HOME FROM THE SEA: Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa

A shallow and unimportant study of the last two years of Stevenson's life, living with his wife and step-children in the Samoan Islands. There is some overlapping of interest with This Life I Loved by Isobel Field, but -- given a choice of the two -- the Field book stands head and shoulders above this one, though the Samoan adventure is but a small part of the whole. Home from the Sea paints a stereotyped picture of a perpetual Peter Pan, in a day by day record of minor events, with but little sense of background. Perhaps Stevenson was only a Peter Pan, but I'd like to think he was something more, and this book does not help to a rounded picture of the man.