The Other Side of Paradise

Veteran journalist and novelist Barber (Sakkara, A Farewell to Paris isn't strikingly original in either plot or style, yet he tells an entertaining, old-fashioned sort of tale, much like a Nevil Shute story. Kit Masters, a young British doctor, has been dispatched to the remote South Sea isle of Koraloona after an embarrassing incident in London. In this tropical paradise, he is involved in a number of local intrigues, medical challenges as he copes with young polio victims and a cholera epidemic, and a romance with a young Polynesian who is the granddaughter of Gauguin. The artist, or more precisely, his paintings, play a prominent and interesting part in the plot. Removed from the world, yet touched by all that happens, especially the outbreak of World War II, Masters and his fellow islanders battle natural and man-made calamities with pluck and ingenuity in this charming, if rather lightweight, adventure. (April 20)