I'm working on filling in some of the gaps in my reading of nineteenth century American lit. I've taught Moby-Dick and several short novels, like Benito Cereno and Billy Budd, for years, but I have never read Melville's early novels. This isn't really a novel so much as an embellished memoir, and it's interesting to see how Melville's real experiences shaped his later literary (and more fictional) books.
Because it is not really a novel, don't expect plot or character development. It's just a chronicle of experiences (with not a little bit of plagiarized material from other South Seas histories he read later). I suppose it is an interesting book to a Melville or American lit scholar, but it's not a book I think most people would truly enjoy reading.
It reminded me of Poe's only novel, the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, and of Aldous Huxley's Island. Pym also deals with sailors who get trapped on an island, and Island deals with a utopian island. Typee explores a tension between both extremes, a paradise with something malevolent hidden beneath the outward appearance.
I just began Omoo, which is sort of Typee's sequel.