GIRL ISLAND

Marooned on a desert island, six high school girls must survive the elements and one another in this debut novel by Castle.

In 1993, 17-year-old Ellery Holmes is a talented heptathlete, starting as a scholarship student at Kings’ Academy, a top English private school. She’ll be meeting some of her new classmates (five girls, two boys) for the first time on a school trip to the Maldives. Ellery is something of a loner—a trait that’s exacerbated by the recent death of her father. She makes a new friend in the brainy, bullied Dawkes, but the rest of the rich, spoiled group offer little hope of acceptance. Petty jealousies and spite, Ellery can handle, but then the group’s plane goes down and they wash up on an uninhabited island. The pilot is dead, the group’s teacher is badly injured, and the two boys swim off alone to a neighboring island. Ellery and Dawkes are left trying to cooperate with alpha mean girl Whitney and her fellow “Cronies.” Further complicating matters is the fact that the remaining member of the group, Skye, is Ellery’s former best friend, whom she hasn’t spoken to since they kissed two years ago. Castle writes from Ellery’s first-person point of view and intersperses occasional diary entries by Dawkes throughout the narrative. The prose is crisp and effective, and the dialogue feels naturalistic. Castle’s story explores what humans are capable of when far from civilization, unambiguously following in the footsteps of William Golding’s classic novel Lord of the Flies1954), which it name checks. The main difference is that Castle’s castaways are mostly female. The stage is thus set for an exploration of the teenage group’s strengths (levelheadedness, adaptable intelligence, a willingness to cooperate) and weaknesses (posturing and a toxic adherence to social hierarchies). One can argue that the negative characteristics are attached too tightly to the Cronies, which makes them rather grueling characters; it also lessens the impact of their descent into evil. Nonetheless, the other players’ plights demand resolution and will keep readers on tenterhooks.

A tense page-turner that shows adolescent humanity at its best and worst.