Apocalypse

Bowler is an author whose strong, personal vision never quite manages to get the support it requires from his accompanying plots. And such once again is the case in this novel, where 15-year-old Kit drifts after a sailing accident into a strange, forgotten island whose inhabitants treat him as an emissary from the devil. Much pain, weeping and a type of crucifixion follows before he finally manages to escape, leaving behind the one girl who was always on his side. Bowler’s insistent imagination keeps this story going for some time, but too much repetition – with young characters regularly escaping their more powerful adult captors by biting them on the hand – eventually ensures that the whole project dies out well before the end. A hundred fewer pages would have helped this very odd, sometimes impressive but ultimately disappointing story from a writer with much to say but somehow always falling short of his initial promise.