Islands

Fiercely intelligent book but better than that -- it's a great read. I like it when a book is both intelligent and readable; I like it even more when it's this finest kind. Randall's chops rock.

Reading this book is like plugging directly into your soul. You can't help but be hooked by the premise of a single human mortal (the novel's narrator, Tia) in a future world in which death has been conquered by science. The central guiding conceit is a beautifully simple, perfectly analogous metaphor for the universal experience of alienation -- of alienation to a HORRIFYING degree: how can everyone else in the world NOT seem to be preoccupied with relatively petty concerns when YOU are the only one that will one day die? I have never felt such rock-bottom, hardcore aspects of human experience like death, sex, man's existential aloneness, transcendence (from...? to...?), art, passion for life, ostracism, even the futility of belief in God for those who are cursed with a steely intellect, forefronted and wrestled with so exhaustively, passionately AND entertainingly(!) in one novel. The writing seems to be the product not only of a tireless wordsmith, but feels so specific in its many beautifully woven technical descriptions that you'd be surprised if the author did not have a degree in engineering, besides an impressive working knowledge of architecture, botany, physiology and marine biology (besides a Tom Wolfeian talent for evoking hallucinatory drug experiences to boot).But first and foremost, this is a work of literature. It is, unapologetically, science fiction, and it is also front rank literary art, doing the work that literature does, going right for matters of the human soul, wondering, questioning -- in as galvanizing a way that this reader can conjecture by virtue of the fact that all the novel's readers will share with Tia the one thing that makes her a "freak" -- what we are all doing here, the ultimate question of any art form.Randall creates a world that is vivid and consistent, just strange enough to remind you, on every page, that we are in a future world, but always human enough to keep the reader from drifting off into some fantasy that is not terribly, terribly urgent from word one.Interestingly, there are people all over the country now, so confused and distracted by the chaos of our culture, who are going on "retreats" that contain as their central theme "A Year to Live", the point being to force the retreatant to take stock of what's truly important in their life and (I imagine) begin to prioritize. A couple of pages into Marta Randall's "Islands" and, seeing the world through her narrator's eyes, you're right there, face to face with The Thing That Makes You...Prioritize!

What if you were the only person on Earth who could not be made immortal? Tia's body slumps and withers with age as everyone around her remains young and beautiful. Then her lover of fifty years past joins her on an underwater archeology expedition to the drowned islands of Hawaii.The other members of the crew either hate or fear Tia because she is undergoing a disgusting metamorphosis that they no longer have to experience, although they can still die by accident. Her former lover takes up with her again because he is attracted by the thing he fears the most: death and dying. When Tia discovers why he has made up to her, she boots him back out of her life.Most of Tia's life is told in flashbacks: before and after she discovers that the immortality treatment doesn't work for her. Once she realizes her fate, she speeds through denial, stays angry through most of the book, bargains with her fate by learning all she can about the immortality process, goes through a deep depression when her one true love decides to take off for Pluto. If she goes with him, she'll be the only member of the crew who will age during their long journey. Instead she locks herself away from the rest of humanity on a solar monitoring station for a few years, almost goes mad, and finally returns to Earth in a state of semi-acceptance.One thing is for sure---she isn't going to take any more crap from the Immortals. Deep under the waters of the Pacific, Tia discovers a powerful process that the Immortals had lost. If she can learn how to use it before her shipmates slaughter her, she will gain the ability to transform herself and her world."Islands" is an interesting psychological study as well as future science with all the trimmings.