The Fourth Island

by Sarah Tolmie

Overview

Dark, mournful, and beautiful, Sarah Tolmie's The Fourth Island is a moving and unforgettable story of life and death on the hidden Irish island of Inis Caillte.

Huddled in the sea off the coast of Ireland is a fourth Aran Island, a secret island peopled by the lost, findable only in moments of despair. Whether drowned at sea, trampled by Cromwell's soldiers, or exiled for clinging to the dead, no outsiders reach the island without giving in to dark emotion.

Time and again, The Fourth Island weaves a hypnotic pattern with its prose, presaging doom before walking back through the sweet and sour moments of lives not yet lost. It beautifully melds the certainty of loss with the joys of living, drawing readers under like the tide.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250769848
Publisher:	Tom Doherty Associates
Publication date:	10/20/2020
Pages:	112
Sales rank:	448,283
Product dimensions:	5.13(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.30(d)

About the Author

SARAH TOLMIE is a poet, speculative fiction writer, and professor of English at the University of Waterloo. Her books of poetry, Trio in 2015 and The Art of Dying in 2018, both with McGill-Queen’s University Press, were shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award and the Griffin Prize, respectively. Her fiction, published with Aqueduct Press, includes the novels The Little Animals (2019) and The Stone Boatmen (2014) which was a finalist for the Crawford award, the dual novella collection Two Travelers (2016), and the short fiction collection NoFood (2014). Her poem “Ursula Le Guin in the Underworld” won the 2019 Aurora Award and the 2019 Rhysling Award. Sarah Tolmie lives in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.

Editorial Reviews

07/06/2020

This lovely, mournful historical fantasy from Tolmie (The Little Animals) explores the uneasy relationship between people and place. In 1840, a stranger’s body washes up on the shores of Inis Mór, one of Ireland’s three Aran Islands, wearing a sweater that is undeniably Aran work, but doesn’t come from any known village on the islands. Shortly thereafter, residents of Inis Mór begin to disappear—and wash up alive on Inis Caillte, a fourth Aran Island that doesn’t show up on any map. Populated solely by the lost, the island heals the ailments of all those who reach its shores, among them Nellie, a deaf woman who arrives to find her hearing restored, and Jim, who finds happiness and family there after giving in to depression. As the denizens of Inis Caillte contend with their own loves, achievements, and losses, a creeping despair sweeps across Inis Mór. Drawing on themes of community, redemption, pain, and healing, the story has a lovely slice-of-life feel, but the unresolved ending will leave some readers unsatisfied. Still, the narrative voice is captivating, with the rich, conversational tone of a storyteller sitting at a fireside. The contemplative style, low stakes, and small cast is reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle and is worthy of the association. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

The Fourth Island is both beguiling and unsettling, both mythic and earthy. A truly memorable story, beautifully crafted.” —Juliet Marillier, author of the Warrior Bards series

“The contemplative style, low stakes, and small cast is reminiscent of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle and is worthy of the association.” —Publishers Weekly

“The Fourth Island is an absolute gem of a story, full of wonder, melancholy and no little wisdom.” —Peadar Ó Guilín

“Part charm, part history, part ravishing spell in itself, The Fourth Island is the best kind of ghost story, reminding us of all the good and the bad in the world. I loved this book.” —Helen Marshall

From the Publisher

06/12/2020

Tolmie (The Art of Dying) writes a strange meditation on love and death in this new novella. The people of the tiny island community of Inis Mor are baffled when the body of a strange man washes up on their shore wearing a sweater woven in a pattern no one can identify but that everyone finds familiar. The dead man and his sweater will lead a few of the townsfolk to an unknown island—one that sits just outside the bounds of time and mortality. VERDICT This quiet, magical-realist fairy tale written with a delicate melancholy will attract readers who enjoyed G. Willow Wilson's The Bird King or Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose the Time War.—Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib, Atlanta

Library Journal

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