Patrick O’Brian’s The Far Side of the World enjoys a great title. The author knows it, and various characters use the phrase several times. Where is the ‘far side of the world’ — it’s the South Pacific, off the coast of Chile, where Surprise, Aubrey’s ship, is sent to protect British whaling ships from an American frigate. Over halfway through the novel, Aubrey jumps into the ocean at night to save Maturin, who has fallen in, as is his wont. The ship sails on without them to their dismay. Fortunately, they are saved by a boatload of Poylnesian Amazons, who seem to threaten castration, but eventually just leave them on an island. The Surprise finds them, amazingly enough (well, these are our heroes). The book ends with the ship returning to quell imminent battle on land between the shipwrecked sailors from the American frigate and a skeleton crew from the British ship left on the island. Onec again, O’Brian has no qualms about leaving his readers intensely eager to get to the next book.
I don’t know why the movie-makers are taking the titles from the first and the tenth Aubrey-Maturin novels for a single movie. The movie won’t bridge 10 books… no one is that foolish. We’ll see. If the movie arrives in November, I don’t have much time to get to the next (and last) ten books before opening night. Oh well.