words fell like water

John Bemrose introduced me to The Island Walkers. I spent time living with them, watching how life is reproduced in miniature. The Walker family represent a small version of society, and within their family we encounter even tinier examples of attempts to survive against the larger forces out to get you.

‘A large red ant crawled up Red’s tongue. He gulped wetly : gone.’

I was surrounded by individuals living in isolation. A group of people who think intensely but seem largely unable to communicate their thoughts to anyone else.

‘He was appalled by her ordinariness, by her very existence, so small and finite and limited. Her powers touched nothing beyond her, not a single blade of grass.’

People aware that the relation between them and their natural environment is often more important than relations between each other. In turn the people become like their surroundings -

‘Over the years, like two trees twining together, their trunks had fused.’

Men and women live out uncomplaining, resigned lives. Failure, misery, suffering and death are all acknowledged, accepted, anticipated. Only the younger characters strive to fight against this -

‘he hated it when his mother anticipated his thoughts; it made him feel she had stolen a piece of his future.’

the circumnavigator