The Shark God: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in the South Pacific by Charles Montgomery

The Shark God: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in the South Pacific Reviews

• 
  Missy J

  2.5 stars.
  
  I read Paul Theroux's
  The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific (1992) before reading Charles Montgomery's "The Shark God" (2004), which is also known as "The Last Heathen." Theroux's book was an informative and entertaining travel book that visited over a dozen Pacific Island nations, whereas "The Shark God" retraces the journey of the author's great-grandfather, who was a missionary in Melanesia. Montgomery's travel focuses solely on Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. Furthermore, he is on a specific mission: in search of magic.
  
  Unfortunately, Montgomery's writing didn't captivate me and at times was quite confusing. I'm glad that I read Theroux's book first, so that I had some basic knowledge about the region, the pidgin language and a little Melanesian culture. Because Montgomery dives right into it all and does not give a clear outline of what he is about to do, nor does he give sufficient information on the setting and the situation of the places he visits. He lets himself get carried away by the people he meets, thus rendering his journey and the story line very hard to follow. But it was interesting to see how a decade later Vanuatu and Solomon Islands have changed (or not) since Paul Theroux's account of it. Kastom was very much alive and present in Vanuatu, but Montgomery wasn't able to find magic there. The Solomon Islands were in the midst of a bloody conflict, but it was there that Montgomery found the answers to his questions.
  
  Initially, Montgomery attributes the pervasiveness of magic to the proximity to the Equator, where nature towers over man. But in the end, he comes to the conclusion that looking for proof of magic is absurd. One cannot find magic, unless one believes in it. Thus, magic has more to do with the believer than it has to do with the magician. It's about faith.
  
  Montgomery observes the different Christian sects and how Christianity and local beliefs have meshed into a new lifestyle, where people worship Jesus in their own mystic ways. He concludes that too much rationalism is not much different from fanaticism. The author also comes to the realization that myths may not necessarily be historically correct, but nonetheless still contain a powerful truth.
  
  During his journey, Montgomery lives together with natives and tries to understand their mystical beliefs. He meets a few foreigners; a female anthropologist, who has difficulties getting to the core of a culture, because she is not a part of it. Then there's a British priest, who finds a home and true love and friendship among the natives, but does not succeed in teaching Christianity according to the Bible. He also meets Chinese Malaysian loggers. I recommend Theroux's book first, before you attempt to read this book.
  
  "The key to mythical truth is not bones and ruins, but belief itself."
• 
  Wendy

  I owned this book for six years before finally deciding to try it. Once I began the first chapter, however, I was hooked. Montgomery analyzes history, anthropology, custom and religion without ever being pedantic or didactic. Stylistically, the prose is precise, evoking fine descriptive details that capture the essence of the places and individuals he encounters.
  
  Motivated to learn about his great-grandfather's missionary days in Melanesia, Montgomery discovers and unveils more than place and people. Rather, he focuses on kastom, the belief system of Melanesians shaped by missionaries, black magic, myths and stories relating to gods and ancestors, all of which have culminated in a unique, if strange brand of Christianity/Anglicanism.
  
  Although the focus is Melanesia and its history with missionaries, this book invites the reader to reflect upon his or her own ancestry and belief systems, and, inadvertently, to compare the experience of Melanesians to the political and religious imperialism experienced by First Nations cultures in Canada and the United States. However, it's refreshing that Montgomery is never judgmental of history, politics, or people; he neither venerates nor condemns the Melanesians, missionaries and modern-day tasiu-- allowing readers to formulate their own opinions.
• 
  Darth J

  It can be slow and the narrator can blather on and on. I want believe what he saw was real, but I'm not sure if it was a hallucination or if he was exaggerating to make up for a sort of boring travelogue. I don't remember why I rated it 5 stars, but I did so.... yeah.
• 
  John

  A book in the "historical footsteps" genre - the inspiration being Montgomery's own great-grandfather's Victorian missionary work in the islands. Less of a travel narrative than I'd expected, heavier on the anthropological angle, which made it a bit dense. I found Alexander Frater's Tales from the Torrid Zone (also footsteps of local clergy missionary ancestors) easier going, but recommend both.
• 
  Fishface

  This is a travelogue of the Melanesian islands, travelled by a man retracing the steps of an ancestor, who was a missionary in the South Pacific. Pretty interesting story riven by seasickness and substandard plumbing.
• 
  Dlmrose

