Here's a humdinger from our Awa Press stable of review copies: Graeme Lay’s The Miss Tutti Frutti Contest, subtitled Travel Tales of the South Pacific, left me literally twitching with the desire to hurl some sarongs and thongs (for the feet, note) into a battered suitcase and head for the islands and their endearing and eccentric inhabitants.

I, like Graeme, was an avid childhood reader of anything with islands in it. He mentions some books that had an effect on his youth in his preface, and lo, I’d read them all: Treasure Island by the above RLS, the blood chilling cannibalism and torture of The Coral Island by R M Ballantyne, and definitely (tamer but still surrounded by water much of the time) various Enid Blytons. Not to mention Arthur Ransome. Thus rendered smug by our shared reading list, I forged ahead.

First things first – I have to mention that the cover of Travel Tales is gorgeous. A ‘naïve’ illustration of island life by Andy Leleisi’uao, and a rather tasty author photo by Jane Ussher (ooh, Graeme! Ageing very well my dear … a perk of the job no doubt). And designed by the brilliant Sarah Maxey, as are most of Awa Press’s books. They’re certainly doing well on the style front. And now the inside …

Graeme Lay has always been a superb travel writer. He has a hugely approachable writing style, filled with hilarious observations of human nature. He shows us a huge range of island life. Tourists, (‘Cherman’ or otherwise) eccentric misfits, artists, fa’afafine (the ‘Miss Tutti Fruttis’ of the book’s title – the ‘third sex’ of the islands), layabouts, drunkards and wild locals in all their glory. From the sublime Louis,

…a stocky, barefoot Tahitian in his thirties who controls his boat from the bow with a vertical PVC rudder …. When he is not grinning, he is laughing uproariously and waving to the other speedboat skippers… Any boat that passes, anything that anyone calls to him, Louis breaks into hysterical laughter. When we strike a big launch’s wake and nearly roll, he laughs so much he almost goes overboard …

… to the ridiculous Errol, the superbore from Morrinsville, whose upper half is dressed for Tahiti in vile Hawaiian shirts, but whose bottom half, in navy trousers and heavy black shoes, is still in NZ. Errol goes on tiki-tours twice over so he can bore a new group of people two days in a row by upping the ante on everything the poor guide has to say:

Teva points to a coconut palm draped with a climbing plant: ‘Fruit salad plant. It lives off the coconut palm, see?’
‘Epiphyte,’ adds Errol quickly. ‘Very common in Sri Lanka, that genus.’

His similarly no-frills descriptions of the natural wonders of the islands somehow manage to effortlessly convey the grandiose scale of some of these volcanic wonders. There’s a lot of education going on in these stories too. The history of some of the more famous literary and arty inhabitants of the isles, such as Herman Melville (writer of Moby Dick and Typee) and the aforementioned Robert Louis Stevenson, plus of course, the sublimely twisted Paul Gauguin. Mr Lay sure does his homework: we are treated to quotes from all of the above, as well as other early voyagers such as Sydney Parkinson who was aboard James Cook’s Endeavour in Matavai Bay, Tahiti on 13 April 1769:

‘We … anchored in nine fathoms of water, within half a mile of the shore. The land appeared as uneven as a piece of crumpled paper, being divided irregularly into hills and valleys; but a beautiful verdure covered both, even to the tops of the highest peaks.’

Love that 'crumpled paper'. There’s politics too, and plenty of fascinating trivia such as the fact that Gauguin sojourned briefly in Auckland on his way to Tahiti in 1895, staying at the Albert Hotel on Queen Street. The Maori art and carving he saw in the Auckland Museum influenced his later work, art historians claim. Another unknown and grisly tidbit was the information that Marquesan islanders used to inter the skulls of their dead in the aerial roots of the massive banyan trees, so that they were taken skyward as the tree grew. Apparently when one burnt down not long ago, the ground was showered with skulls.

I found myself actually sort of running on the spot in bed on Sunday morning, kicking convulsively, yelping involuntarily with pleasure, and giggling insanely while reading these stories. The first fully interactive travel book? Just what is needed in darkest Auckland winter, when all around are buggering off to these islands. We had the roof done this year instead. Sigh.

Tell you what though. We’re going. No more of the bland suburbia of Fijian resorts. We will travel those islands. Our whole family will travel by bicycle, outrigger and best of all, helicopter, all over them, just like Graeme. The only thing is, I’m going to need him to come, too …