The Island

Starred review from July 25, 2016
Levez’s debut captures the emotional journey of 16-year-old Frances Stanton, one of a plane full of British juvenile delinquents and camp staffers headed to a skills-based intervention on an Indonesian island. When the plane crashes, Frances reaches a deserted island with few supplies, where she struggles to find food, water, and shelter among sharks and poisonous plants. With a dog as her only companion, Frances faces painful memories of her family back home, including her ill mother, her half-brother, and her mother’s lecherous boyfriend. Through short chapters, Levez effortlessly balances Frances’s past, present, and imagined future, including vivid flashbacks of her home life and acts of retaliation against a well-meaning teacher. After a storm hits, Frances meets another survivor, Rufus, whose prescriptive habits cause friction. Their relationship moves from rocky to companionable, but when food runs low and Rufus lands in a dire situation, Frances must find a way off the island to save her newfound friend. Echoing O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins, Levez’s story will keep readers riveted as determined, hard-edged Frances fights to survive. Ages 13–up. Agent: Clare Wallace, Darley Anderson Literary.

July 1, 2016
A teen struggles against both nature and her own past experiences in a reflective survival tale.Sixteen-year-old Frances Stanton considers herself a monster. She likens herself to the gorgon Medusa, longs to be as emotionless as a rock, and drops dark hints about the crime that landed her on an airplane bound for a rehabilitative adventure experience. When that plane crashes into the Indian Ocean en route to Indonesia, Frances climbs aboard a life raft, floating to a small island. Levez keeps the stakes agonizingly high as Fran fights for her life, making incremental gains, trying to prevent catastrophic losses, and slowly forging a deep bond with another castaway, Rufus. (Both characters seem to be white.) Events on the island alternate with Fran's memories of what led up to her current situation: she set fire to a wing of her London school, seriously (though accidentally) injuring a young teacher who, intending to help, was responsible for the removal into protective custody of Fran's biracial younger brother, Johnny. Fran is intensely protective of Johnny against both their mother, Cassie--a rather pathetic figure dependent on pot and alcohol--and Cassie's predatory boyfriend and quasi-pimp. Readers will quickly see that conditions on the island are more physically dangerous than in Fran's squalid apartment--but much less emotionally treacherous. Not all readers will embrace this novel's haunting, open-ended conclusion, but those who do will find much to appreciate and discuss. (Adventure. 13-16)

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July 1, 2016

Gr 8 Up-Frances Stanton's social worker persuades her to go to an overseas team-building program for teens who have committed crimes or face juvenile detention. Stormy weather downs her plane in the Indian Ocean, but Frannie manages to grab onto an inflatable raft equipped with a small emergency kit. Parched by the sun, the British teen eventually washes up on an island but is her own worst enemy as she downs a flask of vodka and lights most of the matches in the emergency kit. Flashbacks reveal a near-homeless existence and a little brother, Johnny, who is totally neglected by their alcoholic mother and her enabling boyfriend. A tenuous relationship with one teacher (whom she thought she could trust with her secrets) falls apart, and Frannie's anger results in a horrible act of retaliation. Somehow her personal demons deliver the grit needed for island survival, and when Virgil, a dog from the ill-fated flight, appears out of nowhere, it signals the presence of another human on the island. Virgil leads Frannie to Rufus, a fair-haired do-gooder with great survival skills, but it is an instant clash of personalities, and the acrimony intensifies before it ebbs. Island habitat details are descriptive and realistic and add depth to the tension-filled plot. A crisis cements Frannie's redemption and metamorphosis from monster to savior, and while readers will root for the characters' survival, the novel ends ambiguously. VERDICT A page-turner for teens, who will be chattering about the open ending and clamoring for more to this story.-Vicki Reutter, State University of New York at Cortland

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