Serpent in Paradise [Hardcover]

"No. Nawa (never) read. All ha books full of s__t. People write bad things about Pitcairn in books. Them people who go write books on Pitcairn should go wipe (i.e. emphatically go away or, perhaps, be struck dead)." - The Pitcairn "librarian" on being asked by Dea Birkett if she enjoyed reading

First off, let me say that I'm awarding five stars to SERPENT IN PARADISE because it does what I think a successful travel essay should do, i.e. grandly transport me to a faraway place that I shall never see in person, but which, due to the descriptive skills of the writer, I can envision clearly in my mind's eye, thank you very much.

English writer Birkett became fascinated with Pitcairn, the remote British colony and island home of a subpopulation of the descendents of the Bounty mutineers, while viewing a screening of "The Bounty" starring Mel Gibson. (A larger group resides on the somewhat bigger Norfolk Island isolated in its own expanse of ocean north of New Zealand.) After almost two years of dreaming of visiting the place, she managed to book passage on a Norwegian chemical tanker scheduled to steam by. Thus, after having falsely fibbed in her landing application that she represented Royal Mail International, Dea clambered ashore to live for several months among the island's thirty-eight inhabitants.

The author has been pilloried in other reviews, which have described her as being flawed, foolish, insecure, contemptible, self-serving, shallow, deceitful, condescending, screwy, voyeuristic, narcissistic, and a gossip. Well, gee, that pretty much describes, on one point or another, the flip side of just about everyone, doesn't it? Get over it! And, I could add, that the reader can infer from SERPENT IN PARADISE that the Pitcairners themselves are tribal, petty, suspicious, compulsive, repressed, and eccentric. But, I don't hold those against them because they're also traits of the human condition that balance out the nobler ones, also possessed by all concerned, both author and subjects. And let's ignore for the duration of this review the convictions of child molestation recently found against several Pitcairn males by the British authorities. (At least Dea's one night stand with a married islander was consensual sex between two lonely adults. Hey, I'll bet that's never happened before.) So, now what?

The most glaring deficiency of this book is the lack of a picture section. However, I don't hold this against Burkett because there are no 24-hour film processors on Pitcairn, and I expect that whipping out a camera and snapping away would have caused the author to be pitched off the jetty and told to swim for home. Rather, look on the Web for "official" island sites that also include photo images. Or better, zero in on "Pitcairn Island" on Google Earth and be amazed that people can happily live their entire lives on a life raft so small. As a fun exercise, try to match the structures in Adamstown as seen on Google with Dea's map of the place.

I admire the author for making the tremendous effort to get out and about. SERPENT IN PARADISE is a fascinating read for the armchair traveler, perhaps better than actually being there.

"We all hold a place within out hearts - a perfect place - which is in the shape of an island. It provides refuge and strength; we can always retreat to its perfection. My mistake was to go there. Dreams should be nurtured and elaborated upon; they should never be visited. By going to Pitcairn, I had vanquished the perfect place within myself." - Dea Birkett

"Serpent in Paradise" is unique in many ways. If the myth of the mutiny which took place in 1789 still produces stacks of books about the story of the Bounty's mutineers, on the other hand there is not much literature around about modern day Pitcairn, this most remote part of the inhabited world so hard to get to and so hard for an outsider to fit in. Here in Dea Birkett's book you have a first hand account of life on the island , as seen through the disenchanted eyes (and biting tongue) of a British woman who has dared to follow her dream to visit Pitcairn and managed to arrive there and stay with the islanders for four months.

The book is a travelogue but it is absorbing and fascinating as a novel just fom the start, from Dea's efforts to collect information about the island and to plan her trip, through her voyage at sea on a Norwegian tanker giving her passage through the ocean, until her stay on the island at Irma Christian's home. Dea's stay on the island unwinds like following a plot, with Dea and the islanders acting as main characters of this adventure.

Many travel books idealize the places they are talking about and they strive to be "politically correct", always pointing out the best the place and the local people have to offer. Some readers highly criticized Birkett's book just because it doesn't follows this scheme, because it won't tell you Pitcairn is a paradise on earth nor it will tell you the Pitcairners are the kindest and welcoming people the author's has ever met. Maybe the author sometimes doesn't sound like the nicest person in the world, but the objectivity and disenchantement of Dea's account is what set it apart from the lot and makes it so interesting and engrossing. Reading her adventures on the island is like being there, trespassing Pitcairn's shore and the Pitcairner's homes and lives, a rare privilege and travel writing at its best.

The book is well written too, and until page 220 it is nicely articulated around well developed chapters, each of them centred around an event taking place in a different island's place (hence their titles: Taro Ground, Tedside, Down Isaac's etc...). I had a feeling, however, that the account was somewhat rushed towards the end, maybe as a result of the author's attention shifting from the island around her to the frightening uncertainty of what could happen to her now that the islanders were beginning to look more and more annoyed by her presence.

"What do you Pitcairners feel?", asked the author, "Polynesian?". Dennis had no doubt: "We're British!" he answered. Betty Christian, for her part, said she felt they were from the mutineers and she was not ashamed of it. She also added:

"There's no perfect person, no perfect community. It's sort of like the Garden of Eden. There was a serpent even there, which ruined a perfect place".

Who is the serpent on Pitcairn? Maybe the Pitcairners themselves. Maybe the author and her readers. Maybe both.

Warmly recommended.

More than just a travel guide, this book is one womans journey to discover an island and people far removed from what we call 'modern society'. Whilst these bounty descendents do grasp firmly onto many modern ideas and material possesions, they retain an indiviualism which is unique to this small island. The beauty of this book is that it is not depicting an idealist's view of Pitcairn but is a frank writing of how Pitcairners live, what there beliefs are and how they view the outside world. If anything, this book will inspire you to visit this physically small but spiritually strong corner of the Pacific.