Really enjoyed this one; I’d read ‘On the Beach’ and loved it, but this is a very different sort of book and I wasn’t sure what to expect. While parts of it are a bit dated (premarital sex is referred to as ‘a fate worse than death’ and the racism is pretty rampant), its vivid depictions of life in the Pacific and Australia in the 1940s and 50s were instructive for someone like me who knows very little about the period/places but mostly entertaining- a nice antidote to ‘Main Street’!