Stickle Island
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
British weather is always unpredictable, but the Spring of 1980 was something else entirely – snow, hail, floods, drought and sometimes the whole ticket. Trucks were overturned, motorways closed, trees uprooted, crops flattened. When the sun finally rose on Stickle Island – stuck out there, a mile off Dymchurch in County Kent – six bales of primo marijuana had washed up on shore.
Stickle Island follows the island’s myriad residents as they come up with a (not entirely agreed upon) plan to form a co-op and use the profit from pot sales to save the island’s only ferry, which, thanks to the miserly Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, has just been placed on the chopping block. There’s hot-tempered and anarchic DC, a soused farmer Henry Stick, his bitter rival John, a horny vicar, an even hornier Postmistress, and their collected offspring: a clutch of teen punks, all of whom could use a leg up, or at least, a decent toke.
Unfortunately for them, a violent and wildly erratic mainland drug dealer called Carter and his soft-hearted henchman Simp have plans of their own, and they’re coming to Stickle to see them through. The islanders must set aside their bitter rivalries and decades long feuds to save the ferry and protect their way of life, navigating the choppy waters of new romances as things grow increasingly, and hilariously, complicated.
Brimming with delicious, subversive humor in the tradition of “Waking Ned Devine” and “The Full Monty”―Stickle Island introduces an energetic and gleeful new voice in literature: Tim Orchard, a 67-year-old London-based carpenter formerly from England’s second most unhappy district.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Orchard looks past the quaint eccentricity associated with village life in Great Britain and exposes some of its seedy underbelly in his droll debut novel, set during the Thatcher years. The eccentricity remains, but in 1980, Stickle Island's inhabitants aren't quaint. The postmistress, for instance, is sleeping with the vicar, who disgraced himself in his previous parish, and many of the locals and "blowins" more recently settled on the small island (it doesn't even have a pub) are on the dole. When the funding for the island's ferry is set to be cut, the locals face being forced to move back to the mainland. Bales of marijuana that wash up on the shore after a storm may provide the answer in the form of a co-op to sell the drugs. Meanwhile, a colorful and dangerous duo of dealers track their pot to the island, intent on reclaiming it, but must bargain with the local anarchist holding it for ransom. Pairings, romantic and otherwise, abound, but those featuring younger characters are little more than clever plot devices. Older, saltier characters are much more satisfyingly rendered, though all are described with wit. This mashup of The Full Monty and Waking Ned Devine is recommended for fans of British pastorals.
