Islanders

I doubt the Guernsey tourist board will rush to hand out copies of this book to disembarking arrivals. Cathy Thomas’s islanders are feral teenagers or the slightly older, still-learning versions of their younger selves. With only the odd glimmer of kindness or emotional possibility, the characters bully each other, get off their heads on drink and drugs, throw up, abuse their elders and fornicate as though their lives depend on it. They can’t see much else on offer.Yet there is an irresistible brio to these characters and their intertwined lives, told over two decades. The dozen short stories here depict life in a near-closed community at its rawest and most vivid; the writing itself is top-notch (as no-one in this book would say). Not for a maiden aunt perhaps, but certainly bracing.