#8. Feature’s The Ocean – Mr Peacock’s Possessions by Lydia Syson (Paperback)

I was in a second-hand bookshop last year, and my friend picked up this book and asked if I'd read it. I hadn't, she recommended it wholeheartedly. I sometimes find historical fiction a bit dull to read, however, the cover captured my attention, my friend recommended it and the blurb on the back cover sounded interesting enough; for £1.00 I wasn’t going to argue!

 

“Oceania, 1879.

 

For two years the Peacocks, a determined family of settlers, have struggled to make a remote volcanic island their home. At last, a ship appears. The six Pacific Islanders on board have travelled over eight hundred miles in search of new horizons.
Hopes are high, until a vulnerable boy vanishes.

In their search for the lost child, settlers and newcomers together uncover far more than they were looking for. The island's secrets force young Lizzie Peacock to question her deepest convictions, and slowly this tiny, fragile community begins to fracture ...”

 

Lydia Syson is known for her young adult fiction which explore less familiar historical events such as the 1871 Paris Commune in “Liberty’s Fire” and Battle of Britain Polish pilots in “That Burning Summer.”  It is said that you should write about what you know, and for her debut adult novel, she has explored the history of her husband’s family, for a remarkable tale built on a solid foundation of facts and real events, showing the lengths a family will go to for survival.

Mr Joseph Peacock has decided to move his family from New Zealand to a remote uninhabited Pacific Island, hundreds of miles away from any other human civilisation. At the start of the novel there are six children, Ada, Albert, Billy, Queenie, Gussy and a baby, Joseph, who is born on the island. Albert is expected to be a big, strong man who can help his father, but instead he is a vulnerable child who fears his father and his temper. Fifteen year-old Lizzie can fulfil many of the demands that Albert can not face, and she appears to do no wrong in her father’s eyes.

“This island will change everything for the family. ... Land. That’s the important things. That’s what a man needs to survive. To take his place in history. To keep his name. The land will be our future. Your future.”

Since moving to the island, exhaustion and hunger has set in. The captain who brought them here has sailed away, promising that he will return in three months. After he leaves, they realise that all the provisions he left them with were rotten and it dawns on them they will never see him again. They will have to rely on foraging and tending the land to grow food, otherwise they will starve to death. This is not the romantic Utopia that Joseph Peacock had dreamt of as he led his family to this small volcanic island. Their adventure is turning into a nightmare as each day passes and the island’s dark secrets are slowly emerging.

As the family’s hope of ever seeing other human life wanes, some Polynesian Islanders arrive to assist with clearing the land and planting food, a commodity now in scarce supply. They have been travelling for over eight hundred miles in search of work and new opportunities and they relish the challenges ahead. Perhaps these outsiders will be the answer to the Peacock’s prayers to finally turn the island into a paradise the family can enjoy.

Lizzie thinks the arrival of the kanakas (native workers) will be an opportunity to start all over again, and their hard work does begin to tame the harsh landscape into something more manageable. Of the new arrivals, Solomona is a teacher and pastor, whilst his brother Kalala dreams that they will one day return home and their family will be proud of their achievements. Kalala, is unsettled by Joseph’s quick temper, and when Albert disappears, a spectacular turn of events takes place to fracture this fragile community, as feelings of mistrust are centred on the newcomers. 

“Lizzie stops trusting herself. She begins to doubt the island. Its noises have not changed but now she is alone in the forest Lizzie hears them freshly. Birds whose unremarkable cries have kept her company on hunting expeditions for nearly two years squawk like frightened children among the fleshy leaves of mouse-hole trees, whose branches meet high above her head. She catches something of Albert’s voice; misrecognition pierces her just below the ribs. The air itself feels violent, as though the island is gathering itself for something. She imagines it breathing, heaving, maybe shifting.”

Lizzie is remarkable character who shares the narrative with Kalala in a portrait of family life, cast adrift to survive this unforgiving landscape. The duel perspective is also combined with a “before and now” narrative, so we embark with the family on their journey to the island and realise that they endured a great deal before even setting foot on the island.

As the search for Albert continues, tension builds both within the family, and in the story. This is a book built on twists and turns and a harrowing conclusion as the horrors and history of the island are finally revealed.

Whilst history leads us to believe that the nineteenth century was this great time of emancipation and abolition of slavery, as with most things, the slave trade just changed its name and relocated somewhere else. Cotton plantations were moved to the Pacific, making the inhabitants around the Oceanic islands vulnerable to exploitation; people were just seen as possessions. This beautifully written novel draws attention to such matters and creates a thought-provoking story on an area of history I was completely unfamiliar with.

Despite this being a novel that deals with complex and hard-hitting issues: patriarchy, family violence, white entitlement, gender roles, faith etc, it is an exquisitely written book. Syson takes you to the island, its lush vegetation, the remarkable wildlife, the sparkling ocean and a myriad of intriguing characters, with a lyrical narrative. The switch between Lizzie’s often third-person narrative of her recounting the story both in the past and present, and the first-person narrative of Kalala is so effective, especially as it means words are not put in his mouth, we hear his voice, how he, as an outsider, views the family, not how they think he views them.

Another interesting aside is the perception that white privileged people are of a higher standing than the natives who come to help, but it becomes clear that it is the Islanders who are better educated than the Peacock children. Solomon and Kalala can read and write and ultimately allow the children to understand that there is a world of opportunity out there, but that the children are not equipped to deal with it.  

I think that this is an exceptionally well written novel and I’m glad it was recommended to me. The pace is set well, neither rushing events or dragging them out, and I really appreciated the details of the island and its wildlife as it transported me right there. As a reader I felt involved with the book; with the characters, the narrative and a time in history I knew nothing about.   

 

Genre: Historical Fiction, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Bildungsroman, Travel

Release Date: 21^st March 2019

Publisher: Zaffre

Pages: 336

 

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