Getting Stoned with Savages
2 journalers for this copy...
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Welcome to BookCrossing, a unique community of book lovers, sharing their libraries with the world. This book is now yours to read, enjoy, keep or pass on to another reader. The BookCrossing ID, which you entered in the "Enter a BCID" box on the website, is unique to this copy of this book. If you make a journal entry (either anonymously, or as a BookCrossing member) all previous readers of this actual book will be notified by email, and can follow the book as it travels. BookCrossing is free to join, completely confidential (you are known only by your screen name and no one is ever given your e-mail address) and a heck of a lot of fun. Be on the lookout for other books left in the "Wild"!
I really enjoy J. Maarten Troost's writing. This is the second book I read by him after The Sex Lives of Cannibals and I have the third still waiting for me on my unread bookshelf.
After having lived for two years on Kiribati where his wife worked for a development agency and he was trying to write an epic novel, they returned to Washington DC where he worked as a consultant with the World Bank apparently dealing with the imposter syndrome and existential angst. His wish to return to the South Pacific coincides with him being laid off and his wife Sylvia's wish to have a baby where the village would help to raise it. Sylvia lands a job again with the same agency in Fiji, but her appointment is delayed due to a recent coup. At the end her position is temporarily placed in Port Vila, Vanuatu. The first part of the book is about Vanuatu, an eerie post-colonial place with huge centipedes, cannibals and the best kava (local drug) in the world. The baby is started there but Fiji still offers better facilities for check-ups and delivery, so they relocate to Suva, Fiji. It has calmed down a bit after the coup but there are still tensions especially affecting the large Indo-Fijian population. Told in his unique, hilarious and self-deprecating, it's a charming account of adventures and misadventures in this remote place of the world.
After having lived for two years on Kiribati where his wife worked for a development agency and he was trying to write an epic novel, they returned to Washington DC where he worked as a consultant with the World Bank apparently dealing with the imposter syndrome and existential angst. His wish to return to the South Pacific coincides with him being laid off and his wife Sylvia's wish to have a baby where the village would help to raise it. Sylvia lands a job again with the same agency in Fiji, but her appointment is delayed due to a recent coup. At the end her position is temporarily placed in Port Vila, Vanuatu. The first part of the book is about Vanuatu, an eerie post-colonial place with huge centipedes, cannibals and the best kava (local drug) in the world. The baby is started there but Fiji still offers better facilities for check-ups and delivery, so they relocate to Suva, Fiji. It has calmed down a bit after the coup but there are still tensions especially affecting the large Indo-Fijian population. Told in his unique, hilarious and self-deprecating, it's a charming account of adventures and misadventures in this remote place of the world.
Posted today from Latvia.
This looks hilarious! I chose it from a VBB by its first line: "I have been called many things in my life, but if there has been one constant, one barb, one arrow flung my way time after time, it is the accusation that I am, in essence, nothing more than an escapist." Thanks for sending it my way.
