The Sea on our Skin by Madeleine Tobert

The Sea on Our Skin
(Two Roads, 2012)

This is the story of a violent man, Ioane, who marries a girl named Amalia on a remote island somewhere in the Pacific (but quite like Fiji). The book has the feel of a fable as the characters are in many ways unreal. This is especially the case of the old man in the canoe and the co-joined twins who are different genders. This quality doesn't detract from the story, however. If anything it enhances it.
   Ioane beats his wife and leaves the island only to return years later. He repeats this strange behaviour over and over, and throughout this time Amalia bears him five children. Each has a clearly defined personality and each is affected by their father's treatment of their mother.
   Eventually Amalia fights back and Ioane's life is changed forever. But his need to escape the island has been imprinted on one of his sons. And so the need for travel conflicts once again with the love for home in the next generation.
   I loved this book because of it's fairy-tale qualities, it's haunting commentary on relationships and death and the way the characters are bound to the sea. Tobert comments on the ocean in some way on every page, but the result isn't repetitious, it's beautiful.

My Island Homicide by Catherine Titasey

My Island Homicide (UQP, 2013)

My Island Homicide is a crime novel, complete with a corpse, a range of suspects and details of police procedure. It is a crime story with a difference though, because it's set on Thursday Island, in the Torres Strait. I enjoyed reading this novel because of the snippets of creole throughout and the descriptions of island life. It made me want to jump on a plane and go and explore this remote part of Australia.
   The story goes something like this: Melissa, a missing person, is found dead in a well by the central character, the newly appointed Senior Sergeant, Thea Dari-Jones. Over a period of many months Thea falls in love with a local fisherman, adopts various stray animals, interviews suspects and eventually ends up arresting a man and sending him to court. By this stage the sergeant's love life has blossomed into something serious and she is heavily pregnant when the case goes to court. Throughout the whole story the threat of black magic lurks. I liked this touch as it is a theme I am interested in developing in my stories as well.
   Titasey has crafted a sound crime plot with interesting details and plenty of red herrings. My only criticisms would be that  the constant roll call of characters onto the page was confusing and some characters had little depth. I found I wanted to get to know them
better. Despite this, it was an enjoyable mystery.

Shark Island by David Miller

Shark Island (Oxford University
Press, 2009)

David Miller spent many years in South East Asia and his experience shows. Shark Island is filled with little details of island life: the smell of indigenous foods, the lush vegetation and the spray of the sea. I found this book fascinating for the way it described a little known way of life, that of the Sea Gypsies of Malaysia. One of the main characters in the book is young Jik, a Sea Gypsy boy. Jik's sea faring skills are considerable and his personality is endearing.
   Jik befriends Hannah and Ned, English children whose parents have been kidnapped. The three friends escape armed men in speed boats, elude helicopters and battle their way across the open sea in an attempt to find the missing adults.
   This book is non-stop action and the plot has great twists and turns. I think many kids would enjoy it for the pace and the depth of the story. A terrific read.

An Ocean of Cricket by Adam and Barrie Cassidy

Years ago when I lived in Nauru, a small cricket competition was set up by an expatriate Australian teacher.There were four teams: the Aussie teachers, the kiwi builders, the Indian public servants and the Island labourers. I remember that the teams were so short of players that most of us chipped in to play. Resources were in short supply. The two batsmen divided up the gloves and pads as there was only enough for one player. So I wore one glove and one leg pad onto the crumbling concrete pitch.
   I actually opened the batting for Australia against India. What an achievement! I think I made a total of five runs. There were no thigh pads, no helmets, no box (not that the women needed one of those) and I remember receiving a bruise the size of a dinner plate on my thigh after one match.

An Ocean of Cricket (Victory Books, 2013)

   The field was crushed coral; there wasn't a blade of grass anywhere. There was only one mat for the pitch so at the end of each over, the batsmen changed ends. It was lots of fun but far too hot under the tropical sun.
   I remember one of the islanders came from Samoa and he was a natural at cricket. But I think he'd had lots of practice back home as the book An Ocean of Cricket depicts. This pictorial feast is a celebration of cricket in a few Pacific island countries.
   Adam Cassidy works for the International Cricket Council (ICC) in their East Asia-Pacific office and his father Barrie, is a well-known Australian journalist who hosts the sporting program Offsiders.  They collaborated to produce this wonderful book which all cricket lovers would find interesting. The pictures are great - showing men, women and children all participating in cricket at the 'grass-roots' level and the more serious ICC sponsored levels in Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu and PNG. The pictures of the kids playing in the villages are delightful. Some are so young they can barely hold a bat. For many villages, the ocean is the outfield. Women players feature just as often as the men and many uniforms are vibrantly coloured. It's no doubt that these people are passionate about their sport.
   If you love cricket and you love the islands then this book is a treasure. It certainly brought back lots of fond memories for me.

