A wonderfully memorable book about childhood and war. Memorable and highly readable. Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

Matia is sent to live with her grandmother on the island of Mallorca following her expulsion from convent school. Whilst her time there starts like a heat-filled adolescent holiday, the arrival of the Spanish civil war forces Matia to experience the adult world, unlike anything she's seen before.

I really struggled with this one. The writing was very detailed, and I did love the vivid descriptions of Mallorca. However, I found it very difficult to see past the racism that was written so casually. The use of this language actually made me detach from the story and I ended up not really following the remainder of the book.

I appreciate that the writing is reflective of the time period, but I, unfortunately, struggled to see past the racism. It was interesting to read a lesser-known classic and the Mallorca setting has made me want to visit!

Many thanks to the author, publisher, and Netgalley for sending me a copy of this book in return for an honest review.

One of those ones where I clearly must have got a different version to the one that's raking in all the praise. I'm finding it tedious and repetitive, the prose is pretty awful in that hyperventilating style of overwrought anxiety, the descriptions consist mostly of telling us how hot the sun is and that everything is gold or blue. Abandoned at 56% - despite its brevity, I can't face the other hour or so it would take me to finish.

beautifully, exquisitely translated - almost poetic at times. a touch difficult to read retrospectively in 2020, but i admired it for its beautiful prose and imagery.

- Nirica from Team Champaca

I’m afraid I found Matute’s story of a young girl sent to live with her powerful grandmother in Mallorca during the Civil War a painful and laborious read. I understand that Matute was writing in a different time but the racism and offensive language which is used so casually made me wince, and the whole novel felt as though Matute left too much unsaid to be able to really follow the story.
Whilst the descriptions of the island were vivid and beautiful, they were not enough to redeem this slightly nonsensical story with vile and immoral characters for me.

trigger warning
<spoiler> antisemitism, homophobia, death by fire, losing a parent, child neglect, corporeal punishment </spoiler>

As Mati and her cousin Borja visit their grandmother for the summer holidays, the war breaks out and going back is far to dangerous - especially as everybody seems so sure the war won't take long. This is the story of their summer on the island.

Listen. The prose is beautiful. It made me wonder what else I miss out by not speaking Spanish up the point at which I'd have liked to start learning it, only to remember the stuff I already have to do.
I am a sucker for books narrated by children aimed at adults, which also helped, and since I can't leave my home to go on vacation, it is nice to visit an island and do a vacation in my mind.

While the war happens far away, this book is about how people get collectively tense, and what happens if they don't get provided with a way to vent: They attack the most vulnerable in their midst.
An the protagonist and her cousin are somewhere in-between. Not only did they not grew up on the isle, but they're at that weird age where you're neither here nor there, not adult yet, but also not a child.
They experiment, act out, but ultimately don't know what to do with themselves and thus are on the sidelines, maybe see things their peers on the island would not, which makes this very, very interesting.

Would recommend. It's even short, so you won't need to plan it much of time if you want to give it a try, and I promise that that will be time well spent.

I recieved a copy of this book in exchange for a honest review.

I couldn't get into this book. It took me way longer to read than a book this size usually would.
I found myself disconnected from the story and often having to reread passages.
This one just wasn't for me.

This was a slow-paced coming of age novel, that was written beautifully. I really enjoyed the writing, the most and how she created this 14 years of old girl. The setting was interesting as well.

If you like literary fiction and coming of age stories, this is a well written one.

Thanks a lot to NG and the publisher for this copy.

Thank you to Netgalley for the free copy in exchange for an honest review. The Island is a real coming of age novel, hands in the roots of what it is to be a child growing up in an adult world. I loved the rich writing style and the protagonist’s journey spiritually, emotional conflicts galore and beautiful scenery throughout. I did have a major issue with the plot (or lack thereof) as it has problems lying in it feeling a little stagnant with not much actually happening. Loved the bones laid down in the setting and the characters met within.

So gorgeous, so powerful, it's a revelation that Matute has remained relatively unknown to English readers, and huge thanks to Penguin for bringing us this novel in such a fluid 'doesn't-feel-like-a-translation' translation.

This has all the sensitivity and delicacy of Rosamond Lehmann or Antonia White in the depiction of Matia's troubled coming of age; but her experience is given an added resonance since it takes place against a background of the Spanish Civil War and, even further back, of internecine struggles on the island (Mallorca) where the recall of anti-Semitic conflagrations punctuate the text ('from high up in the square, where the Jews had been burned alive, the sea was like a deep, blue threat').

Themes are treated with great subtlety: the pressure to choose one side or the other; the acculturation of girls; the way enemies on either side may actually be far closer than we, and they, might initially assume (especially important in a civil war).

The writing is stunning and Matute is outstanding in the way she describes landscape and light, her prose filled with sensual details. As someone who tends not to enjoy 'nature writing' in and of itself, what makes it work so beautifully here is the way it reflects on the story: the sun is sometimes malignant, the trees defensive or threatening. Fairy tales haunt Matia's mind but her understanding of what it means to be adult tarnish the stories she has loved.

Ultimately, the writer this book recalled to my mind is Giorgio Bassani in his wonderful Ferrara novels - praise, indeed, from me.

The Island takes place during the summer of 1936 in Majorca - in a Spain where the civil war has just begun - and follows 14-year-old protagonist Matia. She has been kicked out of her convent school, and is sent to live with her grandmother for the summer, accompanied by her 15-year-old cousin, Borja. Throughout the novel we follow their exploits across the island in what makes for a dark, feverish and lyrical coming of age novel which perfectly encapsulates that unique feeling of no longer being a child but still being treated as one, and trying to find one's way in a confusing (and often scary) changing world.

Three stars because while I found the writing very impressive I always felt somewhat detached from the events of the story.