cover image A Beginner's Guide to Paradise: 9 Steps to Giving Up Everything So You Too Can Move to a Pacific Island, Wear a Loincloth, Read a Hundred Books, Build a Bungalow, Diaper a Baby Monkey, and Maybe, Just Maybe, Fall in Love

A Beginner's Guide to Paradise: 9 Steps to Giving Up Everything So You Too Can Move to a Pacific Island, Wear a Loincloth, Read a Hundred Books, Build a Bungalow, Diaper a Baby Monkey, and Maybe, Just Maybe, Fall in Love

Alex Sheshunoff. New American Library, $25.95 (464p) ISBN 978-0-451-47586-2

In this self-absorbed, whiny guide, Sheshunoff sets up a successful Internet company, quickly tires of it, and heads to the South Pacific armed with books. Along the way, Sheshunoff shares little lessons he learns on islands such as Yap, Pig, Palau, and Angaur. Early in the book, Sheshunoff learns his greatest lesson%E2%80%94"capital P Paradise doesn't exist... there was no deluding myself that a place could fully protect us from ourselves... the human capacity to complicate life... would never be diminished"%E2%80%94but he refuses to listen to his own advice and to complicate his life at every turn, eking out "lessons" from his reading and his faltering attempts at being sociable. Such self-evident lessons include "making some big choices," "finding the right island," "settling in," and "meeting someone." Not long after Sheshunoff meets Sarah, the woman who will eventually become his wife, she deftly and cagily describes his quest in words that also summarize his book: "the contemplation of one's navel in search of a mystic experience." By the end of this overlong memoir, his life has changed little, except that he's traded the streets of Manhattan for the roads of Anchorage, Alaska. (Sept.)