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Getting Stoned with Savages

A Trip Through the Islands of Fiji and Vanuatu

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Getting Stoned with Savages again reveals Troost’s wry wit and infectious joy of discovery in a hilarious account of life in the farthest reaches of the world.

After two grueling years on the island of Tarawa, Troost was in no hurry to return to the South Pacific—until he began to feel remarkably out of place in modern America—and he knew it was time to set off for parts unknown. Here he tells the story of his time on Vanuatu, a cluster of islands where he struggles against typhoons, earthquakes, and giant centipedes but finds himself swept up in the laid-back, clothing-optional lifestyle of the islanders. When his wife Sylvia gets pregnant, they decamp for slightly more civilized Fiji, a fallen paradise rife with prostitutes and government coups, where their son takes quite naturally to island living.

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    • AudioFile Magazine
      There's nothing like a crisp British accent to match a narrative voice that is detached, wry, and sarcastic. Following his wife, who is in pursuit of her career, Troost goes to the Pacific Islands, where he indulges in endless bowls of kava, a psychoactive drink that resembles muddy water. That's the "stoned" part of the title. The "savages" are cannibals, whom Troost searches for but never finds. A cross between Bill Bryson and Hunter S. Thompson, Troost is a delightfully unreliable reporter. And Simon Vance delivers each line with charm. A buttery voice like his is the closest many of us will come to experiencing anything like kava. E.D.R. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 24, 2006
      Using a format similar to that of his previous work, The Sex Lives of Cannibals
      , Troost creates another comical and touching travel memoir. Troost and his wife, Sylvia, move from busy Washington, D.C., to Vanuatu, a nation made up of 83 islands in the South Pacific. As Sylvia works for a regional nonprofit, Troost immerses himself in the islands' culture, an odd mix of the islanders' thousand-year-old "kastoms" along with imperialist British and French influences. This really means that Troost gets to live in a nice house while he gets drunk on kava; dodges "a long inferno of magma and a cascade of lava bombs" at the "world's most accessible volcano"; and checks out the "calcified" leftovers from one of Vanuatu's not-so-ancient traditions, cannibalism. At the end of the book, the couple move to Fiji so that Sylvia will have state-of-the-art medical care when she gives birth to their first baby. While modern-day Fiji provides little fodder for Troost's comic sensibilities, the birth of his son enables him to share some deeper thoughts and decide it is "time to stop looking for paradise." A funny travelogue with a sentimental heart, Troost's latest work genuinely captures the search for paradise as well as the need for home.

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  • English

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