For a debut novelist, Aitken has an impressive command of language, capturing the spirit of Inis in lush, sea-sprayed descriptions of the Irish coast ... Tone is clearly Aitken’s strongest asset as careful attention is given to characterising the island’s atmosphere, more so than to the inhabitants themselves. While Oona’s complicated love/hate relationship for the island is well articulated, other characters are often reduced to cardboard cutouts, propped up to support Oona’s own story and voice ... Firmly rooted in Irish folklore and tradition, The Island Child delicately touches on the community’s tensions with motherhood, gender, religion and guilt. While its supporting characters needed some expansion, Aitken beautifully captures the push and pull of homecoming and homegoing through her protagonist. The Island Child is an impressive debut.
... a book whose plot is driven by mystery, but whose success is less so in the discoveries than in the telling ... Aitken’s evocative prose immerses us in island life and in the book’s central themes: motherhood, loss, the transformative power of stories ... Italicised passages at the end of sections bring an otherworldly feel to the book ... pacing is a problem, particularly in the book’s later stages where huge, life-altering events are dealt with in a matter of pages ... The success of the book is the vibrancy of its writing and narrative voice. Readers will be carried along by Oona whose struggles are full of pathos ... Character description and dialogue are also notably strong throughout, with welcome flashes of humour in the latter.
A dreamy fairy tale winds its way through this moody story of loss and redemption, which focuses on mothers and daughters and the ways in which they grow apart and sometimes find their way back. For most fiction readers.
From the very beginning, I was mesmerized by how the story was written. It is quite dark and atmospheric, and author Molly Aitken does a magnificent job depicting a harsh life on the island where gender roles are strictly divided and where, if one wants to survive, one has to be a part of the community and listen to the priest. On another level, the story amazingly displays consequences of an emotionless relationship filled with resent, and how that can lead to transgenerational unhappiness. It also demonstrates what happens when someone else makes decisions about our lives and destinies, and when choices are taken away from us ... A complex and multilayered story that is beautiful, magical and sad, The Island Child is a book that you will want to consume in one sitting.
The legacy of Ireland’s sexually repressive history has hardly been left untouched by 20th-century Irish fiction. Yet, while a second strand of this novel — set 20 years later — paradoxically feels both overcooked and undeveloped, Aitken brings a gut-pummelling mix of folklore, feminism and psychological trauma to her wild debut tale of mothers impelled to take out on their daughters the sins committed against them.
Aitken brings myth and folklore to bear in her haunting debut ... Though set in the recent past in parallel chronologies, Aitken’s tale feels outside of time. The primitive nature of life on Inis reinforces the mood, as does the inclusion of folk- and fairy tale–vignettes set between chapters. Bearing overtones of Greek mythology and Celtic folklore, Oona’s story also addresses very real concerns: sexual violence, abortion, postpartum depression, and the legacy of familial trauma. Similarly, Aitken’s prose is by turns placidly lyrical, humorous, and sharply pointed, honed by women’s anger over countless generations. Bold and perceptive, Aitken’s self-assured storytelling and understanding of classic themes stand out in contemporary Irish fiction.
A fevered intensity drives British writer Aitken’s debut, along with an unrelenting stress on femaleness and maternal attachment ... Aitken’s lyrical voice evokes the perilous fishing community and the harsh beauty of the island while piling on the high-colored, often blood-drenched events ... An intermittent third narrative, spun like a fairy tale, punctuates events with suggestions of the Persephone myth, adding one more layer of emphasis to the matrilineal theme. These overlapping, parallel threads, nearly always delivered at the same (high) emotional pitch and from Oona’s fixated perspective, run an immensely long course as she travels her physical and psychological journey of emigration, postnatal depression, second pregnancy, loss, more loss, and, in a final circular spin, a return to the island where her two worlds may eventually become one ... A stylish but overburdened fable of suffering and expiation.
