2004-01-02 On Land And At Sea

If there is a theme running through Margaret Elphinstone's work, it is travel. 'Voyageurs' concerns a 19th century journey, while 'The Sea Road' tells the story of the Viking exploration of the North Atlantic through a woman?s eyes. And 'Hy Brasil', too, is strongly infused with literatures of exploration and adventure: the narrator is a young travel writer commissioned to write about the island and inhabitants of Hy Brasil; characters are provocatively named after pirates, both real and fictional; and the names and works of canonical writers - Hakluyt, Ballantyne, Stevenson, and Cook, to take a few - are peppered throughout, connecting the novel to a specific time and type of tale. It is, in many ways, a book about books, and a book about the pleasure of reading them.

But while Elphinstone's writing is, quite frequently, of a breathtakingly high quality, 'Hy Brasil' takes time to establish its intent. Elegant and expressive passages, often of the natural world of the island and surrounding ocean, give way to dialogue that fizzles, or set-pieces that, lacking focus, peter away. Sidony and Lucy and Jared (along with many others) are written for exceptionally well, in terms of descriptive prose; the problem is that Elphinstone fails, somehow, to make the characters enduring or authentic. When, towards the end, the plot finally begins to resolve, the reader doesn't care passionately enough about the island's inhabitants to be moved. Nevertheless, odd problem aside, 'Hy Brasil' is an artful and quirky novel, well worth a look.