Pages: 162
Original date of publication: 1927
My copy: 1981 (Virago Modern Classics)
Why I decided to read:
How I acquired my copy: Library Thing member, July 2011
One day, young Jacky Jacka visits a witch, where he sees a
vision of a woman in a bowl of water. The vision leads him to seek passage on a
ship to the West Indies, which is then hijacked en route by the pirate Captain
Lovel and the crew aboard the Moonraker. The year in 1801, a time when Napoleon had control of the high seas and
the days of swashbuckling piracy was—nearly—on its way out. The story takes
young Jacky throughout the Caribbean, and along the way he meets a Frenchman
named Raoul and a black man Toussaint L’Ouverture, who works to free Haiti from
the forces of Napoleon.
On the surface it’s a fun tale; Tennyson drew her
inspiration from Robert Louis Stevenson, and obvious comparisons might be made
between this book and the Pirates of the Caribbean films. But this novel goes a
bit deeper than that. F Tennyson Jesse was a sailor herself; she was also a
journalist, so she tended to over-research material for her books. There’s
almost too much nautical description in this novel.
Her novels all have similar themes; without wanting to spoil
too much about the plot of Moonraker, the author commonly explores themes about
women and their place in a typically male environment. Jesse also explores the
theme of race, albeit briefly; in that way, I wish that the book had been a bit
longer, just so that the author could have explored the Haitian rebellion a
little more. According to the introduction at the beginning of my edition, this
novel belonged to a dying genre of fiction: the adventure story with an
historical setting. I guess some things truly are cyclical.
Comments