Paul Harding (5) (1967–)

Lost Island Home
Review of the Recorded Books audiobook edition (January 24, 2023) narrated by Edoardo Ballerini of the W.W. Norton & Company hardcover original (January 24, 2023).

Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize, with the winner to be announced Sunday November 26, 2023.

Malaga Island was home to a mixed-race fishing community from the mid-1800s to 1912, when the state of Maine evicted 47 residents from their homes and exhumed and relocated their buried dead. Eight islanders were committed to the Maine School for the Feeble-Minded. “I think the best plan would be to burn down the shacks with all of their filth,” then Governor Frederick Plaisted told a reporter at the time. - Epigraph.

Author Paul Harding took his inspiration for his fictional Apple Island from the real-life story of the community evicted from Maine's Malaga Island in 1912. The island's inhabitants in the novel are completely fictionalized however, with even the founding of the settlement thrown back to 1792 instead of the actual 1860. This was still a moving and dramatic story of the outside forces of greed and discrimination acting to destroy those they did not understand or appreciate. That message is a timeless one regardless of the fiction.

See photograph at https://images.downeast.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/LI-770x513.jpg
Entertaining the missionary - Sunday on Malaga Island 1909. Image sourced from DownEast Magazine (see links below).

I didn't think I would be able to get through too many more of the 2023 Booker Shortlist in the time remaining, but an Audible Sale on November 8, 2023 offered this reading by the always excellent Edoardo Ballerini and I snapped it up immediately. This might a 4-star rating, but for me the narration kicks it up to a solid 5-star.

Soundtrack
The Story of Benjamin Darling Pt 1 by State Radio, a song about original Malaga Island inhabitant Benjamin Darling. Note: see in the YouTube comments for the lyrics which someone has transcribed.

Other Reviews
Paradise Lost by Rachel Seiffert, The Guardian, February 16, 2023.

Amid Literary Praise for This Other Eden, Critics Fear the Novel Could Undo Work to Dispel Myths About Malaga Island by Megan Gray, Portland Press Herald, November 12, 2023.

Trivia and Links
Read the magazine story which was the original source of inspiration for author Paul Harding's fiction at The Shameful Story of Malaga Island by William David Barry, Downeast Magazine, November 1980.

Read a follow-up story about how Malaga Island has gone from Dark Secret to Source Material by Jaed Coffin, Downeast Magazine, January 2023.

Listen to an audio documentary about Malaga Island at Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold at Maine Memory.

Read the 2023 Booker Prize Reading Guide for This Other Eden here.… (més)

I am often not drawn to books on the Booker prize list, but the subject of this one caught my eye. It's loosely based on a real place, Malaga Island. In Harding's novel, the island is Apple Island, settled in the late 1700s by a motley group of people who find there way there over the 1800s - a mix of escaped slaves, Penobscot Native Americans, the Irish, and others. They aren't exactly thriving when a pastor from the mainland starts visiting them. They are hungry, cold, uneducated by modern standards, one of them lives in a tree, there has been a lot of inter-marry in a small genetic pool. But even so, the pastor, Michael Diamond, finds glimmers of greatness - a girl who learns Latin with ease and a young man with real artistic talent.

But, the island draws the attention of the government and they decide it's time to civilize this island. It doesn't take much imagination to guess what will happen to the residents.

I liked this. It has a memorable cast of characters. I also liked how it flipped my view of the island. Really, at the beginning I was not impressed with how these people were living. They were in poor health, practically starving, one living in a tree! But by the end, I was convinced they had it right, and the life they'd built there was one they should be allowed to continue.

Recommended.… (més)