Alison Moore’s debut novel, The Lighthouse, was published in 2012 by the valiant small press Salt and made it on to the Booker shortlist. Now, with her fifth novel, she returns to the isolated places by the sea that have so often inspired her work.
In this new book, a would-be painter called Sandra joins an artists’ retreat on an island called Leiloh where “contentment is assured”. In a parallel story, Carol, an aspiring writer, travels to a deserted island so that she can finish her novel. Although the worlds of these characters are contemporary and largely realistic, this is a story laced with the tropes of fairytale and myth. Emblematic and intentionally flimsy, Sandra and Carol are often described in terms of adverts, plays and books. The atmosphere of the islands is eerie and unsettling, the writing imbued with a deliberate simplicity and distance.
The references to legends and fairytales come thick and fast – Angela Carter, Bluebeard, Alice in Wonderland, Sleeping Beauty, the Pied Piper, the Wizard of Oz. There are also mentions of other “island” books and writers, including the Moomins, Virginia Woolf, Agatha Christie, HG Wells and William Golding. Yet Moore assures us that this is not a survival scenario. There may be no mobile phone signal, “but it’s not like this is a shooting trip; someone may suffer a paper cut, or a twisted ankle, that’s about it”.
So what, then, is this novel about? The strongest parts arise from the secondary characters who are attending Sandra’s retreat. From the outset, they exclude Sandra and soon are openly bullying her. One of her paintings is ruined by a boot mark, her evening dress is mysteriously ripped, the vegetarian lasagne she cooks is not welcomed. Perhaps both community and retreat do not promote female creativity in the ways we might expect?
The tension rises when a second woman called Sandra appears. The original Sandra is distracted by the new arrival’s mirrored sunglasses, “in which she can see herself reflected back, squinting”. The new Sandra’s meaty lasagne is a great success and her creative work is greeted with enthusiasm. Yet how much value can the reader attach to this creativity? The owner of the island may well be right when he describes the group as “half a dozen amateurs come here to fanny about with their second-rate pictures and poems”.
There is an insistence throughout on announcing possible meanings and then brutally undercutting them; like the islands, the novel is foggy and mysterious, and the reader is constantly wrongfooted. Just as Moore retreats from the themes of her novel, so Sandra is soon seeking to withdraw to even greater solitude. But we already know from Carol that life on a deserted island is not the blessing she expected. She can write her novel, but the island itself is “creepy”. Windows slam shut, the smell of garlic is everywhere, pictures fall from walls, phone cables mysteriously come unplugged.
Perhaps it is not the island that is haunted, but the creative life itself? Again, this tantalising idea remains unexplored and we do not fully discover how these two stories (which do briefly coincide) end. Of course, the point of literary fiction is that the reader collaborates in the building of the book. Here we do not get quite enough tools with which to work, yet we can still admire Moore’s commitment to uncertainty, difficulty, that which cannot be grasped.
• The Retreat is published by Salt (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
