Transit of Venus

September 28, 1992
The ``noble savages'' of the islands of the South Pacific now have money and alcohol, military bases, atomic explosions and a good deal of Christianity. The British on Fiji, the French on New Caledonia and the Americans on the Marshalls have all remade these island paradises in their own images, according to Evans. In Suva, the Fiji capital, the author, a British journalist, walks down Victoria Parade past Albert Park, in a city that ``reeks of the London suburbs.'' (``What do you think we're developing the South Pacific for? So everyone can go shopping,'' a friend tells him.) In New Caledonia, the French are so insistently French that for a long time their navy was the only one in the world to use navigational charts based on the Paris meridian rather than the international standard, the Greenwich meridian. The Americans on the Marshalls Islands have made Kwajalein into a ``real nice . . . suburban trailer-park . . . a great place to bring up the kids,'' Traveling on a slow boat through the islands, Evans documents in sorrowful detail, interspersed with excellent historical background, the loss of innocence.

May 15, 2015
Evans' laid-back, witty stroll through the islands of the Pacific may be too gorgeously worded and relaxed for armchair travelers. Perhaps it's a chaise longue tome, with, perhaps, a cool drink at hand, though not kavaEvans imbibes kava, which (let's say) slows him down a bit, when he doesn't sneak to the alley and dump it instead. But mainly, he catches trawlers and shipping boats and little puddle jumpers and visits such Pacific island areas as New Caledonia, Fiji, Vanuatu, and Western Samoa (all depicted by rough little maps), meeting characterslocals and expatswho call these palm-tree- and sunset-laden, wet and steamy, collapsing or rising sandbars home. Robert Louis Stevenson's grave is in Western Samoa, and Stevenson is just one of the historical people Evans ponders. Living in a tropical paradise perhaps needs no justification, but Evans also sees the other sides of paradise (insects, poverty, military coups, etc.) and ponders them, as well. Even so, Evans makes clear the many reasons why white men had the fever for desert islands and still do.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)