I found this book
via a review in Planet Magazine, but I will be honest when it arrived
at 350 pages of pretty small print I think I let out a sigh – was
there really that much to say about 10 years spent on a tiny island?
I share this because while I picked it up fairly reluctantly, having
picked it up I found that I couldn’t put it down.
Rosanne’s arrival
on the island is a bit of a scramble, including a shot gun wedding,
and one is worried that this will turn out to be an epic of regret
and frustration. But once on the island Rosanne rapidly falls in love
with it.
She provides an
account, a generally positive account, of isolation that is almost
impossible today. They have no electricity, no phone, only brief
radio communication via the Coastguard. Later wardens of Skomer now
have electricity, connectivity. Does “keeping in touch” lessen
or underscore the separation, possible loneliness – and does it
provide a distraction from the deep connection with the island and
its wildlife that was so central to the joy Rosanne found on the
island.
There is a poetic
quality to the descriptions of the island, the sea, the various
animals, and the emotional responses Rosanne has to it all. She has
real skill as a writer, the subject matter is rich but she draws you
into its very heart.
She also has the
lightness of touch to play on the humour of many situations, for
example almost all the anecdotes involving Wellington the goat.
But throughout the
account there are moments that will make you weep, such as the oil
spills impact on the seals and sea birds, gut wrenching in the shared
sense of helplessness, hopelessness. Or their recovery of the body of
a drowned fisherman.
Alongside these are
more intimate, but not less powerful, moments – when they have to
re-home “The Raven”, an injured bird they had hoped to nurse back
to health and a return to the wild, but it was not to be.
As they prepare his
departure “He was extraordinarily quiet and well behaved as he was
transferred to the small cage. Perhaps subdued would have been a
better word. He was such an intelligent bird that I couldn’t help
wondering how much he understood of what was happening.” and then
“’Hello’ he said quietly, for the last time.” Hello was the
only word The Raven had learned, that the moment of separation is
marked with this incongruous word broke me. It probably doesn’t
make sense quoted like this but in the flow of the account you are
riding the ebb and flow of emotion with Rosanne.
And ultimately we
come to their departure from Skomer, in a mirror to her arrival, it
is forces beyond her control that determine the timing – she has
time to say goodbye, but no choice over the need to say goodbye.
You are left with
the sense of not having read about life on Skomer but having lived
it. I don’t think there is high praise to give to a writer.
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