J. Maarten Troost

The author discusses his two-year stay on a remote South Pacific island, a place where he anticipated a romantic paradise but instead experienced humorous misadventures and a host of environmental challenges.

Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

The Sex Lives of Cannibals

J Maarten Troost

Fantasized about quitting the 9-5? Walking away from credit card debt and student loans? Think living in the South Pacific for two years sounds like a perfect solution and perhaps even a winning idea for your first novel? Maarten Troost does just that, setting up as a devil-may-care islander while his girlfriend, Sylvia, gets to work on saving the planet, or at least a little part of it on an end-of-the-world atoll, Tarawa. Life on Tarawa resembles not so much paradise as a theatre of the absurd where planes fly with the aid of masking tape, Coconut Stalinism prevails as national government and Sylvia is co-opted by the CIA to spy on the Chinese. But abandoning continental hang-ups like barbequeing the local dogs and watching on as international industrial fishing trawlers plunder the world's richest tuna supply aren't so easy. Perhaps only by following the locals and letting go, one just might find a better way to live...

The Sex Lives Of Cannibals

Les Reynolds

An enjoyable account of their time in the middle of the South Pacific. Loved the way that he was realistic about the downsides, but was still able to appreciate the beauty and way of life on an isolated island. And the book was nicely written, being topical yet still mostly chronological.

Janet Doré

No, it’s not porn – of either the soft or hard variety. It is the funniest book I have read in the 43 years I have been devouring them. Wickedly funny. And, it couldn’t have come at a more perfect time. For weeks I had been plodding through the 10,000+ page classic Middlemarch with brutal (and quite admirable) determination. I always rise to a daunting intellectual challenge…but, not in Kauai. There is an unwritten law (somewhere) that while in Paradise one is only allowed to read books that make you laugh, soar, or are of the soft or hard core variety . So, Middlemarch remains on my nightstand waiting patiently for my return to reality. I couldn’t have picked a better book...

I must warn you that this is not the best book to read in public. First, there is the title. You’ll notice occasional furtive glances, sly grins or raised eyebrows. The rebel in me calls forth a seductive smile at just the right moment. Then, there are the uncontrollable outbursts of laughter. I wonder if my fellow airline passengers went so far as to make a plan in the event that I totally lost it…

What could possibly be so hysterical? The 272 pages of observations and experiences of a funny, funny guy while living at the “edge of the world” for two years…on an atoll (it’s not even big enough to be categorized as an island) known as Tarawa in the unheard of Republic of Kiribati (pronounced “Kir-ee-bas…on account of the missionaries being stingy with the letters they used to transcribe the local language”) in the middle of the South Pacific. He and his girlfriend move to “possibly the Worst Place on Earth” in search of an exotic life experience…and, they got it. Far more than they bargained for…the list is endless: “…stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish – all in a country where the only music to be heard for miles around is La Macarena.”

Try not to laugh while reading this excerpt about the atoll’s mythological beginning…

“A long time ago, Tarawa was brought forth by Nareau the Creator. Nareau the Creator was a spider and he looked upon his work and saw that it was good. Perhaps because he was a spider. Nareau the Creator then flung grains of Tarawa to the wind and from these grains other islands were born and together these islands were called Tungaru. He created demigods and people and they procreated but the demigod gene seems to have died out, and so very soon there were just people. He created distant lands and sent Nareau the Wise to tend to the land of white-skinned spirits, the I-Matang world, and Nareau the Cunning to oversee the land of black-skinned spirits. Their intermingling was not advised.

I sometimes wish that Nareau had been a little more expansive in his ambitions. As the primordial source of life Tarawa is a bit modest. Which grain was it that led to the Euroasian landmass? Why couldn’t we have kept that one, I wondered. How about the Bora Bora grain? Couldn’t Nareau at least have left a grain or two that could have morphed into hills, mountains even, something to break the monotony of a low island? As I cycled up and down the atoll on a thirdhand mountain bike that would never see a mountain, or a hill, or even a rise requiring a gear change, I realized that Nareau, unlike the great majority of deities, was a humble god, prone to thrift and frugality, and while I believe this should be encouraged among deities everywhere, I did periodically yearn for a god who kept a grander residence. Not that Tarawa is without its moments of grandeur – it is, after all, a tropical island – it’s just that it’s very, very small.” [Chapter 5, pages 46-47:]

I wholeheartedly agree with Troost’s own description of this book as “not too serious, not too stupid.” Part travelogue, part human interest, part political education, all wickedly funny…I learned a lot and had a blast while increasing the size of my brain.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

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