The Black Isle, Sandi Tan
The Black Isle, Sandi Tan
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The Black Isle

Author: Sandi Tan

Narrator: Sarah Zimmerman

Unabridged: 21 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/07/2012

Synopsis

This “ambitious, supernatural coming-of-age story” (The LA Times) is a sweeping tale of ghosts in the modern world, and one woman's struggle to create her own destiny.

There are ghosts on the Black Isle. Ghosts that no one can see. No one . . . except Cassandra. Uprooted from Shanghai with her father and twin brother, young Cassandra finds the Black Isle's bustling, immigrant-filled seaport, swampy jungle, and grand rubber plantations a sharp contrast to the city of her childhood. And she soon makes another discovery: the Black Isle is swarming with ghosts. Haunted and lonely, Cassandra at first tries to ignore her ability to see the restless apparitions that drift down the street and crouch in cold corners at school. Yet despite her struggles with these spirits, Cassandra comes to love her troubled new home. And soon, she attracts the notice of a dangerously charismatic man. Even as she becomes a fearless young woman, the Isle's dark forces won't let her go. War is looming, and Cassandra wonders if her unique gift might be her beloved island's only chance for salvation . . . Taking readers from the 1920s, through the Japanese occupation during WWII, to the Isle's radical transformation into a gleaming cosmopolitan city, The Black Isle is a sweeping epic—a deeply imagined, fiercely original tale from a vibrant new voice in fiction.

About Sandi Tan

Sandi Tan was born in Singapore. She directed the Netflix film Shirkers, which won a Directing Award at the Sundance Film Festival, was named Best Documentary by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and was shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Documentary. The Black Isle was her debut novel. She's lived in Los Angeles for twenty years but everyone still thinks she lives in New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Karen Miller on August 07, 2012

She's an old Asian woman who lives by routine - making weekly visits to the store, to the laundry, doing what old women do. Most important, she goes to the archive section of the library every Saturday to visit the book - the book that contained her photograph, surrounded by a story filled with lies......more

Goodreads review by Kina on August 08, 2012

I am an eclectic reader. I also love *well-written* paranormal stories of which there are maybe five - ever. This is in that list. I bought it at Kobo for the $4.99 offer, the same as a previous reviewer. I thought it would be mediocre at best. Wow - what a very pleasant surprise. I bought it last n......more

Goodreads review by Wen-yi on November 10, 2021

4.5 to be petty, because did we really need the incest and octopus sex? But otherwise a dark, sweeping epic of a novel in a Singapore that's both thinly veiled and slightly contorted, fittingly. A speculative history without naming all the names, that hits all the major touchstones.......more

Goodreads review by Stephanie (aka WW) on May 06, 2021

This was a surprisingly good piece of historical fiction. The Black Isle is a fictional island south of Singapore in Asia. It is populated by people of various Asian ethnicities – Chinese, Malays, Thais, etc. Ling and her twin brother and father came to the Black Isle to escape a critical situation......more

Goodreads review by Dawn on May 13, 2022

Sandi Tan performed a miracle. She took characters I did not like and weaved a story around them worth reading. WARNING: Thank you, Nenia. If you are triggered by animal pain, the kids run into an older man and a kitten within the first couple of chapters of the book. When you see the word "kitten",......more

Quotes

"On The Black Isle, a young woman grows old with the Twentieth Century, haunting her own life as history conspires to render her a secret. Sweeping in scope, impressively imagined, ruthlessly readable."—Steve Erickson, author of These Dreams of You

"Rich in vivid characters, and written with great imagination and intelligence, The Black Isle is a remarkable novel. A haunting book, mesmerizing in its beauty, which stayed with me long after I finished the last page."—Judith Freeman, author of The Long Embrace and Red Water

"The narrator of The Black Isle recounts her tales of fantastic events -- erotic, supernatural, horrific -- so convincingly that Tarot cards might as well be baseball cards in her book. An irresistible feat of storytelling, The Black Isle blends what Midnight's Children did for the former Bombay with what Dorothy did for Oz."—Tom Carson, author of Gilligan's Wake and Daisy Buchanan's Daughter

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