Redeeming Qualities

You’d be surprised by how often all I want to read is a Robinsonade–and by how rarely I really enjoy one. Like, I’ve tried writing people surviving in the wilderness with limited resources, and it’s not that hard.

I don’t think W.H.G. Kingston, author of Alone on an Island, found it hard either–he seems to have written several and also taken credit for his wife’s translation of some of Jules Verne’s. Unfortunately his ease with the subject did not, at least in this case, produce a satisfying book.

Harry Gurton is a nice boy with religious inclinations, which will no doubt be useful to him when he’s alone of his desert island. First, though, we have to get him here.

Let’s start by killing off his parents–unnamed diseases, within a few months of each other. Then let’s commission him as a midshipman on a privateer. Let’s provide him with a pocket-sized bible and a warning about the immorality of sailors (they swear a lot) both courtesy of his friendly local minister. With all that taken care of, we can send him to sea.

Now we must make the ship as uncomfortable ass possible. Everyone swears a lot. The officers are relentlessly awful to the sailors. The surgeon leaves the ship after a difference of opinion with some of the officers, and Harry is the only person willing to nurse the sailors when they get sick. His fellow midshipman threatens to destroy his pocket bible. Harry tries to be friendly to everyone, but relations between the officers and the crew get worse and worse. So: it’s mutiny time.

One of the sailors he nursed through an illness lashes him to a mast to get him out of the way. Then the crew murders the rest of the officers. Then they give Harry the choice of becoming a mutineer or being marooned on a nearby island. He chooses the latter, as he’s uncomfortable with the murdering and the swearing. So his sailor friend assembles the world’s most comprehensive care package and puts him ashore.

The one thing I really want from a Robinsonade is the mechanics of survival, in exhaustive detail. How is the protagonist starting a fire? Building shelter? What do they eat? Are they identifying plants? Are they making tools to hunt with? I want to know everything. There should also be elements of struggle–to gather building materials, to search for a missing companion, to familiarize themselves with the collection of legal tomes that was washed ashore in a packing case. Whatever. Those being my priorities, reading Alone on an Island was a frustrating experience.

Harry has it too easy. He’s got guns and fishing equipment, tent canvas, vegetabl seeds and saucepans. He’s got several months’ worth of salt beef and pork. He’s happy to find eggs, not because he needs the food, but because they’ll be “a pleasant addition to his larder.” At some point he thinks to himself that he’d like a cup of tea, so he looks through his stuff and finds that his sailor friend has given him a big bag of tea and another of cocoa. There’s just something about about being able to make hot chocolate on a desert island that suggests Kingston is missing the point. Want to know how this lone fifteen-year-old builds a house? Well, so do I. All we get is “He began putting up his house. [Three sentences about hunting and fishing.] [Three sentences about the garden.] He had now got up his house.”

There are tantalizing glimpses of the kind of detail I want. Harry’s first effort at cooking fails, and he learns that it’s better to boil his salt beef than to roast it. He knows it’s going to be hard to grow things in the sandy soil, so he burns the weeds he’s pulled and uses the ashes as fertilizer. Gathering salt is a little difficult, but eventually he has enough to let him preserve some fish he’s caught. It’s easier to dry or smoke fish, but he prefers the salted fish. I think Kingston was capable of writing the kind of book I wanted. The real problem here is that he’s moving too fast.

Harry establishes himself with little effort and a fair amount of prayer, and then we skip forward three years to another shipwreck, which brings Harry’s sailor friend to live on the island with him. Then, after some bible-reading, we skip forward another couple of years, and the pair is rescued. The sailor becomes a missionary, Harry gets a job, the end. This is a really short book, and it feels like Kingston managed that by cutting out most of the parts I wanted to read.

So, here’s my verdict: Alone on an Island isn’t terrible, but it left my Robinsonade itch unscratched. I’ll try to report back with something more successful.