The Pacific Room by Michael Fitzgerald
Transit Lounge, 2017. ISBN 9780995359550
(Age: Senior secondary - Adult) Recommended. The famous Italian painter
Girolamo Nerli travelled to Samoa in 1892 to paint a portrait of the
author of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, hoping to capture an apprehension
of a state of mind that was 'not truly one but truly two'. The
present day researcher Lewis Wakefield travels to Samoa to find out
about the life of the author depicted in the painting - Robert Louis
Stevenson, known as Tusitala, the teller of tales. Wakefield is one
of twin brothers, his brother now dead, and is medicating for
bipolar disorder. He is intrigued by the relationship Stevenson had
with his Somoan servant Sosimo, and with the Somoan people who came
to build a road to Stevenson's house, called the Road of the Loving
Heart. In Samoa, Wakefield meets beautiful women who he discovers to
be fa'afafine - between two genders 'in the manner of woman'. One of
the fa'afafine, Teuila, a descendant of Sosimo, prepares to attend
the wedding of her lover Henry to another.
This idea of dualities is an undercurrent throughout the novel, and
we come to understand that beautiful lush Somoa may not be a place
so much as a state of mind. And it is probably this that Stevenson
felt so comfortable with; Somoa was sustenance for his inspiration
as well as for his suffering health.
The novel is not biography but a shifting kaleidoscope of
impressions of people, images and place, dream-like in quality,
drawing us into a different experience that is at the heart of Samoa
- another kind of Pacific Room, not an archive but a blending of
sensations and memories. As readers, we come to experience something
of the magic of Samoa as well.
Helen Eddy