Customer Reviews

Mutiny: A Novel of the Bounty

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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John Boyne - isn't he the one that wrote....? Yes Boyne is the author of the hugely successful historical fiction bestseller, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

Boyne turns his talents into a re-telling of the ill fated 1789 voyage of The Bounty to harvest breadfruit on what is now known as the island of Tahiti. The breadfruit was destined to feed slaves in Jamaica. After a long and difficult voyage, many men questioned William Bligh's leadership and a mutiny occurred. Bligh and 19 loyal men were turned out into a small launch and left to live or die. Bligh managed to guide them to land over the course of 48 days. Most of them did survive. Many books have been written, recounting this event.

Boyne's novel, although faithful to historical fact, is character driven. It is told from the viewpoint of 14 yr. old John Jacob Turnstile. Turnstile is given a choice - serve his gaol sentence for thievery or sign on as the captain's servant boy on the Bounty. The ship is his choice. Having never sailed before, we are treated to seeing the vessel, the traditions, the crew, Bligh himself and the fate of The Bounty's historic voyage through the curious eyes of "Turnip", as he is known to the crew. Turnstile is a wonderfully engaging character. His dialogue is witty, sharp and humorous. He is wise beyond his years in certain ways and yet naive in other matters. His documentation of the ship's crew, their personalities and what may have led to the mutiny are a fresh look at a known story. Knowing the history of the Bounty did in no way detract from the reading of Boyne's book. Boyne is a consummate story teller and The Mutiny on the Bounty is a heck of a tale. Highly recommended.

This is the 1st and perhaps only book on the HMS Bounty that i've read and, therefore, can not say how it stacks up to others like it, but let me tell you, this book was fantastic. This review will be brief so that any one who does read it will have a fresh go of it.

Basically, an urchin boy (John Jacob Turnstile) is caught pick-pocketing a pocket watch from a gentleman by the name of Mr. Zela...the boy gets caught, in leu of a prison sentence of a year he is "sentenced" to the "high-seas" aboard the HMS Bounty as the Captain's Servant...a lot of trials and trivulations...native love...mutany...more suffering...rescue...and a little finality.

I have read just about anything I could find about the Bounty story and I found this book to be pretty entertaining. It's a novel, of course, and Boyne takes the liberty of making Bligh out to be an extremely sympathetic character and Fletcher Christian into a dilattante near-fop. I think both characterizations are off the mark but it's Boyne's book after all.

He cleverly puts the teenage pickpocket, John Jacob Turnstile, on the boat as Bligh's servant in place of the real-life John Smith who was Bligh's servant. And since the servant is usually in Bligh's cabin or hovering nearby, Turnstile is able to pick up on many conversations between Bligh and his officers, particularly with Christian.

However, I think Boyne made a couple of big errors in the book. Later, when Turnstile, Bligh and 16 others are fighting for survival in the lifeboat after the mutiny, Turnstile and another sailor talk about how much they hated the ship's clerk, Mr. Samuel, and how they found it typical of the man that he'd joined Christian's mutineers. But Samuel wasn't a mutineer, he was with Bligh in the lifeboat and is mentioned several times in the lifeboat story up to that point. So how in the world did Boyne put that conversation in the book and state that Samuel was a mutineer?

Also, at the very end of the book Turnstile has just gone to Bligh's funeral in 1817 and meets his mysterious benefactor from the beginning of the story. But Turnstile never mentions anywhere at the end of the book that he had any knowledge of what happened to Christian and the other mutineers who hadn't been caught. I think that's preposterous. The surviving mutineer, John Adams, and the descendants of the Bounty mutineers were found on Pitcairn Island several years before Bligh's death and that discovery was the talk of all England. It's just impossible that Turnstile, who by that point of the story has had a long naval career, would not have heard about Pitcairn. It should've been mentioned and it is a huge omission.

Boyne also tones down the real conflict between Bligh and the ship's master, John Fryer. Fryer is portrayed very sympathetically but in reality Bligh and Fryer despised each other on the Bounty, in the lifeboat and after they returned to England. Some of that is used in the book but not enough, probably in the attempt to humanize Bligh. Lastly, Boyne doesn't even mention the big disputes that arose after the Bounty stopped for supplies and repairs at Tasmania (Van Dieman's Land as it was called back then). Perhaps he left it out of the story to keep the book to the length he wanted but some of the seeds of mutiny were sowed there and I think it could've been included.

Nonetheless, you'll like the book whether you're a Bounty historian or not.

I was lucky to come across this in the library, not having heard of the title or the author. Being retired, I read 2-3 books a week...and this one stands out as one of the "gems".

