Review: The Spirit of Eternity

It is unclear from the outset whether this novel is intended to portray the almost incestuous hothouse atmosphere of an ex-patriate community in a Third World country, sexual openness among Third World natives as observed by Westerners, or some combination of the two. Certainly, sex is one of the author's themes, as he includes numerous explicit sexual scenes. Unfortunately, the various relationships never coalesce to produce a clear and coherent plot line, and the sex scenes sometimes appear to be simply added for spice.

The main difficulty with the plot is that the author seems to be trying to put too much action in too short a period, with too little character development to explain or drive the action. Frances' return to Papua New Guinea occurred two years after her first trip. That would hardly seem enough time for all the changes in her own life, much less in the lives of other characters, particularly Markus and Tambu. Moreover, without getting into spoilers, the child - who cannot be more than two years old and most likely is less - is remarkably passive, and Frances a remarkably poor mother. His care is never mentioned, except when Frances speaks in passing of the miraculous nursery, which is open seven days a week at all hours, which sends workers to pick up and deliver children, and yet charges so little that a night club cashier can pay their fees!

There are other implausibilities in the novel. The native Mamma Mia's house sounds like something from a northern forest, complete with squirrels in the surrounding trees. Frances is so ill-informed about her new home that she doesn't realize drinking tap water is a bad idea until she notices it looks bad. All the financial dealings are implausible - that Frances would spend money on the trip, rather than supporting the child, that she (and those characters with legal, but non-UN, incomes) could earn enough in such an economy to live as well as they do, and that they could achieve so much in such a short period of time.

Finally, the punctuation, word choice and sentence structure could be greatly improved. Most obviously, exclamation points are scattered throughout the text in great numbers, apparently at random. Capitalization is not consistent, for example, 'God' is written with and without a 'G, and some words like 'Law' are sometimes capitalized which should not be capitalized at all. There are numerous examples or poor or incorrect word usage. For example, Sadie was referred to as 'Miller nee Cartwright', when it should have been the other way around. 'Stigma' appears to be used to mean an eye disease, 'shock revelation' is used instead of 'shocking revelation', 'give the matter ... credence' when either 'credibility' or 'assistance' was meant. Finally, the sentence and paragraph structure sometimes leave the reader wondering just who or what pronouns such as 'he','this' or 'that' refer to.

I often enjoy novels with exotic settings, but unfortunately, I cannot recommend this one.

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Cheryl - RAM

Book Review: The Spirit of Eternity