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The Island of Desire, the story of a south sea trader
Robert Dean Frisbie's life on the island of Puka Puka is divided into two parts. The first describes his courtship and early family life with his wife, Desire. Hence, the title of the book. The second part follows the family's move to the remote island of Suvarrow and details their encounter with and survival of a severe hurricane.
- GenresTravel
234 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1944
4 people are currently reading
96 people want to read
About the author
Robert Dean Frisbie
20 books9 followersRobert Dean Frisbie was an American writer of travel literature about Polynesia.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 5, 2016
This isn't a bad book, and I would go so far as to say that I moderately enjoyed it, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to a friend unless that friend was looking for something very specific. If you came to me and said, "I'm looking for something kind of like The Swiss Family Robinson, except less cheerful and also with less enslavement of indigenous people and/or wanton animal slaughter (or at least a narrower range of slaughtered species)" or, "I'm really interested in reading personal narratives about surviving hurricanes on small uninhabited atolls," or, "I wonder what it would have been like to run a trading station on a remote Polynesian Island between the World Wars," I might suggest you give The Island of Desire a whirl. But even then I couldn't recommend it wholeheartedly; I would tell you that it's pretty good, but not as compelling as those descriptions might lead you to believe.
Frisbie is concerned at all times with being a Writer (and a Great Writer at that), and it imposes a certain distance between himself and his subjects that also serves to keep the reader at arm's length. The prose can be too careful, too precise, slowing the pace of the story and inhibiting the reader from being fully engaged with the story. Even though the events of his life seems thrilling at face value, he is unable to perform the essential alchemy of transmuting that excitement to the page, of making the story realer than life, of enabling the reader to share in his adventures as he lived them. He seems to have been throttled by an inner critic that he was unable to silence long enough to write freely. His constant awareness of himself as a writer and his driving desire to attain greatness, are, ironically, the things that prevented him from ever being really great.
This review is an excerpt from a longer review on my blog, Around the World in 2000 Books
Frisbie is concerned at all times with being a Writer (and a Great Writer at that), and it imposes a certain distance between himself and his subjects that also serves to keep the reader at arm's length. The prose can be too careful, too precise, slowing the pace of the story and inhibiting the reader from being fully engaged with the story. Even though the events of his life seems thrilling at face value, he is unable to perform the essential alchemy of transmuting that excitement to the page, of making the story realer than life, of enabling the reader to share in his adventures as he lived them. He seems to have been throttled by an inner critic that he was unable to silence long enough to write freely. His constant awareness of himself as a writer and his driving desire to attain greatness, are, ironically, the things that prevented him from ever being really great.
This review is an excerpt from a longer review on my blog, Around the World in 2000 Books
April 30, 2021
After reading an island to oneself by Tom Neale I heard about the author frisbie and got this book. The first half of the book where he talked a lot about his wife to be 'desire' I found to be entertaining enough but as other reviewers have alluded to, the real nuts and bolts of the book come when he comes to live on suwarrow atol.
The book made me chortle at times, other times was very sad and then during the end I was in suspense for a good half hours reading. If your interested in South seas island life or true life survival stories then I think you'll enjoy it.
The book made me chortle at times, other times was very sad and then during the end I was in suspense for a good half hours reading. If your interested in South seas island life or true life survival stories then I think you'll enjoy it.
June 7, 2018
There is much wrong with this book. But there is much, much more that makes it special. Consisting of two parts, it first tells the tale of Robert Dean Frisbie's courtship and life with his Polynesian wife on the island of Puka Puka. The seemingly melodramatic title of the book is a pun on the name of his wife, Desire. The second half of the book describes how he and his four children took to one of the most remote spots in the world, Suvarrow Island in the Cook Islands, and there managed to survive a severe hurricane that obliterated 90 percent of the atoll.
What is good and unique about this work is how Frisbie, who has come to be regarded as a legend among chroniclers of the South Seas, integrated himself so closely into the world and society of the people of Puka Puka. He never "went native," and strongly advised against anyone ever doing so, but he lived and made a family in as close a proximity to the ways of Puka Pukans as is possible to imagine for any foreigner. And when he shifts his locale to Suvarrow, his descriptions of his family ties and their struggle to survive the worst that nature can through against them makes for both moving and gripping reading.
