The Island Reading Group

It was an invitation rich with possibility—the opportunity to meet with the Vinalhaven men’s reading group to discuss the third edition of Islands in Time. And for the first time ever, the men had invited their wives, most of whom are members of the Vinalhaven women’s reading group, for this ground-breaking joint meeting followed by a pot luck dinner.

So we scooted across the flat, sun-flecked bay as the long afternoon sun began to wane. Because the event had been billed as a co-ed affair, I invited my wife along, especially since the spacious lawn at our in-laws was badly in need of mowing. I reasoned that since she had always been jealous of my riding the tractor while she pushed the hand mower, and since she could not as easily discuss the book as she could ride the mower”¦well, you get it, we would not be constrained by our narrow gender roles; instead, we would divide and conquer. I would drink and talk while she would mow and rake.

A little dose liberalism, properly deployed, can be a beautiful thing.

Off we went on our respective ways; me down Leo’s Lane to a gracious house overlooking the harbor, she up the hill to Lane’s Island to set forth on a sea of high green waves of grass. Our host for the evening greeted me kindly and showed me to the refrigerator which had a wonderful display of micro brews; his wife, an EMT, was out on a call at the moment, which turned out when she returned, to be a fisherman who had quite preoccupied for several days trying to forget everything he had ever known and finally succeeded but had injured himself in the process.

I discussed the agenda for the evening with the organizer of the event, whose shuffling demeanor and lidded eyes are known to conceal a subtle, rapier-like wit. He suggested I try the smoked halibut cheeks that had been prepared by one of the two fishermen in the reading group, which I did and then did again—and when I thought no one was looking—tried to do again. The golden brown rind of smoky filaments around the thick walls of white fish when chased by an India pale ale may not actually be as good as it gets, I just forget what is better.

Although this was the first joint meeting of the men’s and women’s island reading groups, the wife of the new social studies teacher on the island, a keen observer, neatly summed up the difference between the two groups. The women, she told me, come to their reading group and bring their books with them, usually with pages turned down or passages underlined that are particularly memorable. They meet in the afternoon, drink tea and have passionate conversations about the characters and relationships that have been revealed to them through their reading. The men, on the other hand, do not bring books to their reading group; several may not even have read the assigned book. They meet in the evening, drink beer and discuss”¦fishing.

My book, as it happens, has several chapters on fishing, but also respectful references to the matriarchal nature of island fishing communities, so I hoped to navigate the dangerous waters between the Scylla and Charybdis of the reading groups that have been known to lurk in these local waters. After some brief comments and a lively set of questions, primarily from the women in the group who were in fact familiar with the actual book, it was time for the main event to begin.

In announcing the main event, our organizer urged the members of the men’s reading group to remember that forks and knives the hostess had provided were not designed to be held in one’s fist and that napkins were available so that their shirt sleeves could be spared for cleaning the dip stick when checking the oil in their pick up.

At the appointed hour at the end of the evening, I met my wife coming down the hill on Atlantic Avenue toward the harbor, hauling a heavy boat bag of items that needed to go ashore. Although the sun had long since set, the sky was not yet dark since we were near the solstice. Nevertheless, it was a slightly chilly ride back across the bay.

Philip Conkling is president of the Island Institute in Rockland, Maine.