Truthfully, this is a bit of a precarious 4 stars. It could have gone to three as well. As good as the writing consistently is, the story about a man finding an equilibrium with the island, and his misconstruing of nature and himself due to the fallout of a foolish decision.

The structure mostly works, circuitously revealing more about the protagonist as it moves through time. I think he’s really well rendered. Probably Too well rendered, for my taste. The granularity of the verisimilitude vacillates between showing how the island is singular, and how living on it is different. But it gets lost in the weeds perhaps just as often, often reiterating the same points refracted onto the character, probably to continue to log the differences in island life. It has to have a more complex structure because the revelations are very straight forward; even forgone conclusions. The fallout is predictable, as is the theme.

So, really it depends very much how much you enjoy the actual consumption of the prose. If you pick it up and it’s even slightly a chore this will probably only get more pronounced. If you immediately vibe with it though, I think there’s enough here to flit in and out of very beautiful writing and, sometimes, interesting thoughts. There’s a reason he’s rather simple, and that ended up helping me somewhat, when thinking about the overall reading experience. To some, it’ll probably be more of an excuse than a reason.