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A carregar... Solomon Time: An Unlikely Quest in the South Pacific (original 2002; edição 2007)por Will Randall
Informação Sobre a ObraSolomon Time: An Unlikely Quest in the South Pacific por Will Randall (2002)
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Adira ao LibraryThing para descobrir se irá gostar deste livro. Ainda não há conversas na Discussão sobre este livro. Pleasant enough, humorous little account of a British schoolteacher who finds himself in a remote village of the Solomon Islands. The reader has to somewhat suspend belief, that the job of a kind of development officer was just offered to a man who barely knew where the place was, on the strength of an acquaintance with the previous man in charge, the Commander. Entertaining, mildly amusing, the characters (and, indeed the narrator) all rather implausible comic personalities, but fairly readable, as our clueless teacher strives to think up a money-making scheme for the locals and decides on a chicken farm... OK, so I guess I was a bit thick, expecting to read some kind of factual account of a guy going to live on a remote South Pacific island, but that was what I wanted. I'm unlikely to get to do it myself, so reading about someone else doing it was going to be the next best thing. Except that the more I read, the more it felt like fiction, with some dramatic/funny incidents feeling as though they had been dreamed up for the sake of entertaining literature. And rather stupidly reading the foreword last with its references to research I realised that was almost certainly the case. It shouldn't matter - after all I believed less than 25% of Henri Charriere's supposedly factual "Papillon" but it's one of my favourite books. I've reached the conclusion that it's OK if it's gritty, but not quite so OK if it's more on the level of daytime telly or slapstick. That said, there were some gems in amongst the text, the sort of thing I'd file under 'guilty pleasures', poking fun as they did at different nationalities. For example: "...she was from the minuscule Lord Howe Atoll, Luaniua, which was so remote and so limited in its range of activities that there was nothing for people to do but tattoo each other" or indeed: "...people tended to be worryingly accepting of the various religious road shows that paddled around the islands. Every halfwitted, crackpot, dishonest, unscrupulous, hypoctitical and, more often than not, American church was in evidence..." or my favourite, speaking of the old colonials inhabiting the Yacht Club: "Fans feebly stirred an atmosphere of outdated exclusivity and wafted the smell of stale tobacco and narrow-mindedness over almost entirely white heads". It wasn't an unenjoyable reading experience, but if wanted proper travel literature I'd probably look elsewhere. Imagine dropping everything in 1999 and moving to a remote island in the Solomon Islands? Oh and you are tasked with coming up with a project that will supply the people of that island with an income after you leave a year later. And you are a British school teacher of foreign languages, and well......like it or not you are a fish out of water, and funny as well. If this describes you then you must be Will Randall the author of this book, Solomon Time. A dry British, very funny book about a man determined to help these islanders. sem críticas | adicionar uma crítica
Echoing the experiences of Robert Louis Stevenson - who spent several years in the South Pacific - here is the story of a contemporary writer who lived in and came to love the Solomon Islands. Most unexpectedly, Will Randall, once a happy schoolteacher, found himself dispatched to a small village on a not very large island, far out in the vastness of the South Pacific. His mission (although he had hardly chosen to accept it): - to fulfil the dying wishes of the 'Commander' and help the local people set up a money-making community project. The Solomon Islands, islands lost in time - Solomon Time; these little gems of land scattered across the ocean, must be the last sanctuary on our shrivelled planet not yet overshadowed by the Golden Arches or encapsulated in a Coca-Cola bubble. Everyone has dreamed at some time of living on a desert island. Here is the unvarnished truth. Sharks, turtles, a band of unruly chickens, a cast of extraordinary characters, and a bird called the Spangled Drongo, accompany Will Randall through some of the most fascinating and certainly funniest scenes to be found in travel writing since Gerald Durrell. Não foram encontradas descrições de bibliotecas. |
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Google Books — A carregar... GénerosSistema Decimal de Melvil (DDC)919.59304History and Geography Geography and Travel Geography of and travel in Australasia, Pacific Ocean islands, Atlantic Ocean islands, Arctic islands, Antarctica and on extraterrestrial worlds New Guinea and neighboring countries of Melanesia Other parts of Melanesia Solomon IslandsClassificação da Biblioteca do Congresso dos EUA (LCC)AvaliaçãoMédia:
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And you are a British school teacher of foreign languages, and well......like it or not you are a fish out of water, and funny as well. If this describes you then you must be Will Randall the author of this book, Solomon Time. A dry British, very funny book about a man determined to help these islanders. ( )