  3.5
• 
  Yanick Punter

  Well-written and at times interesting.
• 
  Suzesmum

  52📖🇻🇺VANUATU & SOLOMON ISLANDS 🇸🇧 My husband asked me recently if I was noticing any commonalities between the various countries I have been reading in the Pacific. My first reaction was the diversity of countries, people and their stories; but on deeper reflection there are some strong themes emerging:
  🗺Captain Cook and his various expeditions are a big theme in this region.
  ⛪️The missionaries of various demonstrations of the 1800s is another💂🏼‍♀️👮🏻World War II and the various occupying forces, and more recently the peacekeeping missions, 🇬🇧🇫🇷🇺🇸Colonisation and the various attempts at self-government (some more successful than others) and foreign aid/development assistance 💣nuclear bomb testing from 1960-1990s🏝climate change🗿🦈Indigenous mythologies. I’m on a bit of a “shark” theme at the moment and was drawn to this book because it covers many of the themes above. The story starts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford and a small packet of sand from a remote island in the Santa Cruz group of the Solomon Islands ignites a spark in the author to retrace the steps of his great-grandfather, a missionary who died on Nukapu🏝What unfolds is a fascinating part-history-part-personal-quest-part-sensemaking journey to the remote and fascinating islands of Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands over 2000-2002. Montgomery left about a year before the Australian-led RAMSI peaceforce (which was in place for 14 years) arrived in July 2003. I was quite sad when this book ended. I learnt so much!
  
  🦈Yes, I saw a shadow in the deep. Yes it was big and as black as cooking charcoal, and every sweep of its tail fin raised a storm of silt from the lagoon floor. Yes, that shadow had circled ever so slowly around my friend the shark boss, who was sitting cross-legged on a bed of crushed coral…Now there is no doubt. Yes, it was a shark. Yes, it was Bolai🦈
• 
  Jrobertus

  The author’s great grandfather was an Anglican bishop who had spent some time in Melanesia. His old writings inspired Montgomery to visit Vanuatu and the Solomon islands to see how Christian missionaries had affected the spirituality of the people who had been ancestor worshipping cannibals. His descriptions of the physical place were disconcerting. These are not tropical paradises but steaming, bug infested, mud stained, impoverished hell holes. The people tend to be nominally Christian to an extreme church going degree, but it is a weird mixture with vast amounts of superstition and ancestor worship. The shark god of the title is but one example. These people still believe in curses and live in fear of them. At first the book was pretty funny as Montgomery struggled to get the locals to prove their magic powers by actual demonstration but that was never going to happen. He claims to be an agnostic and hard ball rationalist. Later, he seems caught up in the notion that faith, in Jesus or your ancestors has a reality of the mind that transcends reality of the world and I was not sure where he was going. In any case, I have no desire to spend any time on Guadalcanal.
• 
  Kris Kaleta

  No nie wiem. Kurczę. Kiedy brałem tę książkę w świetnej księgarni w Łodzi, myślałem ��tak! Tak jest! W końcu książka o Oceanii, która wydaje sie być interesująca!’. Miało być tajemnicze Vanuatu, o którym marzy moje podróżnicze ja. Miało być Tuvalu. Miała być cała Mikronezja i ja pływający w słowotoku autorskim i cieszący sie kulturą tych slow.
  
  Ale po kilku stronach cos nie zagrzało. A po kilku rozdziałach zostawiłem tę książkę na kilka miesięcy. Za każdym razem otwierałem ja, czytałem kilka zdań i zdegustowany odkładałem na bok. Bardzo nie zagrał mi tu język autora, styl prowadzenia historii, jej tempo i w sumie nawet charakter. Bardzo mi przykro, bo z opisu - i z wielu elementów tworzących te historie - to jest naprawdę ciekawy temat i potencjał na wybitna książkę.
  
  Szkoda. Poleciłbym chyba tylko naprawdę zagorzałym fanom regionu lub tematow misjonarsko-biograficznych. Bo, niestety, tego boskiego rekina sie po prostu bardzo, ale to bardzo złe czyta.
• 
  Dorota

  Mam problem z tą książką - z 1 strony to fascynujące świadectwo historii misjonarstwa i kolonializmu angielskiego, który zmiótł z ziemi kultury pierwotne Melanezji, choć tak naprawdę to plemiona melanezyjskie wchłonęły chrześcijaństwo i dostosowały do własnych wierzeń. Z drugiej strony autor tego reportażu wzbudza momentami irytację, nudę jak również rozbawienie. Pisze tę książkę w taki sposób, że jednocześnie czytelnik z politowaniem patrzy na jego próby znalezienia magii, a z drugiej - chce się wierzyć w tę nutkę transcendencji, którą na koniec podsuwa. Jednak to wszystko jest napisane momentami tak z taką emfazą, że chwilami rzucałam tę książkę w chwili irytacji. Nie wiem czy to kwestia tłumaczenia, czy może po prostu autor taki ma styl, ale jego opowieść do tej pory nie jest zrozumiała - dlaczego on tak właściwie chciał odbyć tę podróż - bo chciał pojąć pradziada? Zrozumieć kultury pierwotne? Autor przedstawia motywacje własne w bardzo mętny sposób i może stąd też moja podejrzliwość w stosunku do niego.
• 
  Jim

