Mutiny on the Bounty
by John Boyne
FICTION
DOUBLEDAY
05/05/08
By the addition of an extra fictitious crew member aboard HMS Bounty – our intrepid and redoubtable inside man and narrator, John Jacob ‘Turnip’ Turnstile, a former child thief and unwitting child prostitute – John Boyne, author of the moving Holocaust tale Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, takes issue with the accepted view of that fateful voyage to Tahiti.
Siding with author Caroline Alexander’s view that myth and legend have obscured the truth of the events of 1787, Boyne describes an all too feasible scenario, as seen from the perspective of the foundling Turnstile as Captain’s servant: Fletcher Christian is the villain of the piece and Captain William Bligh is recast as a maligned, misunderstood and sympathetic victim.
Turnip aside, it’s historically accurate and is as entertaining a piece of conjecture as to what happened as one could hope to find, delivered in the now respectable Captain Turnstile’s amusing colloquialisms.
What Boyne does especially well is maintain consistency (unlike Captain Bligh) and the result, although the outcome is already assured, is a page-turner of some considerable suspense.
Gareth Davies, Waterstone's Cardiff
by Diana Souhami
by Richard Sanders
by Norma Clarke
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