Primal

by Robin Baker

Presumed dead, a group of undergraduate students who go missing on a deserted Pacific island emerge one year later in two groups of ragged (and naked) survivors. All but one of the surviving women have conceived, and two students, plus their professor, are said to have died.

In the glare of the world's media, every survivor sticks to the same unconvincing version of events. Piece-by-piece the narrator examines the evidence and conducts interviews...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0753518260
• ISBN13: 9780753518267
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Virgin Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 3.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.1" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Wow

Exactly right! Not a page turner in the "non-stop action" sense, but a page turner for sure. Well written with a fascinating concept. Much more than your typical "horror" book. The book is written in two parts. The first in the form of a narrative told to the main character (the author) by one of the survivors, and the second is the author attempting to finish her story by examining evidence and other means. It works!!

My thoughts

I could not put this book down. It is not a page-turner in the sense of a beach-book read for an easy few hours. It is anything but easy. It is edgy, tense and gives a pricture of what the human psyche is all about beneath the trappings and norms and expectations of modern society. The book reveals how easily our carefully constructed society with all its cultural and sexual strata can so easily collapse like a pack of cards when there is no-one to judge, see or punish you for acting on one's instincts and base urges rather than conforming to "accepted" and "civilised" behaviour. These students find themselves stranded outside civilisation and the book offers a chilling insight into what lies potentially within us all. A gripping read and highly recommended.