ISLAND - Aldous Huxley.

Here is a book I finished over the months of May-August 2001 while on a summer vacation in British Columbia with my girlfriend at the time.

Without giving too much away the book tells us a story about 2 islands; one, the island of Pala (the main Island of discussion) which is a utopian / 'eastern' influenced island full of many of the core values explored in Huxley's Brave New World (BNW) as in being a place where human excellence is being striven for, but perhaps not as scientific and a little more spiritual.  And this of course is no surprise if you understand how Huxley spent the later part of his life.   The island has many interesting practices; a form of tantric sex that is the common and uniform practice, drugs are used as a means of self exploration, and education and life is centered around being in the 'here and now.   In one part of the book it is explained that the children are raised by many families and not just one - so far sounds like a pretty nice place.
Island two; the neighboring island of Rendang, a modernized, maybe "westernized" island that wishes to exploit and conquer Pala for their untapped oil reserves which is ruled over by a dictator Colonel Dipa.
 Now, enter the main character of Will Farnaby who has been strategically planted on the island of Pala to convince the islands leaders to allow Rendang to strike a deal to use their oil.  Things go wrong when Pala's soon-to-be leader secretly allies with Col. Dipa. What's most interesting about Will, and also what I found most predictable, is that as he becomes introduced more and more to Pala's customs he begins to see that he agrees more with their way of life and less to how he was raised.  But, now that things are set in motion what will be the fate of Pala?
 I'll stop there as to avoid too much of a spoiler.  I do want to mention that I found the ending to be one of the best parts of the book, which can be interpreted in so many ways.  You can either really like an ending where the reader gets a lot of freedom to make their own choices, or you can really hate it.  I think for this book it worked quite well.  (DISCLAIMER:  It has been a long while since I have picked up this book so my summary may be lacking in sufficient and/or accurate detail.  Please leave comments or corrections as you see fit.)

I recommend this book for so many different reasons.  For one; it's a small masterpiece written by one of the worlds leading and most burning intellectuals of his time, who put more thought into it's pages than I ever could have. Those who enjoyed Huxley's Brave New World (BNW) which he wrote before Island, will see that Island reads more like a sermon.  (I will review BNW  in a later post and explain) but Island seems more of Huxley's desire to take a fictional approach in spreading his personal philosophy.  And although brilliantly written, Island to me was a touch of a let down becasue of this.  I felt that it was more about Huxley and his personal rantings on philosophy and religion.  Most Huxley fans know that he experimented heavily with psychedelic drugs and had a passion for the idea of universalism and self exploration through mysticism.  He was greatly influenced by Eastern thought, as so many other authors I have reviewed here.  When you have this knowledge, it is clear that this book was more of a Huxley manifesto, again, almost becoming too preachy, with the final message being; any utopian society created anywhere will surely be destroyed when it becomes infected with the "Western" world influence.  I like the message, but it has been beaten to death in so many ways, and I suppose I am tired of hearing it.  However, all that being said - it is Aldous Huxley I am talking about here, and the man deserves the utmost respect for his ability to preach through great story telling.  Island kicks-ass for certain.  But it wasn't the type of ass-kicking I was looking for.

This book is 295 pages long and as I already mentioned in the beginning it took me 4 months to finally complete.  This was for two reasons. One: I was having the time of my life exploring British Columbia for those 4 months and reading wasn't my priority that summer. Although I was able to read a few books that summer, this copy of Island had print that was so small that I found it hard to read in low light, while moving from place to place in a car or bus. It's amazing how something like small print can stretch the reading time from what should have taken me a few days to the course of an entire summer vacation.  Two:  As I stated above, I grew tired very quickly of Huxley's recipe for ranting.  I am in no way disapproving of such a brilliantly well-read and researched mind like Aldous Huxley, and who will obviously always be more educated on the topics in this book than I - but it just couldn't keep me interested personally.  On my sliding scale I give this book a solid 7/10 for the aforementioned reasons.