An Island to Oneself (1966)

Completely riveting, despite the minutiae. ( )

Completely riveting, despite the minutiae. ( )

A lovely counterexample that speaks loudly against the current obsession with constant, continuous communication with everyone else. A solid individual does not need others to prop him up to validate himself.

The conversational diary style as well as the theme of solitude remind me of Joshua Slocum's Alone Around the World.

Really compelling story of Tom Neale, who marooned himself on a desert island in the South Pacific and made it his home for more than six years. The book covers Neale's first two stays on the island as he battled the jungle, established a garden, a fowl run and tried to put aside the need for companionship and living by the clock. His story is warm and engrossing, making this quick read a book to remember. ( )

I couldn't stop reading this book. I found myself saying I'll just read one more chapter... and looking at the clock to discover it was already 3:20AM. The book itself is not in any way artfully written. It is written in the very matter-of-fact voice of someone who decided he wanted to live alone on a deserted island... and succeeded. However, while Neale may not be a particularly gifted writer, his life on the island was riveting! It truly makes me want to follow in his foot steps, if not for years at a time, than at least for a few months. The story has so many fantastic moments within. The preparations for his first trip to the island, his move to the island, spending six months to build a pier, only to have it destroyed by a cyclone less than a day after it was complete, his agonizing over whether or not to roast a duck he had tamed and befriended when his craving for a meat other than chicken and fish was driving him crazy, the day he threw his back out, and after months with no visiter was saved when, on the verge of death, a couple of sailers showed up on his island...

Then, after his rescue, he had to fight, tooth-and-nail to get a chance to go back to the island when the authorities were against it. On his second trip he talks about his boat capsizing in a storm and the five hours it takes him to get back to his island, and even relates the story of how a family was ship wrecked on the coral reef adjacent to his island and have to live with him for months until they are rescued!

It is the story of one of the most remarkable lives I've ever come across. I'm really thankful I received this book as a gift!

*edit* I just looked Neale up on Wikipedia and found this webpage (which has a link to the book in-full online!) Some of the interesting things I found was that he was married and had children before his first and second trip to the islands... and more interesting still... he returned to the island a THIRD time and lived there for TEN YEARS before being found badly ill, and suffering from what turned out to be stomach cancer. He died about eight-months after being evacuated from the island. ( )