Six Books About Island Living

Gabriella Burnham’s tender, searching second novel is about a Nantucket family ripped open when their mother is deported back to Brazil. Moving, sexy, surprising, and open-hearted, this book explores the tensions of life in a tourist destination.

A stunning debut short story collection set in Hawai’i. It is gorgeous, haunting, and unflinching, and it marks the arrival of a stupendous literary talent.

Set against the hotels and resorts of Jamaica, this 2016 novel was the first from New York Times bestselling author Nicole Dennis-Benn, and establishes her extraordinary skill at working with themes of motherhood, daughterhood, and queer love.

Whitehead’s most autobiographical novel, this story takes place at the far end of Long Island, where Whitehead spent every summer as a kid and where his parents became full-time residents. It teases out that strange dynamic between visitors and residents, summer people and the people who stay.

Following three generations of a family on the US Virgin Islands, this rich, gorgeous novel, which won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize in 2014, explores love, control, and a family curse. It’s an epic read.

Jansson, the famed creator of the Moomins, wrote this small, flawless jewel of a novel based on her own experiences living on remote Finnish islands. The very isolation of island life was what she most treasured; as she said herself, “​You become different and think new thoughts when you live a long time alone with the sea and yourself.”