  This would have been far more interesting if it had been about 200 fewer pages. After a while it seemed a litany of kava-addled males, misogyny, and violence. The churches didn't really seem to have improved things much. When he was describing the travel, I enjoyed it a lot more. There is a lot of history, but after a while I simply stopped caring very much. I was surprised by the conditions in some of the islands, especially Guadalcanal. It also made one wonder if anthropological inquires were very accurate.
• 
  Frederic Pierce

  Fascinating travelogue of a man exploring his past in a remote part of the world. It's funny, irreverent, and entertaining while bridging the modern world and an island culture filled with beliefs and isolated truths that are only possible in places that western civilization has a hard time reaching.
• 
  Rae

  Gosh, I was so excited to pick this up at the library. I only got through half of it and that was a challenge on it's own. The author seemed arrogant and naiive. Is it possible that he is more racist and ignorant than his Victorian grandfather? I kept thinking he would eventually join us in the 21st century. The author is clearly highly educated, but when it comes to social and cultural understanding and acceptance, he is definitely lacking.
• 
  π

  2 gwiazdki za fatygę i potencjalnie ciekawy temat. Z dużą irytacją i mozołem przeczytałam kilka rozdziałów. Ani to ciekawy zapis podróży, ani złożone przedstawienie lokalnej duchowości/ religijności. Łatwiej się czytało, kiedy udawałam że to powieść, a nie reportaż.
• 
  Nancy Wilson

  worth reading
• 
  Lizzie Bridges

  +
  
  
  Humorous, insightful and inspiring, Montgomery's search for his family history brings the religious tapestry of the South Pacific to new light and understanding.
  
• 
  Drew

  Hallucinatory!
• 
  Anna

  "Wiosłowaliśmy zakosami przez bałwany, ufając w przesłanie, które niosly nam z końca świata. Wiosłowaliśmy, bo wiedzieliśmy, że wiara wyczaruje nam wyspę z tajemnicy morza."
• 
  Melissa

  Montgomery went in search of magic. Well actually he just wanted to trace his ancestor's footsteps, but then his mission quickly became the unknown and magic once he was in Melanesia. This book, rather than be on comparative religion and travel like I thought it would be, actually read more as a memoir (although to be sure there is religion and travel included).
  
  As a young boy, Montgomery discovered journals from his missionary ancestor and the stories contained within fascinated him enough that he wanted to retrace those steps in history. Armed with his savings account and a little bit of knowledge on writing in the travel industry, he flies out to the islands in the Pacific to meet with the locals and see if there is any traditional religion left or if everyone had converted to Christianity. What he found was a surprising mix between the two and a people divided by their beliefs.
  
  While Montgomery fully fleshes himself and his beliefs in the book, I couldn't help but feeling that the local people were left more two-dimensional. They all had a personality quirk that set them off but their true description was in their religion and that seemed to be what defined them. Their actual personal lives, hopes, and dreams we never heard much about and so it made it hard to care about their other beliefs. Mongomery at least was interesting in his own thought exploration and it was interesting to see the goals of his travels change as he progressed through the islands.
  
  The premise was a good one. He wanted to see what those before him had seen and how the missionaries' work had changed the islands. But then he started wanting to see the magic side and the customs that the native people gave up in favor of Christianity. He puts in a lot of detail, but I do think that it starts to get repetitive and drawn out after awhile. Every person's story seemed the same and I felt like I was reading about the same person over and over again. There were a few standouts; mainly about the missionary Patterson and some of the older stories and I did enjoy those parts of the book. As for the other stories though I would rather have read more about the landscape and less about the people's betel nut habit.
  
  An ok book. It has a lot of interesting points from an anthropological standpoint but it presents it in a way that can be quite dry at times.
  
  The Shark God
  Copyright 2004
  370 pages
  
  Review by M. Reynard 2014
  
  More of my reviews can be found at
  www.ifithaswords.blogspot.com
• 
  Fiona

  The author learned that his great-grandfather was an Anglican missionary in the 1890's in Melanesia. He decides to travel to the Melanesian Islands (Vanuatu and Solomon Islands including Guadalcanal and Malaita) to see the results of the Christianizing of the islands.
  
