[.ca] Stevenson Under the Palm Trees: A Novella (ISBN 0887621384)

Amazon.ca:
Scarcely longer than a medium-length short story, Alberto Manguel's finely crafted novella Stevenson Under the Palm Trees is the haunting tale of the final days of the Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, best known for his fantasy The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Wracked by consumption, Stevenson has come to the island of Samoa, bringing along his American wife, Fanny, his mother, and two stepchildren. While there, the writer meets a mysterious Reverend Baker, a fellow Scotsman, who may or may not be a projection of the puritanical, guilt-ridden aspect of Stevenson's own personality. After Baker's arrival, the natives, who had admired Stevenson and called him Tusitala, or "teller of tales," start changing their view of the author and blame him for various disasters, including the rape of a young native girl and a mysterious fire in the local saloon/brothel. Long known for his imaginative criticism of fantastic writing in books like The Dictionary of Imaginary Places, Manguel conjures up the claustrophobic paradise of the South Seas in numerous well-turned phrases: "Here the heat ... makes sin burst like flowers from the mud" and "She compared ... the Samoan faces to inky roses." In a piece this short, every word counts, but the writing never feels dense or heavy. The result is a highly suggestive, psychological tale, exquisitely rendered. Like a tropical glade saturated with echoes, refracted sunlight, and deep shadows, Manguel's novella is rich and multi-faceted despite its brevity. --Mark Frutkin