Amazon.com: White Shadows in the South Seas (The Bestsellers of 1920) (9780742613546): Frederick O'Brien: Books

Product Description

Originally published in 1919. This volume from the Cornell University Library's print collections was scanned on an APT BookScan and converted to JPG 2000 format by Kirtas Technologies. All titles scanned cover to cover and pages may include marks notations and other marginalia present in the original volume. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Library Binding
Publisher: Classic Books (May 2000)
ISBN-10: 0742613542
ISBN-13: 978-0742613546
Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)

Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #8,009,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Purple Prose Majesty, January 29, 2005

By	Smallchief - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (VINE VOICE)

This review is from: White Shadows in the South Seas (Resnick Library of Worldwide Adventure) (Hardcover)

Was there ever a more romantic title than "White Shadows in the South Seas?" The book sold like hotcakes in the early 1920s and a movie of it won an Oscar in 1928. I suspect, however, that a lot of the popularity of the book was due to photographs of undraped Polynesian women and hints of sexual delights. One of the female characters is named "Vanquished Often." This is pretty racy for 1921, the stuff that escapist dreams were made of after the horrors of World War I.

Well, unfortunately, "White Shadows" while not a bad book is not a very good book either. It's about a visit the author made to the remote Marquesas Islands of the South Pacific. He meets a lot of bizarre characters and tells us of them at length -- and I have a feeling he told a few "stretchers" as Huck Finn would say. There's plenty of colorful descriptions of scenery that is in truth spectacular, and stories of some of the people who have visited the Marquesas, including Herman Melville and Paul Gauguin. O'Brien gives the reader a good dose of history and folklore.

I've had "White Shadows" and its companion volume "Mystic Isles of the South Seas" on my bookshelf for about 40 years. The titles are too evocative and the books too romantic to throw away. The photographs are pretty decent too, although not as revealing as some of Marquesan women in "The National Geographic" of the same epoch. So, buy the books and look at the pictures, read a bit of the purple prose, and dream of an Island maid named Vanquished Often.

Smallchief

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