When Kelvin returns to his childhood home on the southern coast of New South Wales, he discovers the town is a haven for people like him who are on the run from their pasts. He meets Jessica, a lawyer who has escaped the city, and Carl, an enigmatic American farmer. Both are pursuing new lives and causes inspired by the extraordinary landscape around them, but Kelvin begins to see the darker side of the environmental debate when he becomes drawn into a community of anti-logging activists. When his relationship with Jessica intensifies and eventually implodes, Kelvin makes a decision with devastating consequences for all of them.
An Accidental Terrorist, Steven Lang
A f2f bookclub read, I started this book with high hopes, having just finished another with what seemed like a similar concept. A scenario that had some serious potential, this book started off okay but quickly just seemed to degenerate into a mish-mash of making the reader feel sorry (attracted to / interested in) a central character that was just... well boring. Unfortunately this feeling of being bored was compounded by some extremely predictable events, actions and outcomes. Perhaps the idea was to show how somebody unwittingly gets involved with things that they shouldn't. Personally I didn't find it all that surprising / unlikely / sad or even unpredictable that this man could fall into such involvements.
I really really really struggled to get to the end of the book, hoping for some sort of moment in which our "hero" became the sort of bloke that I had a hope of understanding (quickly moved past wanting to like or even sympathise with him), and was more than disappointed to find a non-ending. I'm quite partial to an open-ended resolution to a book, but the story's got to be strong enough to support that - and if ever a book was calling out for a strong ending - this was it.