Montgomery, Charles. 2007. The Shark God: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in the South Pacific. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.370 pages, includes a selected bibliography pp. 365 – 370.

ISBN 13: 978-0-226-53486-2
ISBN 10: 0-226-53486-3
Price: $17.00 US


In Shark God Charles Montgomery retraces his grandfather’s voyage on the Southern Cross, an Anglican mission ship. His grandfather, Bishop Henry Montgomery (1847 - 1932) was the fourth Bishop of Tasmania, and was the author of The Light of Melanesia (Full Text on Google Books).The elder Henry spent 55 years of his life establishing missions in the South Pacific. The Southern Cross was responsible for establishing a strong Anglican presence in the South Pacific, in a region known as Melanesia. These include the former colonial territories of New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), the Santa Cruz Islands, and the Solomon Islands. The British not only fought for these islands as territories, but they also believed that they were fighting to save the souls of those who were part of the Empire.

The book opens with a quote from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. The first line reads: “The story should begin at Oxford.” The sentence continues into an intriguing metaphysical mystery narrative, describing the author finding a small envelope filled with sand in the Oxford Bodlean Library. Charles Montgomery, the author, likes long, descriptive sentences reminiscent of Ford Maddox Ford and Henry James.

The New York Times Book Review calls this book a "memoir,” Amazon classifies it simply as “travel writing,” and the Library of Congress catalogs it as “Melanesian religion and myth” as well as “travel writing.” The Shark God is a journalistic attempt to deconstruct the mythology surrounding the mission work of his grandfather and his grandfather’s contemporaries.

In this quest he encounters such stories as “a ghost anthropologist” who dies in the jungle from malaria. Charles explores the historical record concerning legends about homosexual missionaries who turned to pirating. In his travels he interviews locals and gathers stories related to the Anglican martyr, Bishop Patterson. Some of these stories are filtered through many hours of kava drinking, a common ritual in Melanesia. He talks to the prophet Fred who promises him evidence of the John Frum cult, a cargo cult that believes a white savior named “Jon will come from America” (hence John From) with cargo, TVs, tinned meats, beer and cigarettes. He talks to Kastom Chiefs about magic. They each promise to show him how to control the weather, avoid sacred curses, and with a small donation learn knowledge that will give him power over his enemies. He encounters Peace Corps workers, isolated PhD students, the Melanesian Brotherhood and Harold Keke’s gun boats.

The Shark God is published by the University of Chicago Press and is in its second edition. Charles Montgomery is a journalist and photographer with four Western Magazine Awards, a National Magazine Award, the silver award for the 2003 American Society of Travel Writers, and the Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non Fiction in 2005.

As a journalist Charles has written for Outside magazine and is a contributor in Explore magazine’s anthology, Way Out There. The Shark God includes a selected bibliography and scholarly references. Readers will appreciate this as an informative page turner. It is a fascinating look at this exotic region of islands and atolls in an area that can boast the highest language and cultural density per square mile. As noted earlier, this book would find a good place in collections as well as libraries interested in documenting religion, mythology, missionary and histories in the Pacific.