Tripwrecked! Tempest Terror

In Ross Montgomery’s ingenious light-hearted fantasy, a school party is shipwrecked on a desert island, where the children gradually realise that their situation has uncanny parallels with Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Frank, the narrator, and Rianna, the quiet ones who are used to being ignored, form an alliance; and their sensible ideas, even if appropriated by the more overbearing among the castaways, help them all to survive. Yet Frank and Rianna, too, are convinced that there is a Caliban-like monster loose on the island; and adults will notice Montgomery’s nod to another desert island classic, Lord of the Flies, in the proposal that one of the party should be sacrificed to appease the monster. However, unlike Golding’s grim examination of child social dynamics, Montgomery consistently plays it for laughs, aided and abetted by Mark Beech’s cartoon illustrations. The resolution of the tale offers an explanation that, deflating the children’s fantasy, is nevertheless as cheerfully implausible as the rest of the plot.