Fiction Addict

Genre: Historical, Adventure

Publisher: Thomas Dunne Books

Publication date: February 17, 2009

Reviewed by Jeremy Taylor

John Boyne, who received international attention following the success of the movie based on his 2006 novel The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, turns in another excellent historical novel with Mutiny, a retelling of the infamous events onboard the HMS Bounty.

In December 1787, 14-year-old John Turnstile is caught stealing in a Portsmouth market.  Facing prison time, he eagerly accepts the offer made him by his generous victim, opting to escape not only jail but a horribly abusive living situation by serving as the captain’s boy onboard the Bounty, bound for the West Indies by way of the island paradise of Tahiti on a botanical mission. Once the voyage is underway, Turnstile discovers quickly that life at sea is no picnic as he braves the elements, observes ship politics, endures mistreatment by some of the crew, and undergoes a brutal line-crossing ceremony at the equator.

When the ship reaches Tahiti, the doomed mission’s clock begins to wind down as tensions between Captain William Bligh and Lieutenant Fletcher Christian escalate, finally resulting in mutiny. Bligh and his sympathizers, including Turnstile, are set adrift in a tiny open launch to attempt the miraculous: find their way back to England with no food, no water, and no navigational instruments besides a compass.

Fictional accounts of the Bounty story are nothing new, yet Boyne’s stands out. His skill in narrating the book from the first-person perspective of young Turnstile, his treatment of Captain Bligh as a flawed but deeply honorable man wronged by his treacherous crew, his wonderful descriptions of exotic settings, and his imaginative depictions of real-life events combine to set this book above its peers.

The book does contain a fair amount of strong language—though most of the offensive stuff is cleverly couched in eighteenth-century vernacular—and some inexplicit sexuality, but the objectionable content merely underscores the authenticity of the narrative. The story is formulaic at times, which is perhaps unsurprising given the fact that this is the kind of real-life adventure on which fiction formulas are based. The story goes fast and seems much shorter than its nearly 400 pages. The bottom line: adventure lovers will be swept away by Boyne’s Mutiny.

Review copy provided by Thomas Dunne Books.