An Island to Oneself

Long after the last page of An Island to Oneself is turned, even after Tom Neale's name is forgotten, the story of his isolation, hundreds of miles from the nearest inhabited island, will continue to enrich the lives of all who read his book.

In his youth an ordinary seaman, and for years a shopkeeper among the Cook Islands, Tom Neale was in his fifties when he turned his back on society and went into his lonely retreat on a South Pacific atoll named Suvarov. With him he took nothing but a couple of cats and some bric-a-brac to tie and bolt his meager dwelling--in case of hurricanes.

The miracle of his story is in the telling. There are heroic moments in battling the elements: the furious hurricane that engulfed the coral islet; five desperate hours in a stormy lagoon with a cripplingly strained back; even a reluctant bit of blood-letting on wild pigs and a mammoth sea turtle. But the real power of the book comes from the calm, ordinary things Neale does. Building a chicken coop; baking with banana leaves; brewing a cup of tea; taming a wild duck--these details blend into a kind of domestic poetry and become as compelling as a good suspense story.

Neale's yearning for a cigarette, his dreams about killing his pet duck to satisfy his meat craving (he didn't); the delight he draws from his first sip of brandy--all of this enduringly renews the reader's appreciation for the too accessible ingredients which we take for granted in our own lives.

Tom Neale was born in Wellington, New Zealand, but his family soon moved to Greymouth, S.I., where his father became paymaster to the state coal mines. Eventually the family settled in Timaru. At 18?Tom Neale signed on as an apprentice engineer in the New Zealand Navy, where he spent four years before buying himself out in order to wander among the South Pacific islands, clearing bush, fishing, preparing copra. He later settled on Moorea, where he learned to speak Tahitian. In 1943 he accepted a job as store-keeper in the Cook Islands, and from here he sailed to Suvarov.

Ox Bow Press, P.O. Box 4045, Woodbridge, CT 06525