by Arabella Edge ~
Like The Lord of the Flies, to which it will inevitably be compared, this fiction debut about the 1629 wreck of the Batavia off the coast of Australia suggests that Robinson Crusoe was lucky to be marooned alone. In the mid-1600s, the Dutch East India Company sponsored a fleet of merchant ships sailing for the Dutch colonies (today's Indonesia). The fleet's flagship, the Batavia, was carrying "precious artifacts to trade with plump sultans of Mogul courts" when it struck a reef. The narrator of this fictionalized version of the well-known story is Jeronimus Cornelisz, a 30-year-old apothecary forced to flee Amsterdam after discovery of his participation in "Secret pagan rites." After the passengers are offloaded to a barren island, the Commandeur (the company's chief representative) and the skipper sail off in the one usable lifeboat to seek rescue. In their absence, Cornelisz, who believes himself fated to "receive fortunes and be elected an emperor among men," and whose hysterical inability to leave the foundering ship until several days have elapsed is mistaken for chivalry, becomes leader. Before long, he exploits the survivors' trust and establishes a reign of terror. The present-tense, first-person narrative places the reader squarely inside Cornelisz's twisted mind; obtuse and self-absorbed, he is increasingly unreliable and deranged. Suspense lies in guessing at how long Cornelisz will last and how far he will go with bloodshed and debauchery.