Book 223: Palau (English) – A Greater Treasure (Susan KLOULECHAD)

The Captain stood on the beach, watching the longboats return to the shore. Behind them, his ship was a magnificent sight against the rising moon. The sails fitted perfectly and he nearly commended the islanders for their workmanship, but there was no longer any friendship. He thought only for a moment about the effort involved in weaving the large sails from dried leaves. Each had been carefully dyed in dark red, golden yellow, and black, then intricately woven into diamond patterns. Looking towards the mountain, his mood shifted.

 

I said last time that my San Marino book, Androceo, was the newest I had read. That’s not strictly true; this one is even newer! Of all the countries in the world, Palau proved the hardest to find a novel to read. I searched for years, and in the end was ready to admit that one from there didn’t exist. I had already read one book from there – a glossy scuba diving guide, Palau by Nancy Barbour (Full Court Press, 1990) – but although it has a country introduction and nice mythological excerpts (and gorgeous pictures – and not many guides suggest visiting the local jail), it didn’t count as a novel. In desperation I wrote to Susan Kloulechad, who had saved Ann Morgan’s project, and who rescued mine too. Susan is married to a Palauan and lives part of the time in Canada, part in Palau. Very generously she let me read one of her unpublished manuscripts (a different one from the one Ann read). At the time of writing, A Greater Treasure unfortunately hasn’t been published yet. This being the case, I thought it would be unfair to critique a work that, when it is finally (I hope) published, may end up different from what I read (like doing a road test of a prototype car). Maybe Susan will take up some of my suggestions, maybe she will do some re-writing, maybe the publisher’s editor will ask for some changes, or all of the above. So here I’ll just talk about the story.

It’s a young adult adventure novel set in an island country which may be very like Palau. A mysterious stranger, the captain, strides into a tavern in Pewter Bay (presumably somewhere in the Americas, presumably in the 1800s) and announces that he’s after a crew (not a lazy one this time!) to sail to “an island of sparkling diamonds, gems and gold” that he has heard of but has never been reached before. 

Marina is a professor at Pewter University. The captain seeks her out as the sort of Darwin to his Fitzroy, and she agrees to go on the adventure. She develops an ever-closer relationship with the captain which is not to end well. They do find the mysterious, utopian island and set out to colonise it – but it is already inhabited. Marina quickly learns the local language (which Susan tells me is actually Palauan) and she earns more trust from the locals than the rest of the crew do. (She is also more of a conservationist than the rest of them are). They show her a cave in a mountain with a huge diamond inside, which they can use to control the winds. Unfortunately, she shows it in turn to the captain, who avariciously undergoes a Sméagol/Gollum transformation, steals it (killing his local guide), and sets out to sail off with it (leaving distraught Marina behind). But Nature gangs up on him and gets its revenge (having some fun along the way).

In all it was an enjoyable adventure novel with a bit of mythology/fantasy thrown in. She does some lovely descriptions of nature (and appears to particularly be fond of coconut crabs!) along with the amusing mythological escapades. I wish Susan luck with her writing career and am so grateful for her helping me to tick off the land of the green umbrella-like Rock Islands and the stingless jellyfish lake!

 

 

Book 211: Federated States of Micronesia (English) – Under the Northern Cross: a story in the Micronesian oral tradition (Ralph B. CHUMBLEY)

The oarsmen put their paddles into the crystal-clear, blue-green water of the lagoon and began rowing toward the village on shore. In the water below the hull, Keso could see several sand sharks leisurely gliding along the white sandy bottom. The sharks patrolled between two very large, florescent-yellow brain corals that had grown to be at least two-meters across. Purple, stony coral sea fans and orange-and-white anemone – each with its own clown fish – stood out as accents against the myriad schools of colorful reef fish that abounded in Ant’s lagoon. There was an abundance in the lagoon at Ant thought Keso, and, he was glad that he had chosen this lagoon as their re-provisioning stop.

