About book The Shark God: Encounters With Ghosts And Ancestors In The South Pacific (2006)
Montgomery went in search of magic. Well actually he just wanted to trace his ancestor's footsteps, but then his mission quickly became the unknown and magic once he was in Melanesia. This book, rather than be on comparative religion and travel like I thought it would be, actually read more as a memoir (although to be sure there is religion and travel included).As a young boy, Montgomery discovered journals from his missionary ancestor and the stories contained within fascinated him enough that he wanted to retrace those steps in history. Armed with his savings account and a little bit of knowledge on writing in the travel industry, he flies out to the islands in the Pacific to meet with the locals and see if there is any traditional religion left or if everyone had converted to Christianity. What he found was a surprising mix between the two and a people divided by their beliefs.While Montgomery fully fleshes himself and his beliefs in the book, I couldn't help but feeling that the local people were left more two-dimensional. They all had a personality quirk that set them off but their true description was in their religion and that seemed to be what defined them. Their actual personal lives, hopes, and dreams we never heard much about and so it made it hard to care about their other beliefs. Mongomery at least was interesting in his own thought exploration and it was interesting to see the goals of his travels change as he progressed through the islands.The premise was a good one. He wanted to see what those before him had seen and how the missionaries' work had changed the islands. But then he started wanting to see the magic side and the customs that the native people gave up in favor of Christianity. He puts in a lot of detail, but I do think that it starts to get repetitive and drawn out after awhile. Every person's story seemed the same and I felt like I was reading about the same person over and over again. There were a few standouts; mainly about the missionary Patterson and some of the older stories and I did enjoy those parts of the book. As for the other stories though I would rather have read more about the landscape and less about the people's betel nut habit.An ok book. It has a lot of interesting points from an anthropological standpoint but it presents it in a way that can be quite dry at times. The Shark GodCopyright 2004370 pagesReview by M. Reynard 2014More of my reviews can be found at www.ifithaswords.blogspot.com
The author learned that his great-grandfather was an Anglican missionary in the 1890's in Melanesia. He decides to travel to the Melanesian Islands (Vanuatu and Solomon Islands including Guadalcanal and Malaita) to see the results of the Christianizing of the islands.Is this a travel monologue? Yes. Is this an expose of missionary work? Yes. Has Christendom arrived and still present today in the islands? Yes, as long as you understand that many of the pagan myths remain a part of this Christianity."Melanesian myths were not fictions plucked from ether but expression of lived experience." In much the same was of Moses handing down rules to the Israelites, the edicts of the Melanesian ancestors don't differ much from the rules. In essence, "obey or you will rot in hell, obey or taro will rot in the ground."One of the moving experiences for the author was meeting the Melanesian Brotherhood who are Christians who many of the locals believe have extra power - especially their walking sticks. They are the peacemakers on the islands and much is done through the power of prayer.While in the islands, he wants to know if some of the "old" ways are still around. Yes, he's curious but also he wants to experience what his great-grandfather could have experienced while converting them to Christians. Yes, he found some of the "old" ways and even experienced their rituals. In New Georgia, he was able to breathe on the devil stone which brought heavy rains in the area. Although shark worshipping stopped in the 1970's, he did meet the shark boss and swam with him in the ocean. The shark boss can sit on the floor of the ocean and a shark will swim around him. Yes, the author saw this - at least, he saw a large shadow swimming around the shark boss. I liked the writing style. The author knows how to describe heat very well. "The heat was not like heat at all. It was more like a great weight pressing down from the sky and squeezing you until you oozed fatigue and sweat like honey from a sponge." Well said.
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Nice writing, the guy clearly has talent. He really makes the setting come alive. There's just something about this book that grates on me and I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's that he knows the faults of past writers and explorers (treating local populations like potential museum pieces, delegitimizing their beliefs, you know, the whole colonial approach to non-white non-europeans). Yet, he doesn't seem to miss a chance to write about the mysterious and the "surreal" and the exotic. But maybe what really bothers me is his seeming mission to witness "magic" just so he can ask the questions that prove it's not really magic. How insulting: go into someone's home, push to see rituals that normally aren't shared with strangers just so you can insist there's nothing magical going on at all. I say if you want to write about the religious experience of another community do it, with respect. If you're on a personal mission to spit in the eye of religion in general (he is perfectly honest about his christian ancestors faults) stay home and write a blog maybe. I think this is a brilliant place to write about with fascinating characters but it's let down by whatever the writer has going on in his head with his relationship to religion. In the end, I couldn't be bothered to finish it.
—Linda
