For example, red ink is made from a rare mineral dug out of mines in Spain. This is a pre-modern world in which manufactured items cannot be taken for granted. It’s utterly engrossing as Donoghue describes step-by-step how they build a little community. Her monks know how to make houses of uncemented stone to develop scraps and waste into soil to fish and to hunt. If she ever gets shipwrecked on a desert island, she will get along just fine. Here Donoghue has really done her homework. Most of the novel consists of the monks’ struggle against nature. They must ‘hate the world,’ but when Trian is awestruck by the beauty of nature we see him begin to backslide into pagan ideas. Sharing a tiny island with him becomes the greatest challenge of all.

As the story goes on, one of the monks shows his true colours as a cruel fanatic. On top of that, they have to write manuscripts and to say prayers seven times a day. It is a battle against the unforgiving elements merely to survive and build shelters. We follow these characters into isolation on the spectacularly steep and barren island that we now call Skellig Michael.

His two companions are the young Trian, who was sent to be a monk by his family (for reasons which, don’t worry, we will learn), and the old Cormac, who lived a whole pagan life of war, love and grief before he ever became a monk. We glimpse it in his ‘an odd shiver of delight’ when he is addressed as ‘father’ for the first time. Manus from Kilbeggan Library reviews Haven by Emma Donoghue in this staff review.Ĭheck the library for a copy by clicking hereĪround the year 600, three monks set out on a quest to find an island off the west coast of Ireland where humans have never set foot, there to build an outpost of the Christian faith.Īrtt is the leader and the visionary, learned and confident, but with an authoritarian streak.

Dangerous highlander by donna grant