ONE BIG DAMN PUZZLER

Peter Brooke's enthusiastic narration makes John Harding's unconventional satire a listening delight. A white lawyer arrives on a tiny island in the South Pacific intending to make reparations for the damage done to the population by the Americans during WWII. The island boasts a large number of feral pigs, an unusually large number of natives who are missing limbs, and Managua, a tribesman who's attempting to translate HAMLET into something understandable for the locals. (Managua's translation of Hamlet's famous soliloquy gives the novel its title: "Is be, or is be not, is be one big damn puzzler." Brooke's delivery of pidgin argot; taboos; and odd sexual, religious, and scatological practices perfectly captures the gently mocking tones of Harding's sociological, anthropological, and Shakespearean humor. S.J.H. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine [Published: MARCH 2015]