Enchanted Islands by Allison Amend
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Enchanted Islands by Allison Amend
Have you ever made a seemingly inconsequential choice, only to have the enormity of it come crashing down on you with the force of a deep ocean wave? Have you ever been so important without ever realizing you mattered? Have you ever had a soul mate that doubled as both your very best friend and your very worst enemy? Frances Frankowski has.
Enchanted Islands explores each of these paradoxical plights in great detail, without becoming too heavy or philosophical. It’s a refreshing take on the idea that everything you do matters and everything you do has consequences.
Frances (Fanny) Frankowski, born to a poor Polish immigrant family, befriends Rosalie Mendel and her seemingly perfect German family. As Fanny’s family forces her to quit school to contribute monetarily to the household, she covets Rosalie’s ability to go off to high school. But Rosalie has some skeletons in her closet – and when she suggests the two run away together, Fanny jumps at the idea of freedom. After an unmentionable betrayal, Fanny moves off to sort through the mess that is now her life.
Fast forward many years, Fanny is looking for the next mundane task (because that is all that she has come to understand her life to be). An ex-school teacher turned secretary, on the older side of middle aged, how exciting could her life really amount to be? In the brooding stages of World War II comes a proposal that will turn Franny’s world upside down. It just so happens that she is the perfect character to play wife to a handsome spy, Ainslie Conway, as he moves to the Galapagos Islands to keep an eye on its German inhabitants.
Barely thinking twice, Fanny agrees to become Mrs. Conway and move to an island where disappearances are storied, but never proven, and the number of hours it will take to arrive vastly outnumber the inhabitants. Enchanted Islands is really about Fanny’s experience on the island. From learning how to survive, to learning how to be a wife, and ultimately, to learning how to be a spy, the life lessons for both Fanny and the reader are abundant.
This book explores the incredibly complex nature of humans and their desire to survive. It compares relationships and challenges our preconceived notions of what a “good” relationship looks like. In the realm of friendships, marriages, and family, the reader catches a glimpse of what it is like to have a such a powerful relationship that does not live up to society’s standards of ordinary. Loosely based on the memoirs of the real Frances Conway, Enchanted Islands spices up the offered information, turning a couple who lived on a barely inhabited island into monumentally important spies. But even this importance is played down in the book – underlining Fanny’s doubt that anything she does could really matter. Oh, but it does.
Enchanted Islands explores each of these paradoxical plights in great detail, without becoming too heavy or philosophical. It’s a refreshing take on the idea that everything you do matters and everything you do has consequences.
Frances (Fanny) Frankowski, born to a poor Polish immigrant family, befriends Rosalie Mendel and her seemingly perfect German family. As Fanny’s family forces her to quit school to contribute monetarily to the household, she covets Rosalie’s ability to go off to high school. But Rosalie has some skeletons in her closet – and when she suggests the two run away together, Fanny jumps at the idea of freedom. After an unmentionable betrayal, Fanny moves off to sort through the mess that is now her life.
Fast forward many years, Fanny is looking for the next mundane task (because that is all that she has come to understand her life to be). An ex-school teacher turned secretary, on the older side of middle aged, how exciting could her life really amount to be? In the brooding stages of World War II comes a proposal that will turn Franny’s world upside down. It just so happens that she is the perfect character to play wife to a handsome spy, Ainslie Conway, as he moves to the Galapagos Islands to keep an eye on its German inhabitants.
Barely thinking twice, Fanny agrees to become Mrs. Conway and move to an island where disappearances are storied, but never proven, and the number of hours it will take to arrive vastly outnumber the inhabitants. Enchanted Islands is really about Fanny’s experience on the island. From learning how to survive, to learning how to be a wife, and ultimately, to learning how to be a spy, the life lessons for both Fanny and the reader are abundant.
This book explores the incredibly complex nature of humans and their desire to survive. It compares relationships and challenges our preconceived notions of what a “good” relationship looks like. In the realm of friendships, marriages, and family, the reader catches a glimpse of what it is like to have a such a powerful relationship that does not live up to society’s standards of ordinary. Loosely based on the memoirs of the real Frances Conway, Enchanted Islands spices up the offered information, turning a couple who lived on a barely inhabited island into monumentally important spies. But even this importance is played down in the book – underlining Fanny’s doubt that anything she does could really matter. Oh, but it does.
