Tales from the Torrid Zone

Starred review from January 29, 2007
Frater, author of Chasing the Monsoon
, was born in Vanuatu, where his mother had run two schools and his father, a "misinari dokta," had taught and practiced medicine. His grandfather had been a much-revered Presbyterian missionary on nearby Paama Island. Not everyone born and bred in the tropics likes tropical life; many envy the seasons or schools or health services of the temperate world. But just as church bells in the tropics have a unique resonance, so Frater himself has the human version of "tropical resonance." Everything about life in the tropics—food, diseases, insects, religion, rivers, language, drink, forestry, human sweat—is endlessly fascinating for him, reminding him of a story he heard traveling downstream from Mandalay, or filming in Mozambique, or riding a bus into Rarotonga. He finds the smallest details of tropical life so entertaining, he barely notices the attendant inconveniences. Thus he makes the insects eating his grandfather's book—selectively consuming its constituent parts, "the spine's sweet glue and crunchy muslin, biscuity strawboard covers, a confit of gold leaf licked from the titles"— sound like regular gourmands. Frater's final tale, of how he brought a grand English bell to his grandfather's church on Paama, forms a fitting grace note to an outstanding memoir.