Snake Island by Australian author Ben Hobson is a solid and immersive story about flawed human beings. You can’t always choose your family, nor find a way out.
Location: set in the 1990s at Snake Island and Newbury near Victoria in Australia.
Snake Island synopsis
In an isolated town on the coast of southern Australia, Vernon Moore and his wife, Penelope, live in retirement, haunted by an unspeakable act of violence that sent their son, Caleb, to serve time in prison and has driven the couple apart. Ashamed, they refuse to talk about him or visit, but when a close friend warns Vernon that Caleb has been savagely beaten, he has no choice but to act to protect their only child.
The perpetrator of the beating is a local thug from a crime family whose patriarch holds sway over the town, with the police in his pay. Everyone knows they trade in drugs. When Vernon maneuvers to negotiate a deal with the father, he makes a critical error. His mistake unleashes a cycle of violence that escalates to engulf the whole town, taking lives with it, revealing what has been hiding in plain sight in this picturesque rural community and threatening to overtake his son.
Book review
Should you condemn or forgive a family member that did something wrong? Help him to become a better person? Is it fair to condemn him when you weren’t a saint in your past either?
As Reverend Kelly says, the worst thing about good and evil existing is that your actions have consequences. Even though it turns out wrong, many people just try to do good, like protecting their kids. The story in Snake Island goes from bad to worse. But what else can they do when rationality is gone and you’d try anything for those you love? In the end, everybody feels powerless.
It is a raw narrative, with voices befitting their social place in society. In Snake Island, you read about remorse, doubts, and admitting and accepting one’s flaws. Ben Hobson wrote a very human story.
Every single character is trying to figure out how to be in a relationship or marriage. They view the role of husband and wife differently. Some are harsh, others are soft. Even within one family, the personalities are different. Yet what they have in common is their love and sacrifices for their kids. Even if they don’t always like the people they came to be.
Snake Island stands for the safe harbor: a place where you can escape your family for a while. Some go to friends for that, others, like Vernon and Sidney, go to Snake Island. But should they see this as abandonment or refuge that is necessary to keep on going?
In the first part of the book, every chapter introduces a new character. It takes some effort but soon you will know them all including their relationships with the other characters. The use of many POVs usually annoys me, but in Snake Island it felt very natural. I was fine continuing as whoever Ben Hobson wrote about next. The writing style supports the smalltown setting. It resembles spoken language a lot, but it reads easily.
Snake Island is a solid and immersive story about flawed human beings. You can’t always choose your family, nor find a way out. Deserves to be read!
Interested?
Get your copy of Snake Island from Amazon (available 20 October 2020).
Many thanks to Skyhorse Publishing and NetGalley for a digital ARC of this novel in exchange for an honest review.
