cover image The Island

The Island

David Borofka. MacAdam/Cage Publishing, $19.5 (368pp) ISBN 978-1-878448-78-1

The title of this gentle though occasionally hackneyed coming-of-age tale refers not to a geographic place but to an eccentric Portland, Ore., household whose insularity acts as midwife to the awakening of 14-year-old Fish Becker. It is 1968, and Fish's parents have sent him to live with family friends, the Lamberts, while they go to Germany for the summer ""in lieu of a divorce."" At the Lamberts' ramshackle mansion, Fish experiments sexually with a neighbor girl whose breath smells of ""whiskey... grape gum, onion and garlic and pepperoni,"" while the Lamberts' daughter tries to lure him away with more occult concerns, including Ouija boards and open graves. Behind Fish's tale of abandonment and self-realization lies the tangled history of the Beckers and the Lamberts--particularly the rivalry between Messrs. Becker and Lambert, which is finally resolved by their sons. Borofka (Hints of His Mortality) pads this slender first novel with such magic-realist touches as circular time, dreams and recurring images (births in transit, train wrecks and submersion in water). The book, because of the paradoxical effect of too much background in too few pages, is thin in places; but at their best, Borofka's vivid, humble word-pictures (""A used Trojan drooped off the edge of the ice-chest like a Dali clock"" ) resonate and linger in the reader's mind. (Nov.)