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Islands: A trip through time and space by Peter Conrad

by
June 2009, no. 312

Islands: A trip through time and space by Peter Conrad

Thames & Hudson, $45 hb, 192 pp

Islands: A trip through time and space by Peter Conrad

by
June 2009, no. 312

‘There was a man who loved islands. He was born on one, but it didn’t suit him, as there were too many other people on it, besides himself.’ So begins D.H. Lawrence’s bleak little fable ‘The Man Who Loved Islands’. Lawrence’s islander wants control, sole possession, mastery of people and place. When his first island, fertile and beautiful, fails him because of the vast expense of making it perfect, he moves to a smaller one where, without love or desire, he drifts into marriage and fatherhood. Again he escapes. On the third and final island – a barren rock – his total isolation brings madness and death. The moral is clear. Lawrence thought of community as essential; without it we cannot be human.

Brenda Niall reviews 'Islands: A trip through time and space' by Peter Conrad

Islands: A trip through time and space

by Peter Conrad

Thames & Hudson, $45 hb, 192 pp

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