Haven

Title: Haven

Author: Emma Donoghue

Genre: historical fiction

Thank you, NetGalley, for this book.

I loved Room and think about it a lot. I haven’t read anything else by her, though. So when NetGalley offered this one, I jumped at the chance to grab it. However, it didn’t meet my expectations. I kept waiting for something to happen, but nothing ever did.

From Goodreads:

In seventh-century Ireland, a scholar and priest called Artt has a dream telling him to leave the sinful world behind. Taking two monks—young Trian and old Cormac—he rows down the river Shannon in search of an isolated spot on which to found a monastery. Drifting out into the Atlantic, the three men find an impossibly steep, bare island inhabited by tens of thousands of birds and claim it for God. In such a place, what will survival mean?

Three men vow to leave the world behind them. They set out in a small boat for an island their leader has seen in a dream, with only faith to guide them. What they find is the extraordinary island now known as Skellig Michael. Haven has Emma Donoghue’s trademark world-building and psychological intensity—but this story is like nothing she has ever written before.

What I did learn is that this story is based on actual history, which always makes a book more interesting, but I wish I had known that ahead of time. Thinking about how people survived back in the seventh century was interesting, but when a book has three characters, the plot has to keep things moving, and this just didn’t. You quickly realize that three people have a hard time sustaining life on an island with few resources is near impossible. I wanted to like this book more than I did. I kept waiting for the aforementioned psychological intensity to occur, but it never did to my satisfaction.