Having developed an interest in the Bounty story after sailing on the replica and reading the history and some of Bligh's log, I hesitated to read a fictionalized version -- the original story is interesting enough. However, I finally gave it a try.
Boyne's young narrator is really well characterized; he has a distinctive viewpoint and voice which come through clearly. His writing style changes a little through the story, as the character matures. We see a saucy street urchin begin to be a man as he finds his way through his strange new life aboard ship. The character is haunted by events in his not-too-distant past and this affects him deeply, but by the end of the story he has grown up enough to find a way to deal with it, and upon returning to his home in Portsmouth he is at last able to put the demons behind him and look forward to his future.
Captain Bligh is also strongly characterized, and I was clearly able to picture Anthony Hopkins's Bligh from the 1984 film reciting much of the dialogue. I suspect Boyne studied that movie. Boyne paints a much more sympathetic view of Bligh than is common, as others have noted. It is true that he was considered a hero upon his initial return to England -- something that is lost in modern cliché "Captain Bligh" references -- it was only later on as the mutineers' story was told and a couple of their families embarked on a campaign to discredit him, that Bligh fell out of favour. However, it was well known that he had an irascible, irrational temper and was quite foul-mouthed, and that his relationships with the crew were antagonistic from early on in the voyage. Boyne's Bligh is much, much nicer and more reasonable than is likely true. He lists Richard Hough's "Captain Bligh and Mr Christian" in his bibliography, so we must conclude he purposely chose to create a different version of the man.
(He also gives Bligh a son, whom the captain mentions now and then -- prompting his sometimes fatherly inclinations toward young Turnstile -- when in fact Bligh had six daughters, four or five at the time of the story.)
I didn't find Fletcher Christian well characterized. The narrator dislikes him greatly, and frequently mentions what a dandy he is, but we really don't see enough of Christian to convince a reader of this, or that he is the terrible "villain of the piece" that Boyne makes him. He and Bligh began the voyage as good friends who had sailed together before, and he was also very much liked by the rest of the crew, neither of which really comes through here. The real Christian was just as complicated a person as Bligh, and I thought more could have been done with the character here.
Boyne sticks pretty well to the story. It's been a while since I read the actual history, so I won't nitpick over details I'm unsure of, but he does present the mutiny as a plan that had already taken shape at Tahiti, rather than the more spur-of-the-moment thing that it may have been (Fletcher Christian was planning to desert; one of the midshipmen convinced him to seize the ship instead and suggested the discontented crew would follow). The actual mutiny scene struck me as a bit anticlimactic; it could have been a lot longer and more intense given all that went on, but perhaps the author was concerned about length by this point.
I'm not sure Boyne has done a whole lot of sailing, and there are some references that will make keen Age of Sail historians go "hmm..." or "that doesn't sound quite right" or "they didn't do things that way". There are references to "captaincy papers", a "navy constitution", and "shifts" rather than watches; and the Bounty wasn't rated as a frigate. With the boat headed "northwest by west northwest" I wondered if I should be amused at the young narrator's attempt to describe nautical things, but given his place in life at the end of the story, I think it's rather the author who doesn't know his compass points.
And if we're going to nitpick, the biggest problem with authenticity is the amount of anachronistic language in the story. Much of Boyne's colloquial language is at least 50 years too early, and a fair amount is more like 100 years. There are references to the polka and foxtrot, broughams, protein and vitamins; words like barf, trauma, bankroll and lunch didn't come into use until well after 1789. To be really authentic in a historical novel, you need to find ways to convey the same ideas with words that were in use at the time. Etymology Online is a quick and easy reference, and I had fun playing spot-the-wrong-word.
All that said, I did find the story absorbing and entertaining. There have been many retellings of the Bounty mutiny and there will probably be many more. If Boyne is really not familiar with the Age of Sail, he's done a pretty good job of setting a story in the period. This is an enjoyable novel if you are interested in the Bounty story. I can recommend it, and then for the "real" account based on logbooks and court-martial transcripts, I recommend Richard Hough's "Captain Bligh and Mr Christian".
As a pretty picky reader I don't often give five stars, and I would like to give this a 3.5.

From the back cover:
A fourteen-year-old boy, John Jacob Turnstile, has got into trouble with the police on one too many occasions and is on his way to prison when an offer is put to him - a ship has been refitted over the last few months and is about to set sail with an important mission. The boy who was expected to serve as the captain's personal valet has been injured and a replacement must be found immediately. The deal is struck and Turnstile finds himself on board, meeting the captain, just as the ship sets sail. The ship is HMS Bounty: the captain is William Bligh, and their destination is Tahiti. Mutiny on the Bounty is the first novel to explore all the events relating to the Bounty's voyage, from their long journey across the ocean to their adventures on the island of Tahiti and the subsequent forty-eight-day expedition towards Timor. A vivid recreation of the famous mutiny, the story is packed with humour, high drama and historical detail, while presenting a very different portrait of Captain Bligh and Mr Christian than has ever been shown before.

Review:
The minute I heard about this book I knew I had to read it. I absolutely loved The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and was looking forward to reading more by John Boyne. Also, I have an interest in this period in history - I think it has to do with all the time I spent as a child at the Maritime Museum here in Fremantle, Western Australia. As a child, the stories of the seafaring men and women who founded our colony captured my imagination, and I've always had an interest in stories from this time. So, these two things together pushed this book high up my TBR list.

I was not disappointed. This one kept me awake and reading in bed long after a mother of a 12 month old should go to sleep at night. I was bleary-eyed for the few days it took me to finish reading this story. The narrator, Turnstile, is adorable - a street wise, savvy boy who despite suffering greatly in England has maintained a sense of innocence, and the story told through his eyes is humorous, heartbreaking and human.

The story of the mutiny on the Bounty has had many screen adaptions (none of which I've seen, and actually, after reading this book I don't think I'll ever watch one, I can't imagine it could compare. Unless they cast Johnny Depp in a new adaption and then I might make an exception). From what I can tell, these all seem to paint Captain Bligh as a cruel, tyrannical man the men were trying to escape from. However, historical records indicate that he was in fact far less tyrannical than his peers, and in this version the mutiny has its roots in the men finding paradise and never wanting to leave. It is an explanation that is more modern in its sentiments and something I can relate to. After spending some time on a tropical island paradise a few years ago, I myself would have risked being hanged rather than going back to England in 1789.

Everything about this book is amazing - the details and facts of the story themselves are so interesting and all the more incredible because they are true, and they are told in a way that had me completely absorbed. I highly recommend this book.

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.