James Norman Hall

"Lost Island" by James Norman Hall. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.

Lost Island

Andrew John Kinney

I've reconsidered my rating, and I'll make it 3.7, rounded up. This is a short little book by James Hall, the co-author of the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy (with Charles Nordhoff). I picked it up because it was on the bookshelf at the house where I am staying - it was published in 1944, and it has an interesting take on the war; it cocks a critical eye at the environmental and societal damage done to the small atolls in the Pacific by the establishment of military and naval bases on the islands. I researched Hall a bit and learned that he lived out most of his years after WW1 in Tahiti, so he was intimately familiar with the South Pacific. Some of the sentiments reflected in the book are similar to other contemporary comments by some combatants in WW2, who felt regret at the destruction they were inflicting on the lands they were sent to conquer, and anger that the aggression of Germany and Japan made it necessary. The quality of the writing does not in any way match Hall and Nordhoff's Mutiny on the Bounty, but the story is interesting in its perspective, and as a historical artifact, considering it was written while the war was still under way. Hall clearly had a deep love for his adopted home, and was disturbed by what the war was doing to the region. Little did he know that nuclear testing on Bikini Atoll and other locations was next on the agenda, and it's just as well he didn't.

Lost Island

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