Island People - (American Literature) by Coleman Dowell (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In this complex novel, a gay man who has fled the violence of the city for an island retreat spends his time keeping a journal and writing stories. He invents a female alter-ego who haunts him, as does the ghost of the murderer who occupied his house in the 19th century; ultimately these hauntings are manifestations of his own psychic disintegration. Considered by many to be Dowell's finest achievement, Island People conveys the fragmentation that results from prolonged isolation.

Review Quotes

"Inside the book, the reader encounters teeming, charged emotions, dark and active with pain. Coleman Dowell... has evidenced courage and invention in creating a work of art so original and difficult as to be alive to baffling and baffled perceptions." -- Edmund White, "New York Times"

"The kind of novel that can change a reader's life." -- Bradford Morrow, "Voice Literary Supplement"

"This is a novel to take time over and to savor for its psychological insight and melancholia." -- "Gay Times"

About the Author

Born in Kentucky in 1925, Robert Coleman Dowell is one of the great post-war US writers. He is the author of five novels including "One of the Children is Crying," "Island People, " and "Mrs October Was Here."?