Silver: Return to Treasure Island

Since its 1883 pub­li­cation, gen­er­a­tions of young adults have fallen in love with Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, its hero Jim Hawkins, and its anti-​​hero Long John Silver. Half a dozen pre­quels and perhaps a dozen sequels have been written, too, working to capture the magical spirit of eighteen-​​century pirates and their mur­derous hunt for treasure in an exotic Caribbean locale. The latest sequel is Silver:  Return to Treasure Island written by Andrew Motion, Poet Lau­reate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009 and a well-​​known British author with many other books to his credit. Given his mar­velous imag­i­nation and his keen ear for lit­erary cadences, Motion is an ideal can­didate to take up where Stevenson left off.

His story of Silver begins with the next gen­er­ation, when Jim Hawkins’ son and Long John Silver’s daughter join forces. Together, they return to Treasure Island to seek the remaining treasure their fathers left behind. “Natty and I thought we had sailed to Treasure Island to escape their [our fathers’] influence,” writes young Jim; “instead, we had found them waiting for us.” Metaphor­i­cally [in the heads and hearts of their off­spring] and lit­erally [in the actions of the still-​​petulant fellow pirates cast away on Treasure Island thirty years before], the elder Jim Hawkins and the wily Long John Silver dom­inate this tale as much as they did the original narrative.

Stevenson’s Treasure Island was a coming-​​of-​​age novel; equally so, Silver is an expression of young Jim’s mat­u­ration and of his inten­si­fying feelings for Silver’s daughter, Natty. Silver also shows how very like their fathers they each can be, and, at the same time, how very dif­ferent. To enhance their devel­opment, Motion sur­rounds the two with a cast of char­acters just as eccentric and idio­syn­cratic as their Treasure Island pre­de­cessors. The level-​​headed Captain Beamish, the whistling Bo’sun Kirkby, the scar-​​faced Jordan Hands, the evil tri­umvirate of Smirke and Stone and Jinks, Scotland the slave, the comic relief of Mr. Tickle, and a host of other quirky souls. Equally col­orful are the set­tings of Silver. The novel opens awash on very Dick­ensian British marshes, then sails on a tactile sea of alter­nating winds and calm, and finally lands in a tropical par­adise pop­u­lated by an extra­or­dinary gaggle of animals. My favorites were the doo-​​dahs, rotund chubby birds that cannot fly and are deli­cious when roasted for dinner.

The story line may be a bit fan­ciful, but it’s rol­licking good fun. It’s been years since I’ve read Stevenson’s Treasure Island. So, I confess, last evening I watched on TV the 1990 movie that starred Charlton Heston as Long John Silver and Christian Bale as the original Jim [his voice had not yet changed, so he was several years younger than Silver’s hero in the novel I just fin­ished reading]. That movie, too, was rol­licking good fun. Andrew Motion catches that same joie de vivre spirit, overlays it with sim­i­larly macabre vio­lence and evil, adds a hefty dose of humor, and pro­duces a novel that those of us who love the old classics will thor­oughly enjoy. I should re-​​read Treasure Island; I probably won’t; I’m very glad that I turned to Silver:  Return to Treasure Island instead.