Back to Reviews By Title - T

The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest – Travel Tales of the South Pacific, Graeme Lay
Awa Press
Reviewed by Hal Williams (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)

The South Pacific has cast its spell over countless travellers over the years, from the mutineers of The Bounty to artist Paul Gauguin and Moby Dick author Herman Melville.

Another, more recent, visitor to the sun-drenched archipelagos and lagoons was celebrated travel writer Paul Theroux, whose hefty tome The Happy Isles of Oceania spent many of its pages debunking any notion of happiness.

Theroux is a fine writer and an intrepid traveller, so – as one who has only visited the South Pacific aboard a trusty armchair – his revelations came as a major disappointment to me. Where was the magic, the beauty? In place of the colourful sea dogs and charlatans I had envisioned, Theroux met missionaries and drunks and wastrels, and seemed to despise much of his time there.

Admittedly, he wasn't in the brightest frame of mind – his marriage had just broken up, and he was worried he had cancer – but Theroux took away some of my island wanderlust with his dour words.

The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest is in many ways the antithesis of Theroux's assessment of island life. Graeme Lay – a Taranaki native who grew up "in a small town on the rocky, windswept Taranaki coast" – visits the gems of the earth's largest ocean and sees, lives, appreciates and eloquently shares their beauty.

So all aboard for the Cook Islands, Samoa, Tonga, Niue, the Marquesas, the Society Islands, the Leeward Islands, Tahiti and Tahiti Iti – the magic has been factored back in. Lay is a witty, charming writer who likes a drink, an adventure and a good nutter to interview.

Educational, instructive, engrossing, transporting – these are the qualities readers seek in a travel book. Lay delivers on all levels, and adds a little something extra, because he knows these islands; this isn't the account of a one-off visit for the sake of a book.

My only criticism is his unfortunate penchant for attempting to convey accents in direct speech – all the Germans say things like "Zis iss goot", while his dismal attempt at a Brummie accent for the drunken Rob, encountered in Tonga, should attract some kind of corporal punishment. For the rest, this little book is sublime – and beautifully designed, with fold-out bookmarks front and back. Great stuff.