ISLAND ROMANCE

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 283, 24 August 1940, Page 15

ISLAND ROMANCE

A Philosophy Of The South

“Mr. Moonlight's Island,” by Robert Dean Frisbie (London: Heinemann).

Mr. Moonlight’s island is in the South Seas and connected with the rest of the world only by the occasional visits of a schooner which brings for Javan Moonlight a supply of trade goods and collects the copra he hers obtained from the natives in exchange for the articles he sells in his store. Javan is the only white man on the island. For such a contemplative, reflective fellow as he, this is a good thing and certainly he would not have it otherwise. He is able to exist with a minimum of physical effort, his chief exertion being the periodical thinking required to plan a business coup which will induce the natives to buy his goods. In such a paradise they have no use for the goods he sells, yet . sell them he must to maintain his position as a crack trader of the Pacific and usually .he produces a stunt which, will sell them cn masse and so leave him months of idleness before the schooner returns to replenish! his stocks. This idleness he endures very satisfactorily by much reading of his favourite author, Marcel Proust, by the drinking of home brew and by long dissertations on the pagan habits of the islanders, particularly their sexual customs, as compared—favourably compared—with those of the civilized world. The reader is bemused by the atmosphere so subtley evoked, entertained by the antics of these charming natives, made thoughtful by Javan’s strictures on civilization and attracted by his personality and bis philosophy. In short, “Mr. Moonlight’s Island” is a book as fascinating as it is unusual.