that I am a Christian. I’ve been there, right along with my brothers and sisters in Christ, supporting and encouraging missionaries – but this book gave me a picture (granted, a historical one) that made my heart hurt- not just for the missionary but also for those people he was sent to convert. Recently, in my Literary Theory class, we spoke about Colonialism and Post-Colonialism, and those views were heavily portrayed in Island of Wings.

The story here is one of a missionary and his young wife, a pretty enough gal, sent to a remote island in Scotland to convert the heathens there. They live in a state of filth that reeks of birds dead carcasses, they speak only Gaelic (the missionary’s home tongue), and they have a pagan worship that is hard to “free” them from. What amazed me through this story are two things.

First, that despite years on the island (15 if I recall correctly), the missionary’s wife, Lizzie, never learns any of their language. She is unable to communicate with the people she was sent to minister to, with her husband, after fifteen years. That is unreal to me.

Second, is how bleak the picture is. In this story there are no winners, there is only losers. The story of Neil and his wife are based in historical fact, but the tragedy of the infants deaths on the island (something like 80% didn’t live past 8 days), the lack of connection between Neil and Lizzie and the island natives, and the ultimate end of the story left my heart in shambles.

This is definitely a powerful book, and one to read if you are interested in the historical affects of colonialism on remote places.

My best friend and I jokingly rate books and films on their “Susan-friendliness,” and that’s nothing more than the completely subjective scale of my idiosyncratic likes and dislikes. I should have known that Karin Altenberg’s debut novel, Island of Wings wouldn’t be my cup of tea. But that said, I don’t necessarily think that there’s a thing wrong with this novel. It’s not my kind of story, but I think that it was skillfully and effectively told.

Perhaps most interestingly, the story here is heavily based on historical fact. It is a fictionalized account of the life of Reverend Neil MacKenzie and his wife Lizzie. MacKenzie, dealing with demons of his own, asks the Church of Scotland to “preach the Gospels in the most godforsaken place they could offer—he had suggested Newfoundland, where he was sure he could do a world of good. In the end, the Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge had asked him to go to St. Kilda—the furthest inhabited islands in Britannia.”

The novel, which is told somewhat episodically in eight parts between the years 1830 and 1843, has clearly been meticulously researched, and I found the author’s note at the end quite interesting. The setting of the novel is a fascinating place with which I was completely unfamiliar. When the couple arrives in 1830, the islanders are enjoying a happy subsistence, living exactly as their ancestors did centuries earlier. It’s a very different, rather primitive way of life. Altenberg does a great job of conveying the harsh beauty of this remote place, with special attention to the natural world.

What I personally had trouble with was the relationship at the heart of this novel, and the character of the Reverend. Women didn’t have an easy time of it back then, and while I can’t say that this novel is completely joyless, it’s a harsh existence and utterly humorless. Also, as a secular Jew, the whole idea of Christianity being forcefully foisted onto a disinterested people is distasteful to me in the extreme. Reverend MacKenzie is not a sympathetic character and was simply not someone I wanted to spend 300 pages with. Still, he was characterized well enough (and not as some kind of black and white monster, but as a very flawed human) to arouse strong feelings in me.

While Island of Wings ultimately wasn’t for me, I fully expect it to find its audience, and I am certainly open to reading Ms. Altenberg’s future work.

A very cool, restrained book, this historical novel is set on St. Kilda, an island that is the furthest part of the British Isles. Beginning in 1830, the story follows Lizzie and her husband, missionary Rev. Neil MacKenzie, as they move from urban Scotland to the isolated, rocky, backwards island.

In some ways, the novel's arc is unsurprising -- the proper British couple is first charmed, then horrified, by the savage land -- but Altenberg's writing is controlled and captivating, and the development of Lizzie and Neil is surprising and familiar in a way that satisfies. I was strongly reminded of Jane Campion movies (like The Piano) in this novel: the focus on women, the impact of men on their lives, and a harsh and unforgiving world (both literally and emotionally).

There's a kind of historical mystery to the story, too, in the background, that Altenberg fully explains in her Notes. Altenberg's background is in archaeology, which comes out in the novel's almost naturalistic style of narrative, which fits the story: it has that kind of clinical feel of 19th century amateur scientists. The formal, controlled language, of course, does nothing to control, prevent, or manage the more 'earthy' events that occur, and it is that clash of aspiration and reality that provokes and changes Lizzie.

This is a sad novel, but not miserable, moving, with slightly unlikable characters. I felt affection and aggravation at Lizzie, some empathy and irritation toward her husband, Neil, and their marriage was one I rooted for and wished would end. They were, in short, real people, complicated and full, and their story and that of St. Kilda's is one that is moving, engrossing, and atmospheric. An unexpectedly rich novel for the end of my year.

I had to give this book the highest rating because it is not very often one finds a writer who can paint pictures and emotions with words. In taking the real life minister Neal and his wife Lizzie and creating a fictionalized account of their lives on St. Kilda in the 1830's Altenberg has given the reader a novel that is historically interesting and emotionally rich. The isolation as well as the beautiful setting is flawlessly described so that the reader feels that they are actually on these islands as this story enfolds. Wonderful book! ARC provided by Net Galley.