May 2, 2006
Once upon a time, when my working life was somewhat less pressurised, and my time keeping largely a subjective exercise, I occasionally travelled beyond my intended tube stop in order to finish a book or a chapter. I would basically judge the time remaining for completion, continue travelling for half the time required, and then turn around and head back.
I would have done that this morning, as I raced to the fabulous conclusion of Pig Island, a denouement with as unexpected and dramatic a final twist as I can recall reading. But regrettably, and frustratingly, I was one someone else's clock and had to put the bok away three pages from the end and get off the train, only coming back to it later.
What I'd hoped for when I first picked this up, was nothing more than a book as edgy, powerful and compelling as Hayder's previous outing Tokyo. (Yes, I am difficult to please.)
She did not let me down. While the distance between Scotland's wild west coast and Tokyo is as great culturally and physically as it is geographically, Hayder manages to create the same suffocating claustrophobia here as she did in Japan, plunging Oakesy, her central character into uncomfortable, hostile terrain with incomprehensible and inexplicable people. And that includes his wife Lexie. (Anyone who has been through the breakdown of a relationship will recognise the crushing sense of inevitability in the scenario painted here, as well as the desperation and hopelessness of both parties.)
Oakesy is an investigative journalist specialising in deconstructing hoaxes who has headed north to exact revenge on Malachi Dove, the charismatic leader of a secretive religious cult living on Pig Island, who he holds responsible for the death of an aunt and a personal humiliation.
Leaving Lexie holed up in a holiday cottage Oakesy heads for the island - regarded with fear and loathing by locals who believe the religious cult practices satanic rituals there - to begin an investigation that ultimately results in the violent deaths of 30 people blown up in the chapel there and in charge of Dove's strange, orphaned daughter Angeline.
What marks Hayder out as a special exponent of the thriller/mystery art is her ability to take a plot in unexpected directions. The result is that the reader rarely feels any sense of security or comfort in her novels and is left instead with a malignant sense of dread at what sort of horror lies around the next literary corner. She also has a way with the macabre and the grotesque that must make her conciousness an interesting - if not disturbing - habitat.
Oakesy is a convincing and grounded protagonist - driven hard, first by both his cynicism and his overwhelming need for vengeance and in turn by his fear. Both his strengths weaknesses - and those of Lexie - are determinedly human, which makes the turn of awful events all the more horrifying. (At more than one point, I physically squirmed). And then there is the ending to contend with.
This is an excellent thriller - full of thoughtful writing and fascinating insight, and I heartily recommend it to all. Well, all except those holed up in isolated holiday cottages in rural backwaters. I suggest those of you who are wait until you get safely back to the City before tucking in.
Pig Island by Mo Hayder was published in the UK on April 3 by Transworld.
Reading
Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin (p 62)