Against these attributes, the failures of the book seem relatively insignificant. Yes, Ropita, the best that the Puka Pukans could do to approximate the pronunciation of his first name, Robert, is prone to employ purple prose. And he sometimes gets lost in his own prose. It is easy to see why he never became a successful novelist. His worst fault in The Island of Desire is the lengthy passages devoted to Captain Prospect, who Frisbie undoubtedly thought would serve as a colorful old coot of sorts but who quickly becomes tiresome and one-dimensional. All these drawbacks, however, are washed away in the detailed and exciting chapter on the Frisbies' encounter and survival of the hurricane. Many times, only seconds separated them from life and death. This part of the story is harrowing and exciting. It exceeds in its descriptiveness, in fact, Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall's fictional portrayal of a cyclone dismembering a South Seas island in their 1936 novel, The Hurricane. Hall was a friend and supporter of Frisbie's. Such an irony that Frisbie lived to experience what Nordhoff and Hall could only imagine some years earlier.
Robert Frisbie was not an immature man, although his seemingly careless ways and risky decisions may make it seem that way to contemporary readers. But the truth was that Frisbie was a nineteenth-century man living in the middle of the twentieth-century. He longed to make life more than mere existence. He wanted to capture meaning in it. The Island of Desire served that goal. For although its readership has always remained small; it has remained consistent. Frisbie will still be read with the same appreciation 100 or 200 years from now, while more contemporaries, much more popular at the time, fade into oblivion. I suppose that, then, is about as meaningful as it gets.
What is good and unique about this work is how Frisbie, who has come to be regarded as a legend among chroniclers of the South Seas, integrated himself so closely into the world and society of the people of Puka Puka. He never "went native," and strongly advised against anyone ever doing so, but he lived and made a family in as close a proximity to the ways of Puka Pukans as is possible to imagine for any foreigner. And when he shifts his locale to Suvarrow, his descriptions of his family ties and their struggle to survive the worst that nature can through against them makes for both moving and gripping reading.
Against these attributes, the failures of the book seem relatively insignificant. Yes, Ropita, the best that the Puka Pukans could do to approximate the pronunciation of his first name, Robert, is prone to employ purple prose. And he sometimes gets lost in his own prose. It is easy to see why he never became a successful novelist. His worst fault in The Island of Desire is the lengthy passages devoted to Captain Prospect, who Frisbie undoubtedly thought would serve as a colorful old coot of sorts but who quickly becomes tiresome and one-dimensional. All these drawbacks, however, are washed away in the detailed and exciting chapter on the Frisbies' encounter and survival of the hurricane. Many times, only seconds separated them from life and death. This part of the story is harrowing and exciting. It exceeds in its descriptiveness, in fact, Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall's fictional portrayal of a cyclone dismembering a South Seas island in their 1936 novel, The Hurricane. Hall was a friend and supporter of Frisbie's. Such an irony that Frisbie lived to experience what Nordhoff and Hall could only imagine some years earlier.
Robert Frisbie was not an immature man, although his seemingly careless ways and risky decisions may make it seem that way to contemporary readers. But the truth was that Frisbie was a nineteenth-century man living in the middle of the twentieth-century. He longed to make life more than mere existence. He wanted to capture meaning in it. The Island of Desire served that goal. For although its readership has always remained small; it has remained consistent. Frisbie will still be read with the same appreciation 100 or 200 years from now, while more contemporaries, much more popular at the time, fade into oblivion. I suppose that, then, is about as meaningful as it gets.
September 19, 2022
I read An island to oneself by Tom Neale and decide to read this. Good book esp. The 2nd half. Now to reading one of Grisbee daughter's book "Miss Ulysses from Puka Puka", Florence (Johnny) Frisbee.
January 17, 2024
After reading Tom Neale’s excellent ”An island to oneself” I noted for myself that someday I have to read this Frisbie’s book. Well I finally finished it and somehow it took me quite a while to finish it. There was something the way it was written that I could read it only in small doses.
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May 12, 2024Wat Robert Dean Frisbie schreef, is erg complex. Er moet op de juiste manier mee worden omgegaan. De manier waarop 'Benediction Books' deze uitgave presenteerde, voldoet alvast niet. Zelfs proeflezen werd blijkbaar overbodig geacht.
November 24, 2025
Tom Neale brought me here. After reading his book "An Island to Oneself" this was the next logical step. This was a good book but, not near as good as Neal's book. Nevertheless, it was a good read and I enjoyed visiting the southern Pacific through the pages that Frisbie had penned.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews