This is another of this year's short, dreamy, kind of unresolved tales that I fully enjoyed sinking into. I'm not sure I have much more to say about it. It's like a fragment of a legend or fairy tale, discovered as a side mention in an old book about something totally different. Maybe everyone knew about it at the time, but as much as you'd like to know the full story, the rest has been lost to the ages and you're just lucky you got this glimpse to spark you're curiosity and imagination.

“She was afraid of the ocean’s endlessly reaching silent hands that would seize and drown her.”

The Fourth Island by Sarah Tolmie is the haunting story set in a village in the Aran Islands. When a body washes ashore it sets in motion a mystery the inhabitants try desperately to solve. What surfaces is a fourth Island off the coast of Ireland where only those who dwell in despair can make it there through their own darkest moments?

From the beginning, this novel sets an ominous atmosphere with its dark prose. The fourth Island Inis Caillte reinvents those who make it as their true selves. The story follows those who witness the body which is washed ashore trying to solve the mystery through a sweater which is knitted with a distinct pattern which they can’t trackback to its origins.

I really enjoyed the mix of Irish folklore throughout. The key themes of this novel were the joys and sorrow of life and death, those who leave us and those who are left behind. There's a powerful message within the words which is moving and realised as the story reaches its climax.

A beautifully moving story told through vivid imagery.

Often books are like tides. The plot comes in waves, leaving characters half-buried in the sand. In order to find the seashells, skulls, strangely twisted driftwood amid the seaweed and salt, you must have a keen eye. It might take a few passes across a small, strange stretch of beach or stone or mud but these liminal places are the only place a sea, or a story, willingly lets go of its dead.

The Fourth Island is like a dark tide. It flows in and out of time, history, and myth, creating a picture of the Aran Islands that is deeply enmeshed in Irish culture.


The book focuses on the inhabitants of a fictional fourth Aran Island, Innis Caillte, over a generation of appearances and disappearances. Tolmie’s lyric prose pulls us through, not a riptide, but an undertow through the entire piece. Her command of dialect and description is wonderfully grounded Gaelic experience, full of turns of phrase and idiom that enmesh you in the environment of The Fourth Island. It is a novella about loss and sadness, a current that pulls you under, but often left me struggling.

There is no way to find the island, as it is as lost as the people who reside upon it, but you can find yourself there purely by accident or circumstance, or by wholly magical means. This premise is fantastic and lovely; that by being lost, completely, you can find yourself in a place that feels delicately suited to your nature, outside of region or time. I truly enjoyed reading about how the characters found themselves so lost that they ended up on an island totally outside of their reckoning. Watching Nelly and John Coneeley, characters who more or less ‘washed up’ on Innis Caillte from Innis Mor, change while on the island was compelling, as they played off each other in different ways. The sentimental descriptions of mourning, horror, and dissatisfaction convinced me that each character deserved to be swept up onto Innis Caillte.


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I would have been satisfied with the mystery of appearance, but Tolmie, in the text, makes an attempt to quantify the nature of the magic and over-explains why only three or four folks across time ended up on the island, out of all the lost folks out there in the world. By doing so, she removes much of the mystery, creating a story that feels detached and out-of-touch, which ignores the whole world in favor of Ireland. The implication in The Fourth Island is that Inis Caillte is the only lost island where lost people go to. While focusing on Ireland, and Irish loss, specifically, is important, and in this piece was treated with respect, the broad-strokes explanations of Innis Caillte denies the magic of an entire colonized world haunted by loss and covered by the shadow of British Imperialism. If the mystery of Innis Caillte had been preserved, Tolmie would have left open the possibility of lost islands dotting each ocean, sound, and bay, each suited to the people that need it. Instead, there is only Inis Caillte.

