Island Beneath the Sea by Isabel Allende (2010. HarperAudio. ISBN 978-0-06-199362-6)
Yes, that’s my title of this review of author Isabel Allende’s latest effort. I took a lot of heat from my buddy Mark Rubin, who was one of the pre-readers of my novel-in-progress, Sukulaiset: The Kindred because Mark thought I referred way too often to mammary glands in my story. So, in deference to my good friend, I conducted a literary mastectomy. Many scenes involving naked breasts, nipples, sex, and the like were removed to protect the innocent. Oh, if only Isobel had a Mark Rubin!
I’m no prude as the introduction to this review makes clear. And if you have any doubts about my being able to abide sexual innuendo, read some of my other novels. But I have to say: for a woman, Isobel is certainly fixated on breasts.
The problem with an audio book where boobs and sex pop up (pun intended) every few pages is that such descriptions are disturbing to the 15 and 25 year old young men sitting in the back seats of the Pacifica on the long haul from Duluth to Bozeman. It’s clear that sex sells. And maybe, with the success of soft porn lit such as Fifty Shades of Gray, Ms. Allende needs to “up her game” by spicing up her fiction. But I don’t think so. She’s a great writer who can get along with a few less breasts being exposed. There. I’ve said my peace. On to the book.
Allende takes an interesting and under appreciated facet of history, the slave rebellions on Haiti, and weaves a believable and thoroughly entertaining fictional tale from that legacy of murder, torture, rape, and instability. TeTe, the daughter of a slave woman and an unknown white father, is purchased as a young teen by a French plantation owner, Valmorain. The story of the pair, their families, their friends, and the times, sprawls from Haiti to Cuba to Boston to France to New Orleans. Along the way, the listener (or reader) is a guest on an amazingly accurate journey back in time.
A story of this length is bound to have incongruities and inconsistencies and implausibilities. And Island Beneath the Sea has a little of each. More troubling to me as an author who respects Allende’s skills as a writer,Valmorain isn’t a fully realized, living, breathing character. He seems, to my ear anyway, to be more of a caricature of a cruel plantation owner than a plausible rendition of humanity. On the positive side of the ledger, Allende’s portrayal of TeTe rings true, as do the author’s renditions of the other major protagonists and supporting cast.
In addition, the historical scenes, the use of geography as character, and the weaving the actual events of Toussaint L’ Overture’s revolution into the plot all ring true. This is not a great historical novel but it is, in the end, despite the cleavage, a very good one.
4 stars out of 5.
