“Silver: My Own Tale as Written by Me with a Goodly Amount of Murder”, by Edward Chupack

 

288 pages, St. Martin’s Griffin, ISBN-13: 978-0312539368

“I am Silver, and there is no other pirate like me on these waters…” Yeah, boy, whatta way to start a novel. I never read Treasure Island, but I have seen a bunch of TV adaptations over the years, so that counts for something, right? RIGHT? Right. And so my take on Edward Chupack’s Silver: My Own Tale as Written by Me with a Goodly Amount of Murder (really, how can you not buy this book after reading that title?) may differ from one who has actually read Robert Louis Stevenson’s book. Chupack states, in his “Author’s Note”, that he took Stevenson’s characters – especially some of the minor ones – and changed their aspects and situations, only using Treasure Island as a starting point; thus, Silver is neither a sequel nor a retelling of that book, and I can only approach Chupack’s work as a stand-alone read, but on that basis alone, this novel absolutely is worth its weight in…silver (ho, boy, am I clever).

The “Silver” of the title is, of course, Long John Silver, a murderous, treasure-hungry pirate who describes himself as “the dog that bites the other dogs. What do I fear? I am John Silver, and I am more dog than man and more dog than dog”. When we first meet him, he has been taken prisoner by an unknown person and locked in his quarters on his own ship from where, battling a raging fever, he writes his memoirs and tells the boy who brings him food about his search for a very special treasure. Silver’s memoirs cover his early life on the streets of Bristol, England, his being taken on board the pirate ship by Black John, and his life as a murdering pirate. But most of all, it covers Silver’s search for the treasure and of the lifetime of treachery that goes along with it.

The story itself isn’t a terribly deep one, and it does get rather repetitive at times, while the mystery is not one the reader will want to work too hard to solve on their own. Rather, it is the language that makes this book sing: one could open to any random page and find something wonderful to quote. It’s also the details about the pirating life and the world of the late 17^th Century – from London to Spain and all the way to the Carolinas – that held my attention right down to the final word. The characters are fabulously drawn, from the rat-like Pew to the alcoholic Billy Bones to Edward the dandy to Solomon the Jew. Yeah, Silver may be a murdering, thieving scoundrel, but he’s a charming and intelligent murdering, thieving scoundrel, and I only hope that Chupack will one day follow up this fine work with another.