Outside Reading 4-1

Date: February 15th
Title: Once on This Island
Author: Barbara Kingsolver
Type of Reading: Book Review
Found from New York Times


           The extraordinary title of the book “When the Killing’s Done” has indicated that the story is going to be a unique one. And even this review of the book does not seem quite ordinary. This book review starts with two very weird questions: “Who could love a rat?” and “What could possess a man to sail to an uninhabited island, in defiance of law, and throw out vitamin K pellets as an antidote to a government-sponsored rat-poisoning program?” The questions do not only catch readers’ attentions, but also reveal that the story is going to be somehow related to a guy, an island and rates. An island? The title of the article is called “Once on This Island,” and the readers may think here, “What island?” The writer quickly answers the question in the following paragraph. The author tells us that the island in this novel is an “impassioned portrait of a real place, the Channel Islands of California.” Through the organization of the information, which can be seen as a detail of the article, the reviewer relates the novel to the reality for the readers, the author may have amplified the curiosity of the readers of the review, and may have reached closer to one of the review’s purposes: advertisement.

The writer calls the island “an isolated cradle” and “the doorsill of extinction.” Using these two dictions, the writer has smoothly introduced the two main characters who despise each other unconditionally: Alma Takesue, the “habitat-restorer” and Dave LaJoy, the “animal-lover.” The introduction of these two characters and the contradiction of those two are very interestingly written in the review. The author calls Takesue “the saner half of this moral face-off” and described LaJoy as “a fanatic decked out in dreadlocks and vegetarian zeal.” The dictions that the author used are not formal but very lively and humorous. Moreover, the author also called the island “pre-human Eden” —which is obviously an allusion from the Bible—that is shown the “dramatic mercy” of human beings. By saying Eden, it should be meaning that the island was beautiful like a paradise when it was left untouched, but the author sarcastically wrote that it was touched by human with “dramatic mercy” that has destroyed the paradise completely.

The argument between Takesue and LaJoy is caused by the declaration of government that made the Channel Islands a national park. There were not so many rats on the island before, but somehow the rats got on to the island, and they started to reproduce uncontrollably. Takesue wants to protect the ecosystem by killing the rats, but LaJoy opposes it and tries to save it. That seems to be the basic plot of the book. No one can really determine which of them is right and which of them is wrong. The article starts with two confusing questions and ends without any answer for anything. However, the article closes with one line like this: “When will the killing be finished? Never.” Here the author gives out the only clear answer in the entire piece of writing, and this may be indicating that the author has the same perspective with LaJoy, who is the animal lover.