Review
WL Rating
The third and final novel in the Bounty trilogy, Pitcairn’s Island describes the disturbing events that unfold as Fletcher Christian and his mutineers attempt to settle a lonely island in the Pacific. Along with a group of Maori men and Tahitian women, this hodgepodge of settlers begin the noble work of creating a new society on the edge of paradise. Unfortunately, most of the founding fathers in this little saga lacked the brains, character and selflessness needed to pull off the whole paradise-building thing. Efforts start well enough, but a combination of 18th Century English bigotry and home-brewed alcohol wind up destroying much of the good work that had been accomplished. As you read the book, it’s not hard to see that the mutineers were doomed from the start. After all, who builds paradise with 17 horny men and only 12 women? Like that’s going to work. As events unfold, there is plenty of drama and it becomes clear how the settlement’s inauspicious beginnings inevitably built a foundation for a highly dysfunctional society (which is graphically exposed in the recent book Lost Paradise: From Mutiny on the Bounty to a Modern-Day Legacy of Sexual Mayhem, the Dark Secrets of Pitcairn Island). Regardless of the modern inhabitants’ fall from grace, Nordoff & Hall’s book is a classic and, like the other two books in the Bounty trilogy, a WL Essential. (July 2009)
Pitcairn’s Island - Nordoff & Hall
