This is worth reading!
As more and more blogs and reviews pop up everywhere, I want to concentrate on having a blog which encourages you to read books which are worth spending time on. I've just read three great books in a row, and this is one of them.
The setting is intriguing: a small uninhabited island in the Pacific, 1879. Based on the author's great uncle King Bell, who lived on the island of Raoul. Remote, harsh, volcanic. Fertile but grim.
The Peacock family is driven to the island by the father's manic desire to own an island, to be self-sufficient, to rage against the machine... The family has to go along with him and as more and more children are born, they build rudimentary shelters, plant gardens for food, fight off rats and goats, and forge a life for themselves.
Ships pass every few years, and one of them brings eight pacific island men to work for them to establish plantations and industry, all part of the Father's imagination.
The day the men arrive, the oldest son disappears and the family starts to unravel and the island's secrets are uncovered.
This story is very powerful, explores aspects of family life, exploration and colonisation in such a way that it captures us and keeps us reading, wondering how things can possibly be resolved.
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