Ben Brooks's An Island of Fifty: A Review by Thomas DeMary

There’s a scene in Spike Lee’s film Mo Betta Blues in which the two main characters, jazz musicians in a quartet, quarrel over the juxtaposition of artistry and pleasing the fans: one wants to do his thing, the other wants to rock the crowd. The idea of bridging the gap, of self-expression and mass marketability joining forces, never comes up; the zero-sum equation served its purpose in making the scripted beef more dramatic. One has to wonder if, in regards to literature, the zero-sum equation is real.

If it does exist, it may have a bit of merit. An Island of Fifty, the third novel by  Ben Brooks (Mud Luscious Press), is a confounding story written in an unique (and, after the first two chapters, mildly annoying) prose style. A story of the plight caused by “industrial civilization”, An Island of Fifty is, if nothing else, ambitious in its execution. Self expression, allowing oneself to write what he wants, in whatever manner he chooses, is worth congratulating—or at least acknowledging without a hint of negativity.

Acacia watches the island from

her island. She polishes her shotgun

& laughs at the drunk crew flailing on

their moored boat. She sees it set sail

& prays it sink while the men

laugh hysterically.

Boats come daily.

Drink liquid gold.

They bring red bricks & strange foods.

Marsha does not sing from the beach

any longer, she notices. The port has

become hard gray lines. The ships have

become steel faces tearing merciless

slits in the ocean.

Bandage the sea. Bandage

everything.

Acacia picks vegetables, fruit, then

smokes a cigarette & watches the sky

burn confused. The sky sorrows. She can see

that the people are growing restless in

the greenhouse heat of growth. People

want.

She remembers old time; Old town. She

remembers farming, sweat with trade.

She remembers the cobbler & The Miller

drunk. She remembers Marsha skipping

surf in mornings. She remembers naked

flames. She remembers arms & women &

wine & song & wood & scent & smile &

dance & sparrows & moths & chariots

& yellow days, black nights, open palms,

the gift of silver, flat land, safe land,

empty hotels & faces. She remembers

people. She remembers people sweating,

working under a plastic sun as willing

slaves. She remembers love & not

courtship. She remembers the absence

of a cathedral. Man’s phallus in God’s

young sky.

Citizens of an unnamed island, existing in an unidentified period of time, discover “industrial civilization” — an esoteric phrase that could be swapped for capitalism, technology, or classism. Or perhaps colonization, as ships arrive at the island; sailors and religious fanatics bring with them the usual tools of deforestation, humiliation of the islanders, and a general disrespect for Mama Earth.

Creative expression ruled in An Island of Fifty and, in the process, bypassed fiction’s usual crafty suspects: character development, subtext, and tension. Novelists, depending on the project at hand, are free to decide what to show the reader and what to hide—even the hidden parts, if done well, can suggest or allude to the writer’s intent, a wink-and-nod technique of sorts.

In other words, Brooks presumes too much: the reader should care about industrial civilization and its impact to the island, to its citizens. The problem is that Brooks skipped a few steps: the novel fails to develop the characters, leaving the reader with ambivalence, at best. Why should one care for The Miller, Hector, et al?  Who are these people beyond their given names?

Is industrial civilization bad? The novel says “yes” which means the novel says too much; it impresses a moral view upon the reader, rather than fleshing out the story, the characters, their interactions with one another and allowing enough space in the narrative, in the subtext, to let the reader reach her own conclusion: a staple in well-written literary fiction.

And while plenty of action occurs, An Island of Fifty conjures no tension, no drama. Since one is left indifferent about the characters, their movements, their decisions are analogous to action figures in the hands of a child: they serve the whims of their owner, rather than existing as sentient, complex beings. Without any investment into the characters, the story arc rises and falls like a firecracker thrown by a limp-armed pitcher. In the end, Brooks produced a manifesto in the guise of a thinly veiled fable on the perils of industrial civilization and the displacement of priorities: money over humanity, materialism over decency, power over fairness and justice.

Unorthodox storytelling and acrobatic narrative only adds texture to a fully-baked novel—the result creates a platform to both satisfy the writer’s creative energies and the reader’s desire for a good book. And when a book is ambitious, a laudable goal in its own right, the basics need attention, not circumvention for the sake of prosaic style and a bludgeoning theme.

An Island of Fifty is ambitious and stylistic, but without the foundation of provocative characters to give the text breadth and tension, the book panders to the novelist’s ambition as a redeeming literary value, in hopes that style will trump substance and keep the reader’s attention. Unfortunately, An Island of Fifty‘s unnecessary prose style, coupled with its heavy-handed theme, isn’t enough to salvage the narrative and entice the reader to care.

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Thomas DeMary currently hacks away at his prose somewhere in New Jersey. You can  follow him on Twitter @thomasdemary