Island is incredibly offensive, bizarrely interesting, and often a lot of frenetic, fast-paced fun. sleazy, escapist enjoyment; i felt guilty. the novel is reprehensible and often terribly written. but like i said: fun! horrible fun. a bunch of survivors of a suspicious explosion on a private yacht run around a tropical island, getting picked off or captured & abused by unknown assailants. fortunately, a relentlessly horny teenage boy is on hand to be our fearless hero, audience identification point, and cataloger of all things he deems attractive or unattractive in women.is Laymon a banal and vapid writer or is this all deliberate - could there be intent behind it? who knows. sometimes i can't help but get the impression that everything he knows about human conversation, emotion, and motivation is what he learned from bad tv and 80s slasher movies. well in this novel that debit actually works well because of the hilariously banal and vapid protagonist. the cataloguing of various cute physical attributes of his fellow castaways gets so repetitious and out-of-place and obsessive that the novel almost becomes an absurdist farce. no matter how dangerous or grueling the situation may be, no matter how often everyone is running for their lives or trying to stake out their tormentors... our hero still pops a boner at the slightest hint of T&A and his inner monologue remains ludicrously obsessed with the most puerile, laughable details. i'm not sure i've read anything like this.
the protagonist awkwardly getting in touch with his dark side a couple times was a nifty touch, although it also meant having to get through some repulsive, drooling depictions of abuse (par for the course for Laymon readers, unfortunately). but "nifty" is definitely not the right word for the very ending, one where our boy-hero decides to bring his exploration of that dark side to the next level. genuinely disturbing is probably a more appropriate phrase.
witness this finale, in which our horny young idiot of a protagonist finally gets some of his sexual fantasies fulfilled: after many struggles, a lot of quick thinking, and a bit of luck, he manages to heroically save the day by violently dispatching both of the heinous, monstrous villains... and then simply decides to keep his fellow survivors imprisoned ("uh oh, I can't find the key to your cages!")... and so is able to take those villains' place, living in their island mansion, a bunch of naked women he's been salivating over throughout the novel now full of gratitude towards him... and now also available for his every whim - that is, if they ever want to get out of those cages.... golly gee, i guess it really IS a happy ending for our brave lad!
that ending is diabolically clever. Laymon, you really went there - that does take some stones. to make matters even more unnerving, the tone of the novel's first person narrative, one that is in a journal format, is both angsty Young Adult and gee whiz, what a crazy adventure i'm having! that tone remains consistent from the zippy opening to the upsetting final decision. the reader is positively not let off the hook and i was left with that lingering, sickening, dread-filled feeling in my stomach that so many horror authors aspire to create but fail to obtain. maybe Laymon isn't such a bad writer after all. having a hero who gradually, increasingly exhibits villainous attributes is nothing new - but it was genuinely startling to see it happen in Island. and i suppose it can also be said that crudity can sometimes get more visceral results than ambiguity and literariness.
