Pan Macmillan, Sydney 2004

Finally I got lucky and found an Australian best-selling author writing about Australia. And this is the ultimate airport novel in an absolutely positive sense. It can make you forget everything and everybody around you on a twelve-hour-flight to or from Sydney.

You find yourself on a small island on the Great Barrier Reef in a luxurious tourist resort, where Blair Townse has got the job of assistant manager and his young wife Jennifer has come with him from Sydney.

But instead of playing the welcoming hostess to their posh guests, she makes friends with the members of  a small scientific research station on the other half of the island. While Blair is having an affair with a colleague at work, Jennifer spends more and more time at the station, doing some research of her own about sea turtles nesting on the beach. Although she is pregnant, she and Blair split up. Isobel, a very formidable and famous marine biologist, helps Jennifer to find her own role in life. And Isobel dedicates her life to saving the Reef, the oceans and just about everything in need of saving, including Jennifer´s baby.

This model of a lady seems to be Morrissey´s alter ego. All the good people together fight against the bad, bad big money people, who plan to turn the peaceful island into big tourist business. and, of course, in the end they succeed and Jennifer also finds new love.