An Island To Myself

Book Rating: 4.5 of 5

I think an Island to Myself (Island) is a truely unique story and one well worth reading for anyone interested in Atolls, remote islands or the South Pacific.

An Island to Myself is a ghost written memoir of Tom Neale by Noel Barber. Tom Neale is a unique man who lived on the remote atoll of Suwarrow alone three seperate times for 2 years, 3 years and 10 years. The memoir covers Tom’s first two stays on the Island.

Tom was 50 years old at the start of his first stay on the island. Its pretty amazing that Tom was physically able to do this. It gives me hope for staying very active later in life. The story is pretty much what you’d expect Tom lives solo on the island and chronicals his first two years there in pretty good detail. I found the story surprisingly engaging and oddly exciting.

The highlights (and low lights) of the story for me was when

• Learning what Tom ate and the way he cooked his food. I never knew you could eat a sprouted coconut.
• How Tom killed and buried the islands pigs. It was really interesting to me how this part of the story made me feel. Did Tom see himself as an interloper on the island like the pigs? Did he see them as fellow travellers?
• All the things that Tom needed to survive on the Island. Tom was clearly a great survivalist, but he was still a modern man. He needed so many tools to make his life enjoyable.
• Tom’s addiction to smoking was always interesting. His desperate need for a smoke once he ran out was funny. There he was on his dream island but all he wanted was a smoke.
• Tom’s killing and slaughter of the Sea Turtle was depressing.
• Tom’s interactions with the duck. Treating it as a pet and the deeply resisting slaughtering it for meat… Very strange.
• Tom living on the island with three unexpected cast aways and ones depedance on smoking

It was all very interesting. In truth I wonder how much of the story is true and how much was invented by his ghost writer (Noel Barber) the story is just a little to compelling to be 100% an invention of Neale.

I feel as if Tom Neale was written to be a better person then he was. Later reading on Neale I learned that the Islanders on Rarotonga found him to be rather cranky. Also between leaving the island in 1954 and his return in 1960 Neale was married and had two childern. THIS IS NOT MENTIONED IN THE MEMOIR AT ALL. Which I find completely insane. The man abandonded his wife and children to live alone on the island without much thought! Later he returned to the island a third time for 10 years!

I think what’s great about Island and Tom Neale is the layers to the story and the story behind the story remain super engaging. Was Tom a nice guy? Was he an asshole? Was he a little of both? Was Tom a great survivalist or was just a modern interloper on a remote island consuming all that was there to offer with his advanced tools - just another pig? I strongly recommend this story. The onlly reason I give this a 4.5 out of 5 is you have to do some research to discover some of its layers. If it contained an afterward on Tom Neale covering the less steller parts of his life I would give it a rare 5/5.