Tales from the Torrid Zone – Alexander Frater
I mentioned in my last entry that I was taking on a rather long book that seemed like it might be a chore to get through. With that in mind, I decided that since it is divided into three parts, I would take a break after each section and squeeze in another book. This was my choice for break number one.
Frater was the son of a Presbyterian minister who was based in the Pacific. He was born in the then New Hebrides islands in 1937, which eventually became the country of Vanuatu. Frater spent his adult life as a travel writer, employed by various British newspapers, magazines, and even the BBC.
This work is built on his explorations of the tropics, mostly in the Pacific. However, it isn’t a collection of the articles he published about those trips. Rather it is a new work that pulls together anecdotes those previous pieces were based on. Because of that, it lacked either a central thread that tied everything together, or hard breaks between each story that made them clearly distinct. It was one of the least rewarding travel books I’ve read, which was a big disappointment. His personality never really shined through, and I found his observations to be far less interesting than in other Pacific travelogues I’ve read. I bet if I had read Frater’s magazine work that was focused on a specific area, I would have enjoyed them a lot more.