Canvey Island is a story that begins with the events of the 1953 disastrous flooding of the island itself and proceeds to detail the lasting effects of that event on the lives of a family who lose a member. One of the things I particularly liked about this novel is a convention that I generally do not like, the switching of view points from chapter to chapter, so that the story is told by six people instead of just one. In this case it works, because we need to know how each of these people is reacting to the events as they unfold and also need to be able to get to information that only some of these people have access to.

The major character, a boy named Martin who loses his mother, Lily, in the flood, pulled me in immediately. I cared what was happening to this boy and lamented the events that kept shaping his thoughts and his life as he aged. I formed some very solid ideas about these people at the very beginning of the book, chapter one, and another thing I really loved was that Runcie managed to expand or reverse my thinking on almost every single one of them. In the end, what he gives us is reality. People who are neither saints nor devils and who are all perhaps just doing the best they can with the situations they are in. He made me think about how we love to find someone to blame in life and how seldom there actually IS one clear person who can be blamed. Sometimes we all contribute to the unhappiness around us, and sometimes we are ourselves to blame, and sometimes the choices just aren’t quite as clear as others might think they are. Oh, and sometimes what seems like indifference or even cruelty is someone being as kind as they know how to be.

I truly enjoyed this book. I was attracted to Runcie when I found that he had written the Grantchester series that airs on PBS. I’m a big fan of Sydney Chambers. I did find that same kind of relatability in Canvey Island...people you can believe in, with all the imperfections to prove that they are flesh and blood.
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Interesting way of writing which took a bit of time to get used to. Story of a family with all the issues of someone growing up. Quite enjoyable but didn't seam to go anywhere with no climax or clearly defined ending. ( )

I received this book as an early reviewers copy. I enjoyed getting to know the characters and glimpsing into their lives. It was not a great book, it was not an awful book. Having the characters tell their own stories made the book interesting and easy to read, I enjoyed the style of the writing. I also like the setting, the coast of England. Stories on the ocean alwalys draw me to themI would give this book 3 1/2 stars. ( )

This book was sent to me as an early release and I had no idea what it was about by the time I received the book. However it turned out to be enjoyable reading. I got into the book right away and I liked the fact that you get into each character's head as they relate the story of the people in Martin"s (the main character) life. To me it showed why people do the things they do by probing into their thoughts and then how that action is interpreted and affects other people in their world. Martin carries the memories of his mother's dealth throughout his life and that trauma affects his decisions between the women in his life and how he allows his father and Aunt to think only of themselves and not of him. His Aunt is kind of the same way with her husband George who is extremely ill from his experience in the war. There is a contrast between George and Martin in a way. I enjoyed reading this book and recommend it. ( )

James Runcie’s Canvey Island is a quiet, thoughtful work of fiction that shows how the character of average people is shaped by the most difficult circumstances of their lives, much like the British coastline, which his protagonist tries so desperately to preserve, is inevitably worn away by the ravages of the sea.

As a young boy, Martin witnesses his beloved mother’s death by drowning in a terrible flood on their island home. His father Len, in the meantime, is out dancing on the mainland with Martin’s floozy aunt Violet and her husband George, a man who lost his sanity during a grisly battle in WWII. As an adult, Martin becomes a water engineer, studying England's rugged shore in hopes of understanding, containing and controlling the very sort of catastrophe that took his mother from him.

The book is written in short chapters narrated by all the principle characters – Martin, Len, Violet and George, as well as the two women in Martin's life - his first love, Linda, and his wife, Claire. It’s an ingenius method of storytelling that allows readers to get everyone’s viewpoint, and in their own words. And while some characters, most notably Aunt Violet, at the outset seem irredeemable, by the end of the book their rough edges are worn as smooth as the sea stones lovingly collected by art student Linda. They are like the malleable shoreline continually battered by the relentless seas, victims of their own experiences and, as their past is revealed to us, the characters become more human, easier to understand, somewhat likeable and, in certain respects, even quite valiant.

Some critics were exasperated by the protagonist Martin because they found him to be too passive. For me, this was a large part of the book’s fascination and most certainly its main point - that humans, by our very nature, are reactive more often than we are proactive. Martin, like the other characters, has been shaped by the events of his life. And his attempts to break free prove mostly futile. Particularly in light of the fact that what he's trying to escape is the inevitability of decay and death. After his wife, Claire, goes off on a lengthy, women-only protest against the installation of missiles silos in the UK, he drifts back into an affair with Linda, his high school sweetheart. But ultimately, he hasn’t the fortitude to choose between the women and instead takes the path of least resistance, breaking Linda’s heart once more. A similar choice, we later learn, to the one made by his Aunt Violet so many years earlier.

Runcie has created a loving portrait of post-war England and her people, worn down after the battering of WWII. As the story progresses, and he slowly reveals their secrets, each of his characters acquires the burnish and richness of authenticity and all of them win our sympathies utterly. A truly rewarding read. ( )