One of the worst neglects in history as taught in the West is ignoring the amazing peopling of the Pacific and Indian Oceans by the Austronesians (the Polynesians, Micronesians, Melanesians and – in the wider ethnographical sense – Indonesians). They managed to discover and colonise virtually every speck of land between Easter Island and Madagascar, more than halfway around the world. Most of the most amazing longest distance voyages (such as central Polynesia to New Zealand, Hawai’i and Easter Island – which have been called the moon shots of their time) were done by the Polynesians, but these navigational skills were largely lost under diktats from European missionaries and colonial authorities forbidding voyaging as ‘too dangerous’. But their skill in navigating using natural phenomena (the stars, direction of currents, winds, clouds, birds, etc.) was miraculously preserved into our own times in Micronesia, to be re-discovered by people like the New Zealand solo sailor David Lewis. The Polynesians are slowly re-learning these skills from their distant cousins, but inter-island voyaging never ceased along the shorter distances in Micronesia.

This young adult novel is set mainly on the island of Pohnpei, at the time it was ruled by a dynasty called the Saudeleurs (who built the incredible ‘Venice-like’ city of Nan Madol), 700-1150 CE. They mysteriously disappeared, but this story posits an answer as to why. It follows the fortunes of two princes with opposite characters, one of whom is dogged by bad luck. King Rehntu has procrastinated too long in deciding who should inherit – the legitimate son (the weak and scholarly Katau) or the more capable, stronger adopted son Dareek. The centrepiece of the tale is a trading voyage to the Northern Marianas. (The return voyage not described at all – as happens so often in travel accounts – you would think that as much is likely to happen on the return as on the outward leg!) I would have thought that Dareek (from an atoll) would be amazed by the high islands.

There were some anachronisms. Would the islanders know about Asia or the Marianas Trench? Or about Venice, and the Biblical loaves and fishes? I was left wondering about the Northern Cross of the title (also the name of the voyaging canoe); there is of course a Southern Cross, but not as far as I know a Northern Cross (unless it figures among the Micronesian constellations). This isn’t explained.

The book is well-researched, and I loved the fascinating insights into the culture (such as food preparation, navigation, fishing, and ship naming ceremonies).

I appreciated that there was a good vocabulary. But on page 236, ama is glossed as ‘outrigger’, while in the vocabulary it means ‘spars connecting the outrigger to the main hull of a canoe’.

This novel, published by Amazon, did have a few typos – even on the cover. But on the whole I enjoyed it a lot.

The author was a government contract worker on Pohnpei.

Chumbley, Ralph B., Under the Northern Cross: a story in the Micronesian oral tradition, Middletown, DE, Amazon, 2020, ISBN 978-1-0770-6585-7

Book 181: Guyana (English) – Palace of the Peacock (Wilson HARRIS)

The solid wall of trees was filled with ancient blocks of shadow and with gleaming hinges of light. Wind rustled the leafy curtains through which masks of living beard dangled as low as the water and the sun. My living eye was stunned by inversions of the brilliancy and the gloom of the forest in a deception and hollow and socket. We had armed ourselves with prospecting knives and were clearing a line as near to the river as we could.

I’m afraid that this novel left me fairly mystified as to what it was actually about, so I’m afraid this review won’t be much use. There doesn’t seem to be much plot and it was difficult to understand what was happening. But the overgrown prose, like the Amazon jungle, is often exquisite, so perhaps the best way to tackle it, if you feel so inclined, is to simply enjoy the words and sentences for their own sake without worrying about plot. The characterisation also seemed nebulous.

It reminded me a little of Heart of Darkness. Donne, a childhood friend of the narrator, has ‘devastated’ the savannas where he governed, exploiting the indigenous people, and had abused his mistress Mariella until she finally killed him. We are on a haunted voyage (of seven days, like the Creation) as the doomed crew beat their way upriver through the jungle. Are the expeditioners in fact ghosts? How many times can you die, and yet still ‘live’ alongside the living? Like the bird and animal noises you hear in the jungle but can’t see, or even recognise, the book is apparently replete with symbolism which sadly passed me by. Does Mariella, also the name of the mission to which they are heading, represent the land Donne had raped? Does the multiracial crew represent the whole population of Guyana?

Harris revisited the locations and themes of Palace of the Peacock in his later novels, and perhaps it is necessary to read all of them to properly understand his outlook. And maybe you need to read this one several times (I read it twice – it is quite short). In the end, I was happy to enjoy the beautiful writing for its own sake.

Harris, Wilson (1921 – ), Palace of the Peacock, London, Faber and Faber, 2010 (first published 1960), ISBN 978-0-571-26051-5