My hands are trembling slightly as I type this – I finally have news to share! My story “Life on the Island” will soon be available to readers. After months of writing and rewriting, of doubt and conviction alternating like tides, this work is finally ready to make its way into the world. The feeling is both exhilarating and terrifying – like watching a part of myself prepare to depart on a journey without me.
I began writing this story during those strange, suspended days of lockdown in 2020. Confined to my university accommodation, with the world shrunk to the dimensions of a small room, I found myself contemplating isolation not just as a temporary circumstance but as a fundamental condition of existence. Even in our most connected moments, aren’t we all ultimately islands of consciousness? The pandemic merely made visible what was always true – the impossible gulf that separates one subjective experience from another.
My protagonist, Olga Matveevna, emerged from these contemplations. I saw her so clearly: a woman arriving at a remote coastal settlement after experiencing personal tragedy, her worn suitcase in hand, facing a house on a hill that appears simultaneously welcoming and wary. The island (which I deliberately left unnamed) became a world unto itself – a place where time moves to a different rhythm, governed by tides and seasons rather than clocks and calendars.
As I wrote, I discovered aspects of the story I hadn’t consciously planned. The house on the island began to reveal itself as a repository of memories – each room bearing traces of those who had occupied it before. Time itself became almost a character in the narrative, its passage elastic and unpredictable. The community of longtime residents, with their established customs and unspoken rules, emerged as both a source of tension and potential connection for Olga.
Here’s a fragment from the opening that feels particularly close to my heart:
A Sketch
The first pale blades of grass pushed through the half-melted crust of ice. The morning sun was already warming them with a gentle, foggy haze that seeped through the misted-up windows of the communal apartment. Olga Matveyevna woke when quiet, monotonous sounds began emanating from behind the wall, as though someone were shifting furniture. It was still very early, yet she knew for certain that Viktor was already up, getting ready to go to the institute. Ever since Agata’s death, he had changed noticeably—he had grown stronger, more mature, and all that remained of his boyish face were those piercing, light eyes. Two years had slipped by without fanfare, drifting past like leaden, somber clouds. Life on the island continued in the same everyday routine, with the same unhurried pace it had when Frolova first set foot in that house.
“Some family came by…” Katya began, already bustling about the kitchen as she set a rusty kettle on the stove. “They’re quite old, clearly educated. You can tell right away—old-fashioned manners and all, wearing glasses, very pre-revolution style.” Sighing, she poured the boiling water into a mug. “And they have a lovely daughter. I think she’s studying to be a doctor. Always walking around with a little notebook, jotting things down—going here and there. Poor girl’s gonna ruin her eyes that way…”
Olga Matveyevna listened silently to Katya’s chatter, tuning out at least half of the words, all the while stealing glances at Viktor. He had already finished breakfast and was standing in the hallway, pulling on his worn, dark felt boots, paying no attention whatsoever to the kitchen gossip. Once dressed, he turned to Frolova and said in a muted voice:
“I’m heading out… Shall I bring anything back?”—it was evident he only asked out of courtesy, out of respect. Olga Matveyevna shook her head.
“Have a good day, Viktor. Oh, did you know they’re going to move someone else in here soon—” Katya started in again, eager to share her news a second time.
“Goodbye. I’ll bring some bread this evening.” Viktor cut her off brusquely and slammed the door so hard that Olga’s coat, hung by a couple of nails, fell to the floor. Then he headed downstairs and out into the street.
“Would you look at that. It’s been all this time, and he still hasn’t changed. Still just as insolent as ever,” Katya muttered, scowling as she scrubbed at a puddle of spilled tea on the floor with a dirty rag.
“Maybe we’re the ones who haven’t changed,” Olga Matveyevna said pensively, “while for him, life is still going on…”
“Oh, here we go again with your cryptic nonsense! Life’s already hard enough without your deep thoughts. Every day, up at dawn, and it’s work, work, work from morning ‘til night. And now you show up with all this… acting so clever. Bah!” She shot a final disapproving look at Frolova and left the kitchen, tea in hand.
—
How strange and wonderful a fading life can be. It’s as if you already see the dock ahead, but still want to sail on across the endless reaches of the ocean. Each time you look up, as though to plead with the captain—“Wait, slow down, it’s not time yet; it’s still too soon.” But he remains silent, gives no reply, and you cannot tell whether he’s heard you, whether he has eased the pace, or whether he continues his relentless journey toward the shore. You wait, ignorant and afraid, while around you swirl an unending, tranquil wind and waves that tenderly caress the hull of the steamship.
What began as my response to pandemic isolation evolved into something more nuanced – an exploration of how we create meaning within limitation, how communities form and fracture, how spaces retain emotional imprints. The island setting, initially a literal representation of physical isolation, became a kind of laboratory where I could examine different human responses to separation and connection with greater clarity.
I found myself particularly drawn to questions of perspective. Though I wrote in third person, I stayed close to Olga’s consciousness, allowing readers to experience her interpretations while occasionally seeing beyond them. This approach reflected my own experience during lockdown – feeling simultaneously immersed in my immediate surroundings and strangely detached, as if observing my own responses from a distance.
There’s something almost unbearably vulnerable about sharing this story. It contains so much of my thinking about memory, community, and the possibility of connection across difference. I worry it’s too quiet, too contemplative for today’s fast-paced literary landscape. But perhaps there are readers who, like me, find value in stories that unfold with the unhurried rhythm of tides rather than the urgent pulse of breaking news.
I’ll share more about how to find the story in the coming weeks. For now, I’m savoring this strange threshold moment – my words still largely my own, but soon to belong partly to anyone who reads them.
“We are all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.” Rudyard Kipling wrote these words long before our era of digital isolation, yet they’ve haunted me throughout the writing process. Perhaps all art is an attempt to build temporary bridges across those seas.