Drawn from Paradise by David Attenborough and Errol Fuller

Drawn from Paradise (Harper Collins, 2012)

It was a delight to read this coffee-table book about the European discovery, art and natural history of the birds of paradise. The illustrations are works from artists over the centuries dating back to lithographs from the 17th Century. Birds of Paradise reached Europe long before Europeans explored the island of New Guinea. Plumes and skins were traded along what was once known as the spice route and found their way to the royal houses of Europe. As the hunters took the feet and wings off the birds before they were traded, Europeans of the time assumed that birds of paradise floated in the air and never roosted.
   This book shows the development of our knowledge of birds of paradise over the centuries and the way in which they were named by taxonomists.
   For those of us who adore these birds, this book is a 'must have' as it shows their important place in history and indeed, in European art.

Pacific Poets # 4 Dan Taulapapa McMullin

Dan Taulapapa McMullin

Dan Taulapapa McMullin lives in California but his heritage is Samoan. Dan was born in American Samoa and identifies himself as part of the Fa'a Fafine culture. He is a poet, artist and film maker. He has recently published a selection of poems in a book entitled Coconut Milk. The poems are critical of the relationship Pacific cultures have with Western cultures. The poem 'Tiki Manifesto' is a good example of how Taulapapa views the tourist industry. Many of his poems also give voice to the experience of being Fa'a Fafine and how prejudice haunted much of his formative years.

Coconut Milk
(University of Arizona Press, 2013)

   Taulapapa has an honest, raw and uncompromising style.The poems are written in blank verse and many follow a narrative style. Some of them are funny; some are confronting. Snippets of Samoan language and idiom permeate his work.

Mr Pip... the movie

Radio National have a great interview with Lloyd Jones on the release of the movie adaptation of his book, Mr Pip.  Also on the same program is an interview about the Haus Stori (story house) that Lloyd Jones has helped to set up in Bougainville. Inspirational stuff.

Pitcairn Paradise Lost by Kathy Marks

Pitcairn Island is where Fletcher Christian, his fellow mutineers and a dozen Tahitian women settled after the mutiny on the Bounty. These days it is populated with around 50 people, many of them direct descendants of these historical characters. But casting aside the myth and romance of it's turbulent beginnings, this remote island has a sinister side. In 2000 police went to this British colony to investigate disturbing reports of rape. What they discovered were multiple accounts of widespread child abuse dating back generations. It seemed that few girls had escaped the abuse and many men, some of them community leaders, were among the accused. As virtually everyone on Pitcairn is related to one another, the tangle of abuse also involved incest.
 

Pitcairn Paradise Lost
 (Fourth Estate, 2008)

This book details the trials held on Pitcairn and New Zealand which tore the small community apart. Several men were finally convicted but many were acquitted or failed to come to trial when victims were pressured by family members not to testify.
   I found this book harrowing and profoundly disturbing. Marks was one of only six journalists to gain access to the island for the trials. Her account is written plainly, which makes the victims' accounts all the more stark. It also shows the vitriolic attacks of the community against her reporting.  In the last few chapters she comments on the fragility of societies and how easily humanity can degenerate into anarchy, where the vulnerable suffer and strong men prosper.
   On a lighter note, the island sounds beautiful and rugged. I can only hope that its future will be brighter and that the influx of outsiders and better infrastructure will propel it into the modern age where children's rights are respected.

Beyond the Coral Sea by Michael Moran

Beyond the Coral Sea
(Harper Collins, 2003)

I borrowed this book from the library and unfortunately it's taken me about a month to read. That's not because it's a crappy read, it's actually engrossing, and packed with dozens of interesting historical accounts. It is a weighty tome though, and the way it flits between a modern travelogue and a recount of the last few hundred years of the history of Papua New Guinea makes it difficult to follow at times. But I loved it. I want a copy of my own now.
   The complete title is Beyond the Coral Sea: Travels in the Old Empires of the South-West Pacific. There is so much to this book: the business empires of 'Queen Emma', the failed Utopian settlement of Port Breton, the fascinating accounts of flying witches, the volcanic devastation of Rabaul, the splendour of the Trobriand Islands, the trading kastam of kula... I could go on and on.
   I learnt a lot about meddling colonial Europeans and their enduring legacies. The author's love of the area shone through and I will gladly read this book again and again as a handy historical reference.
   Now I'll have to save up to visit these eastern islands of PNG. They sound remarkable!