Stevenson Under the Palm Trees by
Alberto Manguel
pbk out February 05
(Canongate Books)
at £5.99
Not a crime story but the story of a crime, Stevenson under the Palms
delineates the last few months of Robert Louis Stevenson's life in Samoa. The life of
a Calvinist Scot lived in a distant and alien culture. The writer himself , Alberto
Manguel, was born in Buenos Aires of a maternal grandfather who had left a Jewish
village west of Moscow to travel to Istanbul, and finally Argentina. Manguel has now
settled in Canada, and is a polyglot anthropologist, and translator. His novel News
from a Foreign Country Came won him the McKitterick prize in 1992.
The crime in question is the rape and murder of a young Samoan girl, whose
killer is never found. Is it Stevenson himself, the great storyteller? Or the strange Mr
Baker, missionary and hater of the free life of the native population? Does Baker
really exist, or is he the darker side of Stevenson – the Mr Hyde to his Dr Jekyll?
Stevenson does appear plagued by a 'fetch' or ghost, who causes him to be suspected
of several crimes including the murder.
The short tale weaves Stevenson's life and literature into an intriguing piece
on the nature of reality. How the Samoans' belief that telling a story makes it true.
And how this can have disastrous results. Manguel deftly draws a picture that distorts
reality, inserting imagination into daily life, and dreams into waking existence. Until
both are subverted. Stevenson became famous after the publication of Treasure
Island and Kidnapped in the 1880's. He was writing Weir of Hermiston at his
Samoan home in Vailima in 1894, when he died as a result of the tuberculosis that had
dogged him throughout his life. Manguel uses all his skill as a translator to reflect
Stevenson's own literary aim of 'war on the adjective' in this sparse and yet telling
narrative.
(
Ian Morson
Author of Falconer books and short listed for 1999 Ellis Peters Historical Crime Dagger)
Stevenson Under the Palm Trees by
Alberto Manguel
