Audio-book Review
By Chet Yarbrough
Blog: awalkingdelight)
Website: chetyarbrough.blog
Satin Island
By: Tom McCarthy
Narrated by: James Langton
(Tom McCarthy, British Novelist, Nominated for the Booker Prize twice, One of which was for “Satin Island”.)
To this listener, “Satin Island” is an intellectual journey to nowhere. Obviously, others who determined McCarthy should be nominated for a Booker Prize for “Satin Island” disagree. Anthropology is the scientific study of human behavior, cultures, societies, and languages of the past.
Tom McCarthy seems to have sat at a desk and thought of an idea to write about, i.e., namely anthropology.
McCarthy’s main character is an anthropologist working for a fictional think tank that analyzes companies wishing to have some insight to an unknown future. His employer gives the anthropologist an assignment to write a paper that capsulizes the world’s future based on an understanding of the past and known present.
McCarthy’s story begins in Turin Italy with a brief explanation of the shroud of Turin which is alleged to have been wrapped around Jesus’s body after crucifixion.
The shroud could never have had the imprint of the remains of Jesus. The anthropologist notes it is proven fake because the shroud’s fabric is manufactured centuries after Christ’s crucifixion. The fake of the shroud is an inartful premonition to the course of the story.
The anthropologist’s assignment is a fool’s errand.
Whatever he writes in his report will be like the shroud of Turin. McCarthy tirelessly offers a series of vignettes to reinforce his message. A singular insight that one finds in McCarthy’s story is that anthropology is a science split into two disciplines. One is the acquisition of artifacts that tell an anthropologists’ interpretive story and two, anthropology is a search for written records and interviewed descendants that have first hand recollection of their ancestors’ societies. The first is clouded by interpretation. The second is clouded by understanding of language and descendants’ memories.
A recuring mystery in McCarthy’s story is of a parachutist that dies from a failed, presumably silk (like satin), parachute with nylon strings that were purposely cut.
The nylon strings holding the parachute are the threads of life’s history, like the fabric of the Shroud of Turin, and/or artifacts left for an anthropologist’s interpretation. McCarthy notes the cause of death may have been murder but it might have been suicide. Suspects are arrested. No one is convicted. The person who died is not suicidal. It becomes another mystery of the past.
The anthropologist realizes the report requested by his employer can be based on whatever he chooses to write. He begins to believe his report can be written and widely believed like the story of the shroud of Turin.
The story ends with the death of the owner who hired the anthropologist. The irony of the story is that the anthropologist is widely acclaimed for his final report meant to tell the future of life when he knows his story is like the shroud of Turin.
To this listener, there is too much intellectualism and not enough story. That may be why it did not win the Booker Prize. That is reason enough to me.
REVIEWS AND VIEWS OF LIFE 