HEADHUNTING AROUND THE CORAL SEA

This title has a grim double entendre today which was not the case when the book was written or even when it was originally reported for October publication (see Page 399, bulletin of August 15th). We liked it then; we like it still. And we feel it should be a gift from the gods to booksellers who want something that is good entertainment for the Christmas market. The postponement is due to the selection of the book as Book of the Month for January....A very personal, contagious record of two women's experiences in tropical lands, with a sort of Peter Fleming flair for misadventure and humorous incidents. Thoroughly entertaining account of hunting heads for portraits of vanishing negroid primitives, as told by an author-artist. With her man Friday, Margaret Werner, she traveled via Australia to the Coral Sea. With but few realistic considerations and only about $400 cash and abundant health and time, they get involved in situation after situation, from the initial uprising in Malaita, to the measles. They lose their painting equipment and make do with canvas sails and homemade paint. For the reader, there is enjoyment aplenty in reading of difficulties of transportation, annoyances and dangers, fire and earthquake, malaria, wogs, model troubles, too many beaux, hosts and hostesses, food and beds, plantations and native staffs, stories of doctors, missionaries, planters, et al. This is for the market of Land Below the Wind and The House in the Rain Forest.