Coconut Chaos
by Diana Souhami
TRAVEL
PHOENIX
02/04/08
The story of HMS Bounty has been told many times, but never quite in this way. Souhami’s cocktail of genres – travel, history, psychology – allows for a unique exploration of the rebellion.
It is not the mutinous sailors and their resented captain Bligh whose plight is most memorable; Souhami digs deeper, voyaging to Pitcairn, the island that the mutineers inhabited. As today’s islanders are entangled in a legacy of violence and rape, so too are readers caught in the writer’s web, her daring blend of fact and fiction. The Pitcairn she presents is an unsettling, claustrophobic place, ravaged by abuse and inexorable rain, a protagonist in its own right.
Coconut Chaos is a rare book, daring, clever and unique.
Abigail Dean, Waterstone's Manchester Arndale Centre
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