Eccentric Islands: Travels Real and Imaginary

Using the concept of islands as a metaphorical vehicle, Bill Holm speaks to the intellect and to the soul. Bill Holm is amazingly descriptive and beautifully human. Recounting his visits to real islands we grasp the human (transcending culture) values of neighborhood and community. Islands of the imagination are explored, as places of retreat, creativity, and reflection. In a final powerful closing caveat Holm warns against allowing the imagination to turn inward on itself and to play only with itself. In D.H. Lawrence's "The Man Who Loved Islands" our tragic hero discovers before he dies alone: "My individualism is really an illusion. I am a part of the great whole, and I can never escape. But I can deny my connections, break them, and become a fragment. Then I am wretched." So praise that which makes us human, make connections, share, let down your guard, free your imagination, get off your island and tour some of the others. Buy this book and read it.

Author Bill Holm has produced in this work a wonderful, eclectic, almost at times rambling (but wonderfully so) tour of a number of islands. Many are actual islands he writes about, places where one can journey to; Madagascar, Isla Mujeres or the Island of Women near Cancun off the Mexican coast, Molokai (part of the Hawaiian Islands, once a leper colony, that chapter fascinating and touching centering as it does on the saintly efforts of Father Damien de Veuster and his care for the unfairly maligned and ill-treated lepers cruelly exiled there), and Mallard Island in Minnesota. Some islands he visits are not actual physical places, a few "states of consciousness" which he writes so "resemble islands that they deserve the geographic name," such as the island of music (Holm, a great lover of pianos, clavichords, and harpsichords, describes how producing music can be an island-like experience in a wonderful, wide-ranging chapter that goes into a great deal of history behind these instruments) and the island of pain (how great physical or emotional pain can isolate oneself from others). Clearly this is a different travel book, one thematically organized rather than simply a description of places, experiences, and detailing the history, politics, cuisine, and culture of the particular places visited by the author. The largest section of the book - and my favorite part by far - was two rather lengthy chapters describing Holm's experiences in Iceland. A descendent of Icelandic immigrants who grew up in Minnesota, he spent time there in 1979 teaching English and then revisited the island again twenty years later. Clearly loving the place and the people especially, Holm provided for me a wonderful introduction of a place I would now very much like to visit. We learn that Iceland is a surprisingly small country, an isolated island in the North Atlantic about the size of Ohio (about 40,000 square miles), inhabited by about a quarter million people, most of whom live around the capital and largest city of Reykjavik, and that so sparse has the population of Iceland been through the centuries that only 800,000 Icelanders have ever lived (leading perhaps he says to the sometimes hobby sometimes obsession of many in Iceland with genealogy). A hard island to live on sometimes, first settled in 874 (though a few scattered Irish monks did call the place home before that), the population declined due to the Black Plague in the 14th century, smallpox in the early 18th century, and two large volcanic eruptions in 1783 and 1875, both of which caused massive famine by burying hayfields and killing sheep (it was due to the latter eruption that Holm's great-grandfathers moved to Minnesota). Indeed physically Iceland is a rugged country, subject to volcanic eruptions (the island is still growing, as the volcanic mid-Atlantic ridge bifurcates Iceland) and earthquakes (the author himself experienced a minor one in 1998), ninety percent barren lava and rugged volcanic deser

Although I'm a travel essay collector and snob, never has any author told me a story that made me break down in sobs for four pages (236-240). This is now one of my favorite books. I found it by accident, due to an interest in Madagascar and Iceland, but every island described here will enlighten you. There are a million average writers out there, knocking out non-fiction books on the most menial of topics, but Bill Holm is that rare author who not only feels his topics thoroughly, he has the prose at hand to describe those feelings. And though his subject matter is far from menial, I would read whatever he cares to write about after reading this book. Bravo!

I dove into this book with an avid interest. The writer takes the reader through his various travels abroad and through his own lifetime. Sounds great. Except just like any travel companion, after some time you've heard all of the stories again and again. The writer is from Minnesota, he's so proud of this fact he tells us this more than 50 times. He's of Icelandic descent ( also interesting the first time ) he tells us this fact many many times. Repetition turns to redundancy. Then to scorn as the authour begins to diss America. You know the refrain, everything and everyone in the US is shallow and material and all our forefathers knew better and when these immigrants died they took the culture with them. Holm wrestles with his forefathers like you'd wrestle with aging. He takes it to heart. That's fine only it's boring. I wanted to read about adventure and I'm stuck listening to some guy who never made mucho bucks diss everyone who did. Not eccentric or island related at all. Like other writers and travelers before him, Holm claims to have found the simple spirit of the third world poor happier than anyone else. Only he doesn't stick around to live there. It's easy to make people appear as you want them to, then pass on through. By the end of the book, I was tired of this person. Tired of his inability to tell a story without preaching and show me the way rather than fitting his ethos into an island of any sort. Some parts of the book are revealing if you have not visited the places. The Icelandic trips he takes are full of flavor for the place. I liked them a lot. With a good editor to strip this book of its generalizations and redundancy it could be a real gem. I particularly liked the islands of pain and islands of the imagination.

Eccentric Islands is a magic carpet that takes you along on journeys as they are best experienced. Mr. Holm provides enough detail of his physical journey to allow you to travel vicariously. In addition, he invites you on the mental trips that accompany his corporeal travel, down paths of history and philosophy. The narrative is entertaining, and the flights of fancy are just enough for me to recognize myself in his journey without the dreariness of endless self-reflection. I encourage fans of Bill Bryson to pick up this book (though there is far less humor than your typical Bryson book). I read it on an airplane, wishing I was headed on an adventure rather than a business flight from Minneapolis to Boston.