Castle of Water

 

Castle of Water – by Dane Huckelbridge

Castle of Water is one of those “stranded on a desert island” stories. A 30-something year old American man and a young Paris newlywed couple charter a single engine plane from Tahiti to a smaller destination. Unfortunately their pilot likes alcohol too much and the next thing we know, the plane has crashed killing the pilot along with the newly married man.  Fortunately the other two manage to survive by drifting to a small, uncharted island about the size of a football field.  The plane had an “emergency survival kit” for such a purpose, and the two fortunately manage to salvage it so they have the means to survive with very measly means.

Things don’t start off well. The man seems somewhat levelheaded, but the Parisian woman is rightfully angry at having lost her newly betrothed husband, and she constantly releases her frustration towards the only other human being in her new abrupt existence.  Well, the two manage to solder on as best they can.  After all, this will only be a temporary travail.  Surely a rescue crew will come looking for them soon and they’ll be able to leave this desolate nightmare and get back to civilization.

Right?

What transpires is a rather sad yet touching tale. If we’re honest, it’s a tad hard to have an entire novel devoted to two people living on a deserted Pacific Island. How does an author keep such a plot fresh?  There’s only so much a reader can endure when reading about sunburned strangers forced to eat green bananas and constantly making shelters out of leaves.

We read a little bit about what life was like for these two before they arrived in their new surroundings, and these parts are quite interesting. It helps us understand the characters a bit more, and one wishes the author would have maybe included more of such a substory.  

As you can probably surmise, any time there’s a story about a man and a woman stranded on a desert island, we know it won’t take too long before the inevitable happens.  So what we do have is a lot of introspective storytelling between the two people.  They invent stories to share with each other about an alternative reality where the two of them meet in more normal circumstances.  It’s nice, and probably realistic in terms of people in such situations, but it can wear old after a bit.   The fact that our female protagonist is French can be a bit tiresome as well.  She speaks English, but the author often litters her dialogue in her native French with no explanation as to what she’s saying.  Again, perhaps real, but a bit of a hindrance.  She also says “Pfft!” a lot. I think that expression is a new one for me.

There are other things I struggled with while reading.  You would think two people who lived on such a small island over such a long time would know every nook and cranny after only a few months, yet they are constantly “discovering things” on the island.  And whereas I’m no electronics expert, I never could figure out how a shortwave radio could last without power or fresh batteries for such an extended period of time. (Although I’m sure someone with more knowledge could easily enlighten me.)

Our story actually “starts” at the “end”, so in a sense I’m not really giving you any spoilers in my review.  Probably the biggest disappointment of this book was that it ended too quickly.  This is one of those books that when you only have 10 more pages before the end, you scratch your head a bit because you realize that there really needs to be about 100 more pages to get to anything resembling a satisfying conclusion.

I still enjoyed this novel overall and was a bit disappointed to discover that this book is the author’s only novel.  Apparently he’s written a few non-fiction books around topics a tad inconsequential, but he really shouldn’t give up novel writing altogether.  This was a nice diversion, and for a “first time novel” it was quite good.