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Rating: 
Summary: he's no Bill Bryson, but nice try
Review: "For ten years now my life had been steered by bells, the regular ringing shaping my days, putting their events in order." In his early 30s, Will Randall has a comfortable but sometimes stifling job teaching French and German at a school in the West Country of England, when he is approached by friends who need his help fulfilling a dying man's wish. "The Commander" spent three decades running a now-defunct cocoa plantation in the Solomon Islands, and in his will he has set aside funds to be used to set up some sort of enterprise to support his former employees and their families. Almost on a whim, Randall agrees to leave his job and take on the challenge, although as his departure date draws near he finds himself increasingly reluctant to go but unable to back out. Thus, he arrives at the Honiara airport knowing next to nothing about the Solomon Islands, not all that sure he wants to be there and with no idea what sort of business to establish. Fortunately, the residents of Mendali village on the island of Randuvu have fond memories of the Commander and welcome Randall with open arms. He immediately falls in love with his new home, despite a close encounter with a shark while on his first fishing expedition. Time has a different quality in the islands: "After an hour or two of 'getting ready,' which seemed to consist of little more than leaning against their wooden canoe, stroking and admiring it, the three of us, Stanley acting as translator and responsible group leader, set off on my orientation course." There's little pressure on Randall to get the business going, but eventually he decides (again, almost on a whim) that the future of the village lies in chicken farming. Randall has no experience with chickens, and a knack for making a complete mess of things. Plus, there are some villains lurking in the background. Will the business succeed? You'll have to read the book to find out!This is Randall's first book, and it's a very respectable effort. He paints a warm and colorful picture of life in the islands and the interesting characters he meets there, and does a good job of explaining local culture. By allowing us to eavesdrop on his early language lessons, he teaches us enough Pijin to understand the phrases sprinkled throughout the rest of the book. ("S'pose me lender enjin blong you?" = Could I borrow your engine?) Before his departure, his great-aunt gives him three books, and throughout his stay he turns to the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson, Robinson Crusoe and Arthur Grimble to chart his progress, a device that works well. Self-deprecating humor suits him, but the dialog sometimes rings false, especially the lines he gives himself, perhaps because he's still a bit self-conscious at this stage. Randall's next book will be about India. It was a pleasure to be stranded for a year in the Solomon Islands with him, and I look forward to reading more of his adventures and seeing how he evolves as a writer and as a person.
Rating: 
Summary: Brit in the solomons
Review: As an american i found the book to be very intresting not only for the relaxing journey though the south pacific but also for Randall's british ways, Reading solomon time made me think of Will as Hugh Grant. The conversations with the islanders were very good , the desciptions of the island scenery and people was great and i feel like i came away knowing a remote village in a far flung corner of the map, which is always an indication of a good book.
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Summary: Solomon Time: A modern treasure.
Review: I was highly impressed with this terrifically real, but straightforward recital of events in really unusual circumstances. For example, the author did not editorialize on whether the village people working throughout the night to process their chickens, so they could obtain more material goods, was a good or bad thing. Likewise with the picture of them working in (I presume) a hot, smoky kitchen in Chicken Willys. As a typical capitalist American, I of course would have set up the same, but I also want to ask the author: Are these good people better off as they were, or after taking up the reins of commerce? This new author has real talent.
Rating:
Summary: a volunteer in the Solomon Islands
Review: This book tells the rather self-deprecatory tale of an English school teacher who becomes a volunteer in the Solomon Islands. A chance meeting with an ex-colonial identified as "the commander" sends Will Randall to Rendova Island in the Western Solomons with the vague intention of helping the local villagers create some sort of income-generating project. Randall's first weeks are spent acclimatizing to the slow pace of Solomons life, until a divemaster in nearby Munda suggests he help the villagers set up a chicken farm to supply meat to the local guest houses. Despite the ethnic conflicts raging in the capital Honiara, Will Randall manages with difficulty to locate the correct breeding hens, and Chicken Willy is soon dispensing fried fast food to one and all at Munda Market. Solomon Time is a case study of the naive Westerner in a tropical location who arrives to do good and stays to go native. It's appropriate reading for anyone considering doing something similar.
Rating:
Summary: a volunteer in the Solomon Islands
Review: This book tells the rather self-deprecatory tale of an English school teacher who becomes a volunteer in the Solomon Islands. A chance meeting with an ex-colonial identified as "the commander" sends Will Randall to Rendova Island in the Western Solomons with the vague intention of helping the local villagers create some sort of income-generating project. Randall's first weeks are spent acclimatizing to the slow pace of Solomons life, until a divemaster in nearby Munda suggests he help the villagers set up a chicken farm to supply meat to the local guest houses. Despite the ethnic conflicts raging in the capital Honiara, Will Randall manages with difficulty to locate the correct breeding hens, and Chicken Willy is soon dispensing fried fast food to one and all at Munda Market. Solomon Time is a case study of the naive Westerner in a tropical location who arrives to do good and stays to go native. It's appropriate reading for anyone considering doing something similar.
Rating:
Summary: Fearing the Unexpected and then embracing it ...
Review: This is a good read. The book has many interesting episodes about the author's (mis)fortunes. It also introduces us to the life in the Solomon islands. But the author tries to add a lot of fluff to very small incidents and forces us to skip pages.
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Summary: "It was quite acceptable to do nothing..."
Review: Will Randall, though a high school teacher for ten years, is really just a kid--thirty-two years old, but still young in his attitudes and in his views of what life, and his own life, in particular, are all about. Unsophisticated and incurious, he has been content to let life happen to him. When his friend Charles suggests that he give up his job and go to the Solomon Islands for a year, he demurs, but Charles is an executor of the will of an Englishman known as the Commander, who has left money for the benefit of the islanders, if someone will go there to develop a reliable industry that will provide the villagers with income they can use for community improvements. Eventually, Randall finds himself agreeing to go, not making a decision so much as just going with the flow. Randall experiences a delayed coming of age on New Georgia Island, a process he documents in this good-humored tale, filled with delightful characters and observations about life in a community in which there is little change. Ingenuous and unambitious, he enjoys the lullaby rhythms of life in the tropics, but he eventually determines that raising chickens would both provide income and expand the limited diet of the villagers. Describing how he sets up this business, he also comments on village mores, including the cannibalism which existed until the early 20th century. He briefs the reader on the World War II history of the nearby island of Guadalcanal, retells the story of JFK and PT-109, which went down in the Solomon Islands, and describes his own personal disasters, mocking himself at one point, after he falls overboard in shark infested waters and watches as his motorized canoe continues on its way. Far more interested in telling a story than in contemplating his inner growth or making weighty observations about what he has learned, Randall pokes fun at himself and at the one or two "villains" he encounters with the chicken-business, and he concentrates on telling amusing episodes rather than developing any deep or universally meaningful conclusions. His decision to return to England comes suddenly, with no fanfare and even less explanation, and he offers few clues about what he has learned or why he has chosen this particular time to leave.
Though the author is very entertaining, he sometimes mixes metaphors and similes into a colorful but almost incoherent jumble. At one point, he describes Honiara, the capital, as "the unsightly boil in the navel of the islands." In the next sentence, he says Honiara is "reminiscent of the cardboard set of a low-budget spaghetti Western," and describes it also as "slouching like a hungover vagrant against the foothills of Tandachehe Ridge." Despite such confusions in imagery, however, he succeeds in writing an enjoyable, good-natured, and often charming story which will amuse readers of all ages. Mary Whipple
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