Mixed Results in the South Seas. "Quiros", by John Toohey. [review]

Abstract

John Toohey’s "Quiros" is set during the seventeenth-century search for the Great South Land. Toohey negotiates the pitfalls of his genre with mixed success. The situation he explores is intriguing: men grouped in a confined place on a dangerous voyage to an uncertain destination. He sets up the various psychological dramas in a promising fashion, and gives his story the immediacy of a first-person narrator. However, various interesting possibilities are not fully explored. Perhaps the problem is a sense of uncertainty about the novel’s precise generic location, whether it is primarily a psychological drama or an adventure tale.