I read this book a couple of years ago for a book club, and have just found this copy in a charity shop.

Reverend Wilson thinks that Tasmania is the site of the garden of Eden, and maybe it was originally. But then the Europeans arrived and turned it into purgatory for the convicts and hell for the aborigines.

A disparate group of travellers set out for Tasmania in a ship crewed by Manx smugglers who need to get away from England for a while, but aren't equipped for a journey to the other side of the world. Apart from Reverend Wilson, there are Dr Potter, a eugenist hoping to test his racial theories on the Tasmanian aborigines, and Renshaw, an upper class 'slacker' whose family basically sent him on the journey to get rid of him. Their journey to Tasmania comes at a time when the European settlers are uniting to clear the island of its native population.

This books is by turns amusing and moving and the use of the different first-person narrators in each section works really well; their voices are all distinctive and their personalities come through strongly. My favourite character is Captain Kewley, an imaginative day-dreaming romantic adventurer. I like the ending, especially the way that Dr Potter gets his come-uppance.

RELEASE NOTES:

We'll be monopolising a pair of the black leather sofas.

Picked up at bookcrossing meetup 10.9.05. Have read and enjoyed this previously but looking forward to re-reading it.

My mum picked this up and passed it on to me. It sounds inmteresting!

I enjoyed reading this, it was very amusing in parts.

I will pass it on to a charity shop in sherwood.