The New World – Andrew Motion's second Treasure Island sequel
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Version 0 of 1. The tide of crossover fiction continues unabated. Popularised for today's audience by JK Rowling and Philip Pullman, its origins lie in a tradition running all the way back to Dickens, Twain and Robert Louis Stevenson. The New World, Andrew Motion's second Treasure Island sequel, isn't being marketed as crossover fiction, but, in spite of one scene of explicit torture, that's what it is. In the first book, 2012's Silver, an ageing Jim Hawkins runs the Hispaniola, a Thameside inn where, much to the irritation of his son Jim Junior, he spends his nights in ancient mariner style, endlessly rambling on about his youthful adventures. Young Jim teams up with Natty, feisty daughter of Long John Silver and his Caribbean wife, who live downriver at the Spyglass Inn, and with a ship and crew provided by the now blind and ancient Silver, and they return to Treasure Island to retrieve the silver still buried there. On arrival, Jim and Natty discover a camp of slaves, brutally oppressed by the crew of their wrecked slave ship, and all under the sadistic rule of the three marooned pirates left behind at the end of Treasure Island. They find the silver, free the slaves and escape, only to be shipwrecked on the coast of Texas, and here is where The New World picks up, exactly where Silver left off. This much is quickly explained in a sort of "previously-on-Lost" prologue, before we are plunged straight back into the action. Darker and more contemplative than Silver, full of big themes such as courage, greed, loyalty and obsession, The New World is still an adventure story first and foremost. Jim and Natty, only survivors of the wreck (this kind of neatness characterises the crossover novel), are immediately captured by Native Americans. During their long ramblings through a semi-mythical American landscape, they encounter three different tribes: one savage, one spiritual, one tragic. The first tribe scalp and slice emotionlessly, wear necklaces of body parts, festoon their teepees with human heads and enjoy the spectacle of prolonged torture. Their chief, the implacable, probably psychopathic Black Cloud, spends most of the book tracking Jim and Natty, who have inexplicably stolen his necklace from around his neck while he lay sleeping. Treasure, ever corrupting, still casts its spell. The second tribe teaches the fugitives to hunt, grind corn, drink mescal and be one with the Great Spirit, while Motion puts the beautiful words of the real Native American leader Chief Joseph into the mouth of the defeated third tribe's worn-out, broken-down chief: "I am tired and my heart is sad. I will fight no more forever." These robust archetypes never take on full human substance. Nor does the wild fur-clad Achilles Williams, alone in his Mississippi cabin, or the travelling band of entertainers with their relentlessly theatrical whip-cracking leader, in whose company Jim and Natty take refuge. Only the two main protagonists are really developed, and their troubling, imprecise relationship sustains the plot. Will their buddiness develop into passion? Poor Jim. In common parlance, she's messing him about something rotten. Restless, unsure, saddened by guilty memories, Jim is unequivocably, hopelessly in love with Natty, who, through years of shared imprisonment, shared beds, shared adventures and shared chastity, draws him in, pushes him away, teases with future hope, and demands devotion, total freedom and the right to switch between warm affection and cold detachment at will. Natty is a complex, capricious character. One feels that Motion shares Jim's bedazzlement, and there's something goddess-like in her depiction and the forgiveness of her flaws that distances her from the reader. Sequels and prequels of classic books are always going to be a gamble. On the one hand, there's a hook to hang them on in people's minds; on the other, there's the risk of annoying readers who don't share the writer's vision. They are most successful when the writer inverts the original, using the basic elements but coming at them from a completely different perspective, as Jean Rhys did with Wide Sargasso Sea. Motion's Treasure Island books simply follow on chronologically, using a pre-existing mould. The style deliberately channels Stevenson. It is an entertaining homage that is deeply felt and sincere, from someone who has clearly drunk deeply of the original source. Motion evokes mood and landscape and the interior corrosion of fear, but Jim and Natty are so much creatures of today, and Motion's world is essentially the world we know. • Carol Birch's Jamrach's Menagerie is published by Canongate. To order The New World for £8.99 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. |