Review of the Day: Candle Island by Lauren Wolk

Candle Island
By Lauren Wolk
Dutton Children’s Books (an imprint of Penguin Random House)
$18.99
ISBN: 9780593698549
Ages 9-12
On shelves

An author that can tell you at the beginning of their book that there’s a big secret lurking in its pages, then subsequently make you completely forget all about it until the right time is, to my mind, a good writer. And I surprise absolutely no one when I say that Lauren Wolk? She is a good writer. Not an easy writer. After all, none of her books ever strike me as particularly simple to plot out and write, but a strong one just the same. When I see a new Wolk, I don’t know what to expect or even, in many ways, when or where I am until she tells me. With her latest book, Wolk tackles recovering from trauma (personal, economic, etc.) within the context of a small class war. She also takes time to focus on the process of creating art and what it means to both the creator and the recipients. And that secret? Don’t be surprised if you forget all about it… until it’s too late.

Change can be good. After her father was killed in a car crash, Lucretia and her mother run away from the world to Candle Island, a tiny tourist destination just off the coast of Maine. They’re not going for a vacation, though, but to stay. In the real world, Lucretia and her mother paint and her mother sustains them both with selling paintings. The subsequent fame has turned into a curse. On Candle Island they hope to be anonymous, but that hope is dashed fairly early on. While Lucretia befriends a local boy named Seb and attempts to come to terms with the prickly girl her age, Murdock, her mother discovers an art critic on the island who is determined to interview her. Then there are the wary locals, as well as the snide tourists. Lucretia takes time to tend to a wounded osprey chick, paints in her barn, rides her horse, and tries to avoid three rich teens with trouble on their minds. But when one of the docks is set alight one evening, things on the island take a turn for the serious.

Like many people I first came to Ms. Wolk’s books through her unforgettable Newbery Honor winning title Wolf Hollow. There are elements to that book that still haunt me to this day. Somehow, in the span of just a few pages, Lauren managed to conjure up the most unrepentantly evil little blonde girl you will ever find in a work of realistic fiction for kids. My lingering discomfort has had longstanding consequences, of course. Mainly, that I have difficulty reading other Lauren Wolk books without constantly looking over my proverbial shoulder every page or so for similar villains. Are there bad children in Candle Island? Of course there are. Three little wealthy weasels that pose a threat to our heroine’s happiness. Are they at the same level as Betty Glengarry? They are not, for while Betty was a burgeoning sadist, these three are precisely what they appear to be: rich and bored. That didn’t stop me from worrying about them constantly during my read, which is not the worst way to go through this book. They’re just not on her level.

That Lauren Wolk has given herself the unforgiving goal of writing about the magic of the artistic process is clear. It is also a thankless task, to say the least. While art can be defined in words, the effect it has on the artist, in the midst of their creativity, often defies explanation. Not content to simply discuss Lucretia and her paintings, Wolk doubles down by making two of the other kids on island a singer and a poet. They discover one another’s gifts late in the game but the clear indication is that this is a bond they share, whether known or unknown. And since our heroine is Lucretia, the key to the book are the moment when she paints. She can recognize art in other people, whether it’s a song or a poem, but when she’s in the zone, that’s when Wolk has to put the reader in a similar kind of zone as well. Some kids will come out of this book wanting to paint themselves. Others will take a broader interpretation, and may feel inclined to pursue their own art. Still others, without any artistic inclinations at all, may read Candle Island and come away from it with a slightly better understanding of what it means to either create or appreciate art. That’s what we can hope for anyway.

As for her writing itself, it’s what we come for, isn’t it? There are certain authors for children that are capable of the kind of writing that is not merely full of strong character growth and interesting plotting, but legitimately lovely prose as well. On a single page I found lines that end with glimpses of a “bruise-blue sea.” Or, when Lucretia thinks about befriending the prickly Murdock, she is thinking of, “How adding even a little yellow to the coldest gray could warm it toward something altogether new. But Murdock was a girl, not a painting. I would have to remember that.” I mark in my copy of this book the lines I like best. What’s remarkable about them is how seamlessly they’re integrated into the plot. I suppose, when you get right down to it, not a ton of things happen in this story. There are tense, and sometimes even terrible, moments but at no point did I ever quite figure out where the book was going. I figured that Lucretia would befriend Murdock eventually, and there would be some big scene involving the three spoiled preps, but when the big reveal does happen in the book it caught me wholly off-guard. So off-guard, in fact, that I actually needed one of the characters to spell everything out to me (which, nice guy that he is, he did readily). It’s really a talented title from start. You get what you come for when you read a Lauren Wolk book, even if you’re not certain why you came.

If I seek to find flaw, finding flaws is hard to do. However, there were a couple elements of the book I would have liked to see tightened up. The time period, for one thing, is fairly unclear throughout the book. If I had to guess, I’d say that the story takes place before the advent of cell phones. Otherwise, the book could easily take place today. It’s not like class warfare has gotten any less acute in recent decades. Of course, thinking about it, I’m not entirely certain that Ms. Wolk has ever given a strict date to any of her books. Wolf Hollow and its sequel did, but that may have been because there was a specific war that the plot hinged around. This book could technically take place today, but only if you squint and try to imagine cell phones and the internet not being a thing. It’s easy if you try.

At the end of the day, this is the kind of book that can include a Mark Twain quote like, “The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice,” without anyone batting an eye. Or, my personal favorite, the Edith Wharton line, “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” And remember that secret I alluded to earlier? The Prologue is where you’ll find it. Lucretia tells you that six mysteries waited for her on Candle Island, and she ticks them off. Then she ends by saying, “Each of them exciting in its own way. But none more interesting than the mystery I took there with me.” Challenge the kid you hand this book to (the kind of kid who doesn’t get scared off by slower realistic titles) to try and figure out what that mystery is as they read the book. Odds are, they’ll get so wrapped up in Ms. Wolk’s writing that they completely forget to search for it. That’s Wolk’s power. The ability to intrigue, enchant, and eventually surprise. A beautiful book that is about art while being art.

On shelves now.

Source: Galley sent from publisher for review.

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