  Is this a travel monologue? Yes. Is this an expose of missionary work? Yes. Has Christendom arrived and still present today in the islands? Yes, as long as you understand that many of the pagan myths remain a part of this Christianity.
  
  "Melanesian myths were not fictions plucked from ether but expression of lived experience." In much the same was of Moses handing down rules to the Israelites, the edicts of the Melanesian ancestors don't differ much from the rules. In essence, "obey or you will rot in hell, obey or taro will rot in the ground."
  
  One of the moving experiences for the author was meeting the Melanesian Brotherhood who are Christians who many of the locals believe have extra power - especially their walking sticks. They are the peacemakers on the islands and much is done through the power of prayer.
  
  While in the islands, he wants to know if some of the "old" ways are still around. Yes, he's curious but also he wants to experience what his great-grandfather could have experienced while converting them to Christians. Yes, he found some of the "old" ways and even experienced their rituals. In New Georgia, he was able to breathe on the devil stone which brought heavy rains in the area. Although shark worshipping stopped in the 1970's, he did meet the shark boss and swam with him in the ocean. The shark boss can sit on the floor of the ocean and a shark will swim around him. Yes, the author saw this - at least, he saw a large shadow swimming around the shark boss.
  
  I liked the writing style. The author knows how to describe heat very well. "The heat was not like heat at all. It was more like a great weight pressing down from the sky and squeezing you until you oozed fatigue and sweat like honey from a sponge." Well said.
  
  
• 
  Linda

  Nice writing, the guy clearly has talent. He really makes the setting come alive. There's just something about this book that grates on me and I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's that he knows the faults of past writers and explorers (treating local populations like potential museum pieces, delegitimizing their beliefs, you know, the whole colonial approach to non-white non-europeans). Yet, he doesn't seem to miss a chance to write about the mysterious and the "surreal" and the exotic.
  
  But maybe what really bothers me is his seeming mission to witness "magic" just so he can ask the questions that prove it's not really magic. How insulting: go into someone's home, push to see rituals that normally aren't shared with strangers just so you can insist there's nothing magical going on at all. I say if you want to write about the religious experience of another community do it, with respect. If you're on a personal mission to spit in the eye of religion in general (he is perfectly honest about his christian ancestors faults) stay home and write a blog maybe.
  
  I think this is a brilliant place to write about with fascinating characters but it's let down by whatever the writer has going on in his head with his relationship to religion. In the end, I couldn't be bothered to finish it.
• 
  Amy

  This is an informative, interesting (and often entertaining) look at the religious practices of islanders in the South Pacific as observed by the great grandson of a Christian missionary who visited those islands years before.
  
  The subject matter is interesting and the book is well written. I have a problem with non-fiction when there are too many names and facts to remember - probably why I struggled with History in school - and became overwhelmed a little over halfway through the book. Although I didn't finish it, I found the bit I read worth recommending.
  
  
• 
  Peter

  In hindsight I changed my rating from 3 to 2 stars.
  
  I found the history and descriptions of the islands interesting, but the narrator annoyed the hell out of me, and considering the book is autobiographical, I don't think that was the intention.
  While describing historical white people traveling to these islands as racist, and looking at the savage natives, somehow I get the feeling the writer himself is more racist than he'd like to admit.
  Also his insistence on challenging everyone he meets on doing 'real' magic is really fucking annoying.
• 
  Naomi

  p2 "Inside was a postcard from Egypt, stamped at Port Said: Jan. 30, 1884. There was no image on the front of the card, just the address of one Reverend Prebendary Plant, the vicar of Weston-on-Trent."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  "Myth, like love, is a decision. What it answers is longing. What it demands is faith. What it opens is possibility." p294
  
  
  
  Interesting anthropological quest to follow his missionary grandfather's route in Vanuatu and The Solomon Islands.
• 
  Steve Wiggins

  A wonderful introduction to how missionaries impact a community in the south Pacific. Montgomery tries to retrace the steps of his ancestors, but finds that quite a bit has changed, even though much remains the same. A good study of how cultural imperialism and faith often fail to acquire the results they want. See more here:
  Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.
• 
  Christy

  This is one of those books I stopped reading halfway through and fully intend to finish. Thus far, it deserves four stars. I didn't stop out of boredom or frustration, just distraction.
  
  It's a really interesting exploration of the cargo cults of the South Pacific and the encounters between Christianity and native religions.