“The basic idea came to me during a nap” - Karen Jennings on the genesis of ‘An Island’

Karen Jennings' book 'An Island' (Karavan Press) has been shortlisted for the Sunday Times fiction prize in partnership with Exclusive Books

11 September 2022 - 00:00 By Karen Jennings
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Our judges said of 'An Island' by Karen Jennings: 'Haunting in its depiction of a life lived in solitude, where the past is more real than the present. She is masterful in building the suspense, stone by blood-soaked stone.'
Our judges said of 'An Island' by Karen Jennings: 'Haunting in its depiction of a life lived in solitude, where the past is more real than the present. She is masterful in building the suspense, stone by blood-soaked stone.'
Image: Supplied

CRITERIA: The winner should be a novel of rare imagination and style, evocative, textured and a tale so compelling as to become an enduring landmark of contemporary fiction.

JENNINGS ON THE GENESIS OF HER BOOK:

I am a great believer in naps and try to nap every day. Whenever I am stuck or overwhelmed or cross or anything in between, I make sure to close my eyes for a while. Not only do I find my energy or my mood improved, but I often find solutions to problems, or moments of inspiration. The basic idea for An Island came to me during such a nap while I was at a writing residency in Denmark. I was staying in a beautiful manor house that had at one time been a sanatorium and the bedrooms still had a feel of the invalid about them. During an afternoon nap I had a vision — it wasn’t quite a dream, as I think of dreams as coming from within, whereas visions come from the outside — of an old man on an island with a lighthouse, and he was frowning, looking very serious. Everything was grey around him, sea and sky, and there was a sense of some threat about to appear. I couldn’t shake the vision when I awoke, and over the next few days fragments kept being added to it, but without any active thought on my part. Ideas and thoughts simply presented themselves and I saw what the book would be. I was not excited by the book, rather there was a sense of duty. I had to write it, though I knew it would be difficult — very little action, very little dialogue. And I was right, it was very challenging — which means that I ended up having a lot of naps during the writing process.

by Karen Jennings.
An Island by Karen Jennings.
Image: Supplied

EXTRACT:

The First Day

It was the first time that an oil drum had washed up on the scattered pebbles of the island shore. Other items had arrived over the years — ragged shirts, bits of rope, cracked lids from plastic lunchboxes, braids of synthetic material made to resemble hair. There had been bodies too, as there was today. The length of it stretched out beside the drum, one hand reaching forward as though to indicate that they had made the journey together and did not now wish to be parted.

Samuel saw the drum first, through one of the small windows as he made his way down the inside of the lighthouse tower that morning. He had to walk with care. The stone steps were ancient, worn smooth, their valleyed centres ready to trip him up. He had inserted metal handholds into those places where the cement had allowed, but the rest of the descent was done with arms outstretched, fingers brushing the rough sides in support.

The drum was plastic, the blue of workers’ overalls, and remained in sight, bobbing in the flow, during his hastening to the shore. The body he saw only once he arrived. He side-stepped it, walking a tight circle around the drum. It was fat as a president, without any visible cracks or punctures.

He lifted it carefully. It was empty; the seal had held. Yet despite being light, the thing was unwieldy. It would not be possible with his gnarled hands to grip that smooth surface and carry it across the jagged pebbles, over the boulders, and then up along the sandy track, through scrub and grasses, to the headland where the cottage sat alongside the tower. Perhaps if he fetched a rope and tied the drum to his back, he could avoid using the ancient wooden barrow with its wheel that splintered and caught on the craggy beach, often overturning as a result of its own weight.

Yes, carrying the drum on his back would be the best option. Afterwards, in the yard, he would hunt out the old hacksaw that lived amongst sacking and rotting planks. He would rub the rust from the blade, sharpen it as best he could, and saw the top off the drum, then place it in an outside corner of the cottage where the guttering overflowed, so that it could catch rainwater for use in his vegetable garden.

Samuel let the drum fall. It lurched on the uneven surface, thudding against the arm of the corpse. He had forgotten about that. He sighed. All day it would take him to dispose of the body. All day. First moving it, then the burial, which was impossible anyway on the rocky island with its thin layer of sand. The only option was to cover it with stones, as he had done with others in the past. Yet it was such a large body. Not in breadth, but in its length. Twice as long as the drum, as though the swell and ebb of the sea had mangled it into this unnatural, elongated form.


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