There was a moment while reading The Fourth Island where I became acutely aware of the Irishness of the storytelling. While considering mysterious circumstances, a man contemplates what he would do should he see a man with a red face, with one eye huge and one eye as small as a raisin. This seems to be a reference to the boyishly handsome Cu Chulainn, a famed hero, who, when battle-rage possessed him, twisted up his face to appear quite monstrous. It is perhaps both a strength and a hindrance in The Fourth Island that it spoke of folklore but only in passing, that the narrative makes it more difficult for the audience to explore how Irish it is. The first hint of this Irishness is in the name of the island itself, as, of course, ‘Inis Caillte’ directly translated means Lost Island.

The novella is beautifully written, each word picked carefully, but half-in and half-out of the Gaeltacht Aran Islands, it feels its own distance very keenly. Subtlety, speaking in code, and working around arch phrasing is a huge part of Irish culture. Even now, Ireland is split between the English-held land of Northern Ireland and the Republic, and patriotism, republicanism, and loyalist speech could get you hurt if you’re in the wrong county. Speaking in insinuations and cross-purpose is a part of the experience of being Irish. This might feel new to readers unfamiliar with Ireland’s history, as Tolmie weaves in exceptionally small details and snippets of the culture.

The focus on the characters was a strength, as we learned of the lives and desires of the outcast whore, the revolutionary Father, and a casualty of Cromwell’s march into the Irish interior, among others. Exploring the humans of The Fourth Island was exceptionally entertaining, and I enjoyed a lot of the quirks that were added onto each character as we unpacked their histories both on and off Innis Caillte.

Unfortunately, because of the shortness of the book, and the exceptionally keen focus on the rich interiority of the characters, the plot feels as isolated as the premise. The larger story often fades as Tolmie concentrates on each character. Throughout The Fourth Island, the story returns to the largest Aran Island, Innis Mor, and the mythology of Innis Caillte fades into the background as well. The magic of Innis Caillte that drew all these characters onto the island becomes more and more removed, and the book’s loss of the magic is much like a low tide, one that leaves all the old bones exposed.

While I often found myself wanting more from the story itself, I cannot deny that The Fourth Island is a beautifully crafted and exceptionally arranged novella. The piece is profoundly Irish, so much so that it feels acutely removed from understanding if you’re not Irish, or if you haven’t spent years reading Irish literature and poetry. However, scholars (or even fans) of Irish work will be rewarded with poesy that reflects the stylings of poets like Heaney, Yeats, and even the modern author Theo Dorgan; with easy comparisons being drawn between Dorgan’s seafaring adventures and the trial one of the characters survives on his sail to Innis Caillte.

Tolmie’s romantic voice appears on the page as she parcels out the story in generations and lives, giving strength and vibrancy to the individual, but ignoring the island’s story. The novella often reads like a eulogy to the past, coveting a time of both revolution and peace. The ironies layered into the narrative reflect the contradictions of Ireland itself, creating an indecipherable pattern within the characters and their interactions. Someone with a stronger grasp of Irish history than me could relate to each character a legend and history, Macha’s curse overlaid across a whore’s claim to a spinster’s house. Each small story in The Fourth Island contains an echo across insular Irish time, often leaving us, as readers, stranded on the unforgiving shores of Innis Caillte.

When a dead man washes up on shore in a small village on Inis Meain wearing a sweater that is both familiar and foreign, the villagers don't quite know what to make of it. And so our story begins.

This little novel was a really good read, but I'm having trouble putting my finger on how exactly to describe it. It's a close look at the lives of the people in a little village on an island, and as such it's at times a bit dark and foreboding and at other times hopeful and peaceful. It's simple and small, while also examining some seemingly universal elements of human nature. It's written in beautiful prose, so I felt both thoughtful and peaceful upon finishing it.

Fourth Island is set on the Aran Islands, three islands off the coast of Ireland. (My husband and I actually flew over them and visited the 'Big Island,' Inis Mor, several years ago, and Tolmie's writing so strongly recalled that for me that I couldn't help but go back and look through our travel pictures of that trip after finishing the book.) The islands are captivating, set apart in place and time, steeped in thousands of years of their own history and Irish history and surrounded by the expanse of the ocean. They are the perfect setting for a book that has its own mystical elements with the existence of a mysterious 4th island, Inis Caillte - or the Lost Island, a refuge for those who are lost.

