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Stan's Leap
What would you do if you found yourself stranded in Paradise? Newlyweds Jenny and Stan are eager to travel before they begin building their family. After seeing an intriguing ad in a travel magazine, Jenny arranges a vacation to a remote Pacific island. The advertisement promises a completely authentic Polynesian experience. Despite an arduous journey to reach their paradise, they are excited to immerse themselves in the history, adventure, and culture of the Polynesian islands as they were before contact with the western world. Led by the zealous Kimo and his beautiful partner Nani, Henderson Island first appears as idyllic as hoped. The island's natural environment promises to provide for all their needs without modern materials and technology. Several days after arriving, however, an unusual storm disrupts their routine. And when the weekly flight back to civilization fails to arrive, tempers flare and deep rifts among the guests are formed. Day after day passes with no sign of life beyond Henderson Island's shores. As days extend into weeks and months, Jenny, Stan and the other vacationers are left searching for explanations, rescue, and finally a new reality.
392 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 16, 2010
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
As I've demonstrated here over the years, the quality of self-published material these days can vary from nearly professional to barely readable, but one thing that most of them have in common is that they rarely take chances when it comes to theme and genre, with most self-published books I've now been sent confining themselves to such traditional areas as personal memoir, legal thrillers and the like. And that's what made Stan's Leap by Tom Duerig such a delightful surprise, is that it precisely does push its storyline in stranger directions than you usually see in self-published literature; partly a character study, partly a reality-based speculative tale, partly an ode to sailing and partly a riff on such classics as Mutiny on the Bounty and Lord of the Flies, it tells the story of a group of spoiled upper-class Westerners who have all recently decided to take a "back to nature" vacation on a secluded South Pacific island a hundred miles east of Pitcairn (where the HMS Bounty crew settled after their mutiny), home of a "resort" of sorts designed to deliver an authentic pre-industrial villager experience, free not only of modern amenities but even such basics as electricity and indoor plumbing. But after spying a distant anomaly that may have been a natural disaster or perhaps a nuclear explosion (which is part of what fuels this storyline's events, them never quite knowing which of these it was), our characters find themselves essentially abandoned and clueless about the fate of the outside world, first for weeks and then eventually for years; and this is where the Lord of the Flies homage starts kicking in, as the "villagers" eventually revert back into an actual tribal village structure, cruelly controlled by the PTSD-suffering Luddite former soldier who had originally been hired to run the survivalist resort in the first place.
Now, for sure the book has its problems -- much of it is too derivative of the books already mentioned, for example, plus several of the characters are too broadly drawn, plus I never quite understood the point of creating a Richard-Branson-type eccentric billionaire who is the island's supposed owner but then is barely ever mentioned again, especially in that this detail makes the prospect much less realistic that the resort would lack even such basic necessities as a single boat or radio, given how liable to lawsuits that would make a Branson-type figure. (Better maybe to make the crazy Luddite ex-soldier the resort's founder, who didn't quite think out the full legal ramifications before starting to accept paying customers.) But that said, if nothing else, the book at least gets a decent score just for the audacity of its ambition, with the story eventually spanning a twenty-year period and becoming a family drama by the end; and on top of that, I found the technical and historical details regarding sailing and the South Pacific to be more interesting than tedious, and especially enjoyed the ending which managed to be not only surprising and ironic but highly plausible as well. As with most self-published books, it's not for those who demand perfection in their literature, but it's certainly better than average for its type and a highly readable page-turner, a novel that can easily compete with most other beach-and-airport titles out there. It comes strongly recommended for those specifically looking for such a thing.
Out of 10: 8.1
As I've demonstrated here over the years, the quality of self-published material these days can vary from nearly professional to barely readable, but one thing that most of them have in common is that they rarely take chances when it comes to theme and genre, with most self-published books I've now been sent confining themselves to such traditional areas as personal memoir, legal thrillers and the like. And that's what made Stan's Leap by Tom Duerig such a delightful surprise, is that it precisely does push its storyline in stranger directions than you usually see in self-published literature; partly a character study, partly a reality-based speculative tale, partly an ode to sailing and partly a riff on such classics as Mutiny on the Bounty and Lord of the Flies, it tells the story of a group of spoiled upper-class Westerners who have all recently decided to take a "back to nature" vacation on a secluded South Pacific island a hundred miles east of Pitcairn (where the HMS Bounty crew settled after their mutiny), home of a "resort" of sorts designed to deliver an authentic pre-industrial villager experience, free not only of modern amenities but even such basics as electricity and indoor plumbing. But after spying a distant anomaly that may have been a natural disaster or perhaps a nuclear explosion (which is part of what fuels this storyline's events, them never quite knowing which of these it was), our characters find themselves essentially abandoned and clueless about the fate of the outside world, first for weeks and then eventually for years; and this is where the Lord of the Flies homage starts kicking in, as the "villagers" eventually revert back into an actual tribal village structure, cruelly controlled by the PTSD-suffering Luddite former soldier who had originally been hired to run the survivalist resort in the first place.
Now, for sure the book has its problems -- much of it is too derivative of the books already mentioned, for example, plus several of the characters are too broadly drawn, plus I never quite understood the point of creating a Richard-Branson-type eccentric billionaire who is the island's supposed owner but then is barely ever mentioned again, especially in that this detail makes the prospect much less realistic that the resort would lack even such basic necessities as a single boat or radio, given how liable to lawsuits that would make a Branson-type figure. (Better maybe to make the crazy Luddite ex-soldier the resort's founder, who didn't quite think out the full legal ramifications before starting to accept paying customers.) But that said, if nothing else, the book at least gets a decent score just for the audacity of its ambition, with the story eventually spanning a twenty-year period and becoming a family drama by the end; and on top of that, I found the technical and historical details regarding sailing and the South Pacific to be more interesting than tedious, and especially enjoyed the ending which managed to be not only surprising and ironic but highly plausible as well. As with most self-published books, it's not for those who demand perfection in their literature, but it's certainly better than average for its type and a highly readable page-turner, a novel that can easily compete with most other beach-and-airport titles out there. It comes strongly recommended for those specifically looking for such a thing.
Out of 10: 8.1
September 3, 2010
I am so glad I read this book, can I say awesome? It is like a cross between the movie Beach, the shows Lost and Survivors. The story had a lot of ups and downs, happy times and sad times. Deaths and births. This story is about a group of people stranded on an island after they sign up for a trip to a resort on Henderson Island.The premise of the resort is to live like the ancient Polynesians and make the best of life that they can with no tools, electronics or any modern conveniences. Some of the people have hopes of being rescued and others who love the life they have found on the island. Henderson Island is not too far from Pitcairn Island which was the island in Mutiny on the Bounty. Relationships are broken and relationships are formed. The people on this island have to learn how to live with the basics, fish in the ocean, gather fruits and other edibles. Clothing is at a minimum so most of the time the people are naked as the day they were born. The story is in three parts, the first is the arrival of the people to the island, the second part is after they have been on the island for many years and the last part is told by a detective who is doing an investigation in Hawaii. Like I said, I loved this fast paced interesting novel. A great mystery and adventure story!!
July 27, 2012
This was a really unusual book. It can't be easily categorized into a genre. It was a mixture of survival, adventure, nautical, relationships, mystery, and many others. It also switched POV in several different places. It had elements of "Lord of the Flies", "Fantasy Island", and "Lost". There was so much in it that it could easily have been written as a trilogy.
February 8, 2011
review to follow
February 5, 2012
Started a little rough, but quickly smoothed out. Story told from three perspectives that really works. Very enjoyable read, looking forward to the author's next book.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews