Silver

By Andrew Motion

July, 1802. In the marshy eastern reaches of the Thames, a young boy spends his days roaming the mist-shrouded estuaries and listening to his father's tales of adventures: on the high seas, of curses, murder and revenge, black spots and buried treasure--and of a man with a wooden leg.
 
It's almost forty years after the events of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island: Jim Hawkins now runs an inn called the Hispaniola on the English coast with his son, Jim, and Long John Silver has returned to England to live in obscurity with his daughter, Natty. Their lives are quiet and unremarkable; their adventures have seemingly ended.
 
But for Jim and Natty, the adventure is just beginning. One night, Natty approaches young Jim with a proposition: return to Treasure Island and find the rest of the treasure that their fathers left behind so many years before. Jim joins Natty aboard a ship--the Nightingale--and the new friends set out to sail in their fathers' footsteps. But their journey is fraught with murderous pirates, long-held grudges, and greed and deception lurking in every corner. When they arrive on Treasure Island, they find terrible scenes awaiting them and difficulties which require all their wit as well as their courage. Nor does the adventure end there, since they have to sail homeward again...
 
Andrew Motion has written a truly accomplished work of literature--rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly brilliant--that would make Robert Louis Stevenson proud.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 29, 2012
• ISBN: 9780385670708

Andrew Motion

Andrew Motion was poet laureate in the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009, and is the 2015 winner of the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry for his collection Peace Talks. The author of several biographies, he won the Whitbread Prize for Biography for his authorized life of Philip Larkin (1993). He has published a memoir, In the Blood (2006), and two acclaimed young adult novels based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island: Silver and The New World. Cofounder of The Poetry Archive, Motion was knighted for services to poetry in 2009. He is currently Homewood Professor in the Arts at Johns Hopkins University, and lives in Baltimore, Maryland.

Reviews for Silver

[jlharmon · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This book had a lot of potential. The characters of Treasure Island have so much potential. Everyone loves a pirate story. Swashbuckling. Learning new (sometimes illegal) skills. Treasure. Sword fights. Maybe even some romance. This book tried. Really. It had exciting characters. It had girls posing as boys. It had marooned pirates and escaped slaves. It even had treasure. But it never really took off. It seemed like Motion was more concerned about neat turns of phrase and description than getting the story off the ground.

Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver are old men. But they have teenaged kids. Natty, Silver's daughter convinces Jim, Hawkin's son, to voyage to Treasure Island to recover the rest of the silver left there by the original party. They have a fairly uneventful journey there, but find the island under the control of the nasty marooned pirates from the original story. The plot limps along with abolitionist and feminist tirades thrown in. "Not all history people are bad!" writes the 21st century author. I'm not sure why that had to be a part of it. Why not just make Natty a strong young woman and show the plight of the slaves without having young main character narrator comment explicitly on everything?

Anyway, I finished the book because David Tennant read it to me. I was happy with the narration, but the text itself was disappointing.

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Except it wasn't ok. This is pretty tedious. I never like being told what to make of a character's actions. For a hundred and fifty pages Jim Hawkins (junior) tells us things like 'she looked at the ground so I thought she must be sad' and 'I am older now but that was how I saw it'. Probably the original Treasure Island is written in the same way - but my memory is that the original allows the reader to see past the narrator's youthful narrative and see the other characters through that prism. The remainder 250 pages continue much the same but with more predictable action, more stereotypes, and less mystery. I had to skip through to the end so I count it as abandoned. And even so the final page was a letdown. [downgraded to one star after reading some other reviews :)]

[scarylullabies · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

David Tenant's narration of this is very enjoyable, but even given the existence of the sequel, the ending seems very much like Motion couldn't figure out how to conclude this story. On top of that, I found Natty to be one of the more compelling characters, and we don't get to spend nearly as much time with her as I would expect. It is a great audiobook for when you're working or doing other things, because it's very verbose, so you can follow it even if you miss a few words here or there.

[whitreidtan · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When I was young, I spent many hours with my books (not that I don't now too, mind you). I still vividly remember reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island and thrilling to all the adventure and swashbuckling in it. I even bought the tiny library by our cottage a copy because they didn't have their own on the shelves, having to order it from the main branch 45 minutes away. And perhaps it's the book that inspired the lifelong fascination with pirates for staid little me. So just imagine my delight when I found that Andrew Motion had written a sequel to Treasure Island, one where Jim Hawkins' son, also named Jim Hawkins, and Long John Silver's daughter Natty return to Treasure Island to retrieve the silver that their fathers left there in favor of the gold they brought home. Forty years after their voyage to Treasure Island, Jim Hawkins runs an inn called the Hispaniola in the lonely marshes of the Thames. He rather plods through life, mourning the early death of his wife and telling his tale of glory again and again of a rum soaked evening. Long John Silver is blind, ravaged, and invalid in his odd, higgledy-piggledy house and taproom but still controlling and somehow, even in his aged state, capable of inspiring fear and loyalty in equal measure. The canny old pirate sends his daughter Natty to beckon to young Jim Hawkins, the son of the original Jim, and to entice him to steal the map of Treasure Island from his father with an eye to sailing back to that distant island. And young Jim, feeling an immediate pull to Natty and despite his misgivings about the old pirate, agrees. So the two young people set out on a long voyage on the Nightingale, a ship financed by Long John Silver, captained by a benevolent, moral, old salt, and with Natty disguised as a boy. As they sail, they find the dangerous, malevolent, and unhinged nephew of one of the original pirates working in the crew on their ship casting a blight on their journey and they must prepare themselves for whatever they might encounter when they arrive at Treasure Island, knowing that their fathers had marooned three men there when they left. And when they finally arrive, they do find that it is not a deserted island as might be expected but populated by a pure evil. This evil changes the tenor of their plans entirely. Although using the original as a starting point and being beautifully written, easily evoking the language of Stevenson, this is a much less enchanting novel. The characters are firmly good or bad with only Long John Silver retaining any air of ambiguity and reality, but of course he is only seen at the start. Natty and Jim might be intrepid adventurers but they aren't as engaging as their fathers were. The situation on Treasure Island is unexpected (really, the maroons are still alive?) and quite honestly, rather unrealistic and unbelievable, as is the attitude of the Captain, his men, and Natty and Jim given the time period in which they live. There are other occurrences on the island that also beggar belief as well but the climactic fight scene is thrilling and as desperate as any reader could want. The ending of the novel, however, is wholly unsatisfying and feels like a complete cop-out. I so wanted to love this novel that perhaps my expectations were too high. Unfortunately the thing came off as moralistic and far less inspired than the original and I don't know that those unfamiliar with the original would be able to follow it at all.

[twink_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Miss Spicer was 'my' librarian when I was young. Her dark dresses, severe bun and black glasses gave her a stern air which definitely deterred anyone from running and talking loudly in the library. But, it was she who fed and fostered my love of reading. I always asked her what I should read next. To her credit, she never, ever brushed me off. One summer she decided I would read the classics - Swiss Family Robinson, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island and more. It was the sense of adventure, the unknown and putting myself into the character's shoes that spirited me away for many a hot afternoon. With the release Andrew Motion's new book Silver - Return to Treasure Island - I was yet again transported away on a adventure with pirates, parrots and plunder. Jim Hawkins returned to England with his share of the treasure and now, in 1802, is an innkeeper. He runs the inn with the help of his son Jim. Jim has grown up hearing the tale of Treasure Island over and over again. And so has Natty, who shows up one night with a proposition for young Jim from her father - Long John Silver. Silver wants young Jim to 'obtain' the map to Treasure Island from his father. There is still treasure to be recovered and Silver will provide the ship, captain and crew for the voyage. He is too infirm to go himself, so Natty will go in his place, disguised as a boy. Andrew Motion is a superb storyteller. His tale pays homage to Stevenson, keeping the tone and language true to the time. The book isn't a fast paced swashbuckler, although there is of course a requisite sword fight. Rather, it is somewhat leisurely in spots, allowing us to take in Jim's narrative and descriptions. A third of the book is devoted to getting to the island. Once there, Motion does a great job of re imagining what the island would be like - and what happened to those left marooned many years ago. It is here that the story takes off - good vs. evil, love lost and found, duty and honour and more. In a sly nod to the original, the crewman most often in the crow's nest, keeping an eye out - is named Stevenson. The ending left me a bit unsatisfied. The door has been left open for a sequel's sequel. I'm not sure if children today would enjoy this sequel or not, but this adult quite enjoyed being transported back to her childhood.

[adpaton · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some writers [like PD James] take unpardonable liberties with the classics when they attempt a sequel but former poet laureate Andrew Motion strikes just the right note and fans of Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson’s most popular work, will not be disappointed. Silver is set a generation along from the original and features Jim Hawkins Junior who, together with Long John Silver’s daughter Natty, sets sail once again for the island to retrieve the remainder of the silver.Far from being deserted however, the place contains some exceedingly nasty and degenerate characters and Jim faces pitched battles and a lot of bloodshed. To say more would spoil this lyrical and satisfying romantic adventure.

[dlmorrese · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sequel to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island? Really? When I saw this on the shelf at my local library, I thought it takes a pretty competent and gutsy writer to try that. Well, why not? I picked it up, took it home, and read it over the course of the last few evenings. This is what I thought about it.
I won’t try to compare this novel to Treasure Island. It’s been years since I’ve read Stevenson’s classic adventure tale of pirates and buried treasure. This is perhaps just as well since this novel stands on its own, albeit with settings and minor characters from Treasure Island. It takes place about forty years after that book ends. Jim Hawkins, the son of the original Jim Hawkins, is the first person narrator. Natty, the daughter of Long John Silver, is his companion and the instigator of their adventure together. Their goal is to return to Treasure Island and recover the remaining treasure -- a large number of silver bars.
I loved the prose from the beginning. It definitely has a quality and style you see too seldom in recent writing. It did not try to ‘grab’ be at the beginning. It did not try to shock me or entice me with ‘action.’ (I normally hate openings like that.) It invited me in, the narrator almost seeming like a bashful host for the story he was to tell. In my opinion, the prose style alone makes this book worth reading.
In other ways, though, I found the novel less satisfying. The plot tends to drag in places, with no mysteries or answers being discovered, just bits of well-executed prose marking the passage of time and reflecting. I also did not find the characters overly interesting. Jim, as the average young man grown bored by his father’s retellings of his adventures, just did not ring true to me. He seems too subservient and has too little longing for his own adventures to be interesting until Natty shows up. After that, he mainly follows her lead. Although it would be historically unlikely, I think this story may have been better told from Natty’s point of view rather than from Jim’s. She is the far stronger and more interesting of the two main characters. I would not object to this lack of fidelity to historic sensibilities because this is not a story told by a Victorian writer for a Victorian reader. It is a modern story for a modern audience.
Overall, I enjoyed this book. I recommend it to fans of the original Treasure Island and to anyone looking for a well-written new novel that is out of the ordinary.