Through the tale we learn a little about mysterious-sweater-man, and the people who lost him. But more about the people who find him, and about what it means to be lost, and sometimes, what it means to find yourself.

Ok so the first thing you need to know is if you or a loved one happens to knit, or crochet, or do any other fiber crafts, you (or they) will like this book. It's a rule. I made the rule.

The second thing you need to know is this is a literary fantasy. The plot - and with it, the chronology, the character development, the general lack of a "main" character versus a developed character group, etc - resembles more of a Celtic knot than it does the typical formula most readers expect from virtually every book they read. There is arguably no cohesive "exposition, rising action, climax, conclusion" plot arc. There's just a lot of philosophical points to be made about human nature, being lost and found, despair vs hope, and general belonging.

This is not to pick this book apart, I should clarify. I fucking loved it. I was dealing loss today and this book offered the peace and closure I needed to have. It's a beautiful and majestic work that, while it isn't as on brand I normally expect from TorDotCom, absolutely sits up there with the other amazing titles from them in terms of quality and exquisiteness.

It also - as I hinted earlier - has a lot to say about the nuances of knitting, and as a knitter (and a spinner and dyer) I don't think I can measure my appreciation in that regard. This isn't some basic "yeah I like to knit, angora is the best" thing, but a breakdown of the time, energy, customization, and symbolism involved with knitting, and specifically, seeing knit sweaters as talismans of protection. This significance might be lost if you've never worked with yarn in any way, but if you're skilled in any handmade fiber arts - even weaving or felting, etc - this book is going to resound with you. To be clear, if you're not a fiber crafter you'll still enjoy this book, it'll just be more enjoyable if you know first-hand what the characters are talking about.

Apart from that, this book is a masterpiece. It practically begs re-reading, annotation, dog-eared favorite passages and post-it noted thoughts. The thoughts and ideas take time to work over because there's so much to unpack. It's amazing.

ARC provided by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Where does one go when they're lost?

One ends up on Inis Caillte, of course. Mysteriously hidden off the coast of Ireland, Inis Caillte is the unknown fourth Aran Island. This island, however, isn't accessible through conventional means. Only those who are lost are able to find their way there - lost in moments of hopeless despair. The inhabitants are immune to the obstacles of langue and prejudice, and welcome to their community all those who find their way to the island's shore, giving these lost souls an opportunity for a second chance, an opportunity for redemption.

Through economical yet passionate prose, Sarah Tolmie fabricates a tale steeped in Irish Folklore and dripping with atmosphere. In this novella, she creates a profound and metaphysical version of the Island of Misfit Toys - one that will make you contemplate both anguish and exultation.

I very much enjoyed the ethereal tone of the story and, once finished, I found myself wanting to learn more of Inis Caillte and its mysterious group of inhabitants.

The Fourth Island is a solid and brief tale of a mysterious island that harbors lost souls. The writing feels atmospheric and captures the rhythm of the sea. There were a few aspects surrounding characters in the book that felt...off. But all in all this is a perfect tale for a cozy night.

An interesting work of speculative fiction infused with Irish folklore. The eponymous Fourth Island refers to Inis Caillte, a hidden island that calls to the lost, saving them from death, isolation, and despair. The island erases all barriers of language, difference, and even time, creating a secret community that transforms its unwitting inhabitants into a softer, truer version of themselves.

[3/5: Atmospheric and almost philosophical. You can almost feel the sea mist on your face through the pages. Fans of speculative fiction will find much to ponder over in this novella. It was not my personal favorite, partly due to the sparser writing style, but I found it transported me nonetheless.]

Thanks to NetGalley & publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review!