“. . . brilliant and hot and sad and Full Of Sideways Humor ”*

Nine Island by Jane Alison is an intimate autobiographical novel, told by J, a woman who lives in a glass tower on one of Miami Beach’s lush Venetian Islands. After decades of disaster with men, she is trying to decide whether to withdraw forever from romantic love. When not ruminating over her sexual past and current […]

Nine Island by Jane Alison is an intimate autobiographical novel, told by J, a woman who lives in a glass tower on one of Miami Beach’s lush Venetian Islands. After decades of disaster with men, she is trying to decide whether to withdraw forever from romantic love.

When not ruminating over her sexual past and current fantasies, J observes the comic, sometimes steamy goings-on among her faded-glamour condo neighbors. One of them, a caring nurse, befriends her, eventually offering the opinion that “if you retire from love . . . then you retire from life.”

*”Nine Island is
a crackling incantation, brittle and brilliant and hot and sad and full of
sideways humor that devastates and illuminates all at once.” —LAUREN
GROFF, author of Fates and Furies

“Wonderful. . . . With echoes of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy and Iris Murdoch’s The Sea, the Sea, Alison has forged a haunting and emotionally precise portrait, a beautiful reminder that solitude does not equal loneliness.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)