'Do I look strange?' These were his last recorded words. That night Sosimo kissed his hands and laid them across his breast, knitting his fingers together like flowers. The next morning the household watched his coffin, held aloft by a dozen brown hands, disappear into an ocean of leaves. Every now and then, at a turn of the mountain, it would emerge from the trees, bobbing higher and higher, floating free. This remarkable debut novel tells of the last days of Tusitala, 'the teller of tales', as Robert Louis Stevenson became known in Samoa where he chose to die. In 1892 Girolamo Nerli travels from Sydney by steamer to Apia, with the intention of capturing something of Jekyll and Hyde in his portrait of the famous author. Nerli's presence sets in train a disturbing sequence of events. More than a century later, art historian Lewis Wakefield comes to Samoa to research the painting of Tusitala's portrait by the long-forgotten Italian artist. On hiatus from his bipolar medication, Lewis is freed to confront the powerful reality of all the desires and demons that R. L. Stevenson couldn't control. Lewis's personal journey is shadowed by the story of the lovable Teuila, a so-called fa'afafine ('in the manner of a woman'), and the spirit of Stevenson's servant boy, Sosimo.' (Synopsis)
Based on the life of Robert Louis Stevenson
Dedication: For Sean
Epigraph:
'I must surrender myself to what surrounds me, unite myself with the clouds and rocks, in order to be what I am.' - Casper David Friedrich
'O le gase a ala laovao: Paths in the bush are never obliterated: the past in never lost.' - Samoan Proverb
'We all don the clothes of civilisation to go on shore, looking very strange to each other.' - Fanny Van der Grift Stevenson
Writing Disability in Australia:
| Type of disability | Bipolar disorder. |
| Type of character | Primary. |
| Point of view | Third person. |
'Simile haunts The Pacific Room. So many sentences begin ‘It’s as if ...’ that the phrase seems like an incantation. Michael Fitzgerald writes that he agrees with Robert Louis Stevenson that ‘every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning.’ For the reviewer coming from outside the circle, this book does not so much erect screens as exist within a lush, enticing forest of signs which seems indifferent to one’s presence. As Teuila, the Samoan fa‘afafine, confidently climbs to the summit of Mount Vaea in the dark, we are told, ‘For an outsider there is no hint of what lies ahead, so inscrutable is the dense foliage.’ One is aware that given time and multiple readings, the forest might become as familiar as it is to Teuila. On a first reading, the best option is to let the strangeness of the book seep into one’s consciousness and resist the temptation to seek clarification at every twist in the path.' (Introduction)
'Michael Fitzgerald’s debut, The Pacific Room, is putatively a novel about the last days of Robert Louis Stevenson. After several years travelling around the Pacific, the Scottish author of Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde spent the last four years of his life in Samoa, on a 160-hectare estate. He became known to the locals as Tusitala (“the teller of tales”), became embroiled in local politics, and was buried there, on top of a mountain.'
'Simile haunts The Pacific Room. So many sentences begin ‘It’s as if ...’ that the phrase seems like an incantation. Michael Fitzgerald writes that he agrees with Robert Louis Stevenson that ‘every book is, in an intimate sense, a circular letter to the friends of him who writes it. They alone take his meaning.’ For the reviewer coming from outside the circle, this book does not so much erect screens as exist within a lush, enticing forest of signs which seems indifferent to one’s presence. As Teuila, the Samoan fa‘afafine, confidently climbs to the summit of Mount Vaea in the dark, we are told, ‘For an outsider there is no hint of what lies ahead, so inscrutable is the dense foliage.’ One is aware that given time and multiple readings, the forest might become as familiar as it is to Teuila. On a first reading, the best option is to let the strangeness of the book seep into one’s consciousness and resist the temptation to seek clarification at every twist in the path.' (Introduction)
'Michael Fitzgerald’s debut, The Pacific Room, is putatively a novel about the last days of Robert Louis Stevenson. After several years travelling around the Pacific, the Scottish author of Treasure Island and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde spent the last four years of his life in Samoa, on a 160-hectare estate. He became known to the locals as Tusitala (“the teller of tales”), became embroiled in local politics, and was buried there, on top of a mountain.'
