It was more than 10 years ago when I read a few Rose Tremain novels (The Road Home, Restoration, Letter to Sister Benedicta), so when I came across this Islands of Mercy published in 2020, and saw from the blurb that it is partly set in Sarawak, I picked it up hoping for a good read. However, I should perhaps have known better; not entirely unexpectedly, the Chinese, Malays, indigenous tribes, the long houses, the British colonial presence, etc, the local colour in Sarawak seemed to have been just there to be utilised as props to the story; there was little culturally sensitive/informed handling of those topics.
This novel is set in the 1860s, Bath, London, Paris, Ireland as well as Borneo. The protagonist is Jane Adeane, a 6 foot 2 young woman who is a nurse at the start, known as the Angel of the Baths, assisting her father, Sir William Adeane, a well known doctor in Bath. Sir Williams’ colleague is Dr Ross Valentine, in unrequited love with Jane. Ross has a brother, a naturalist called Edmund, who wanders off to Borneo in search of new species, but falling ill, is rescued by a self-styled rajah, called Sir Ralph Savage.
Sir Ralph, a British aristocrat expelled from the East India Company for homosexuality, manages to help the Sultan of Brunei put down an insurrection by an indigenous tribe (‘Dyaks’, in the novel, more usually written in Malay as ‘Dayak’), and although
He believed in the Sixth Commandment. He did not like killing people.
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nevertheless, Sir Ralph lays before the Sultan
“A basket of Dyak heads. […]This slaughter of his ‘enemies, together with sexual favours tailored to his imaginative needs impressed the Sultan sufficiently to bequeath to Sir Ralph a substantial parcel of land in Sarawak, irrigated by the Sadong River
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Sir Ralph builds himself a palace, and takes on Leon, a local Malay man, as his “primary bed companion”, and as he explains to Edmund,
I pay Leon with small pieces of silver. If he stays with me, he will be rich one day. The only condition is that he must be available to me day and night. He is very clever and lovable. And he has the silkiest arse in Borneo.
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Thus does Tremain write, lightly and even blithely disregarding racism, abuse, exploitation, genocide, and many forms of violence and colonising behaviours as seemingly normal and even enviable. Her novel is not one which sets out to deal with such weighty issues; it merely casts these as backdrops to her characters. The novel is extremely orientalist and told entirely through western lenses, and I guess has to be read as some kind of fantasy since it is so far removed from reality.
There are a fair cast of strong women in this novel – along with Jane who is unconventional and bold, we have Clorinda Morrissey who came from a very humble background in Ireland but had a ruby necklace to sell to set up her tearoom in Bath and thus realise a dream; Julietta Ashton, a very beautiful Italian woman living in London with an extremely understanding husband who raises no objection to her endless string of women lovers; Emmeline, Jane’s artist aunt who leads a bohemian lifestyle and has independence in London. The only non-white, non-Western female character in the novel is Tahmina, mother of Leon (Sir Ralph’s “primary bed companion”) in Sarawak but she is a poor thing in comparison with all these glowing, striding, fabulous heroines in Europe, relatively silent, respected but unable to exert much influence, and moreover, portrayed as suffering from a skin disease.
It is not a difficult read, and Tremain is quite a good storyteller in managing to create lively characters and keep the plot moving. However, it is the kind of novel where a lot of details go nowhere and are there just for emotional effect rather than coming full circle later. A lot of side stories are also seemingly unnecessary and directionless – Edmund dies very early on; Ross’ trip to Borneo achieves nothing, Clorinda’s Irish relatives who are unpleasant also add very little to the plot, in fact, there is a lot of extraneous detail and detour which actually aren’t at all necessary or even all that interesting. So while it was no hardship finishing the book, I think this will be my last Tremain novel.
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