This is one of the best books that I have read this year. I was completely captivated by the story of the Peacock family, who on the face of it appear as a close unit. However, as the book progresses we come to see and understand how dysfunctional they really are.

The titular Mr. Peacock, is a presence that looms large over not just the characters of this book, but of the island itself. Indeed, the island is so significant to the story that it almost presents as a character in it's own right.

The author has skilfully used her prose to describe the atmosphere on this volcanic island. It oozes with description and atmosphere and the reader can feel the tensions created through the hard life of attempting to settle in an inhospitable natural environment.
I thought this was a fantastic read and I highly recommend it.

I am in charge of the senior library and work with a group of Reading Ambassadors from 16-18 to ensure that our boarding school library is modernised and meets the need of both our senior students and staff. It has been great to have the chance to talk about these books with our seniors and discuss what they want and need on their shelves. I was drawn to his book because I thought it would be something different from the usual school library fare and draw the students in with a tempting storyline and lots to discuss.
This book was a really enjoyable read with strong characters and a real sense of time and place. I enjoyed the ways that it maintained a cracking pace that kept me turning its pages and ensured that I had much to discuss with them after finishing. It was not only a lively and enjoyable novel but had lots of contemporary themes for our book group to pick up and spend hours discussing too.
I think it's important to choose books that interest as well as challenge our students and I can see this book being very popular with students and staff alike; this will be an excellent purchase as it has everything that we look for in a great read - a tempting premise, fantastic characters and a plot that keeps you gripped until you close its final page.

Joseph Peacock, the Mr Peacock of the title, is a patriarchal figure, presiding over what he views as his own ‘Garden of Eden. His wife and family have trailed behind him from island to island, leaving behind a legacy of failed ventures and catastrophes, as he searches for land he can call his own. ‘Plenty proved not enough for Mr Peacock. It wasn’t his, you see.’ Arriving on the remote Monday Island (also known as Blackbird Island), not visited by passing ships from one year to the next, they find it is definitely not the Paradise they had been promised. Cheated by those they had trusted for supplies, for a long time they lead a hand to mouth existence, at near starvation point and relying only on their survival skills and what they can forage from the island.

Ah yes, the island. At times nurturing, at other times sinister and threatening. ‘In fact, everything here grew a sight too much for Ma’s liking. It didn’t seem right, all this unearned fecundity. Flowers that unfurled their perfume unbidden, petals and even leaves so brightly-coloured they seemed brazen. Vines carelessly floating their seeds any which way and honeyed fruit that flaunted itself, then rotted, reeking, where it softly fell.’ At times, the island almost seems a living being. ‘The air itself feels violent, as though the island is gathering itself for something. She imagines it breathing, heaving, maybe shifting.’ Furthermore, it turns out the island has hidden dangers and harbours terrible secrets.

I really liked the distinctive, almost poetic, narrative voice the author creates for Kalala, one of the six Pacific Islanders who arrive on the island to work for the Peacocks, and through whose eyes the reader witnesses some of the events. For example, this description of their voyage to Monday Island. ‘Esperanza pitch and roll, still in deep water plenty lengths from land, and beyond her monstrous roaring.’

I loved the way the author explored the idea of possession in all its myriad meanings. For example, it becomes clear that Joseph Peacock considers his family, and the Pacific Islanders contracted to work for him, as ‘possessions’ he owns. However, his most prized possession is the island itself. Greeting Kalala for the first time as he struggles ashore, Peacock says, ‘Welcome to my island.’ – note the ‘my’ there. But the islanders too covet the tangible rewards they will receive in return for their work. ‘For have we not come here, we six, we islanders in hope of great possessions.’

Through the course of the book, the reader begins to understand just how crucial it is to Mr Peacock to possess land, not just as something to claim ownership of in the present – although that’s important – but to be able to pass on to his eldest son, Albert. ‘All this work has always been for Albert. It’s all Pa cared about. Not him, exactly. But his name. Securing the future for the Peacock family, a tiny empire nobody could ever take away because it belonged to no one, where nobody else could give orders. Peacock land for generations.’

This desire to pass on land, as a testament to everything he has worked for and the obstacles he has overcome, is at the root of Peacock’s troubled relationship with Albert. Because Albert doesn’t seem to share his father’s burning desire for ownership of land; in fact, Albert hates the island as he hated the voyage there. For Peacock, Albert is a disappointment, branding him ‘weak’, ‘a shirker’, physically chastising him and viewing him as someone who constantly falls short of his expectations, particularly in comparison with his daughter, Lizzie.

It transpires that the relationship between Peacock and his daughter, Lizzie, is equally complex. Courageous, strong and adventurous, she shares a similar temperament to her father. ‘For Lizzie was her father’s daughter, a moth to the flame of new hopes and possibilities.’ For a long time Lizzie is blind to her father’s faults and his true nature, even though the other children see it only too clearly. Eventually Lizzie finds herself facing an awful choice. Because she too has ‘possessions’ – her family – she feels bound to protect.

Of course, the term ‘possessed’ may also be used to describe being taken over by strong emotions and, at times, we get glimpses of Joseph Peacock as a man possessed by a sort of madness. Here is a portrait of a monster, someone possessed by a desire for control, manipulative and violent. Before the end of the book the reader will be witness to the disastrous and tragic consequences of his desire for possession and the lengths to which he will go.

Mr Peacock’s Possessions is like the strange but wonderful lovechild of Swiss Family Robinson, Lord of the Flies and The Tempest. It will appeal to readers who like their historical fiction full of atmosphere and compelling characters…and an undertone of menace. Highly recommended. I can see this novel making some literary prize shortlists.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of publishers, Bonnier Zaffre, and NetGalley in return for an honest and unbiased review.

This was a recommendation from a fellow NetGalley addict and goodreader and what a great recommendation it turned out to be. I enjoyed everything about it. Many thanks to Bonnier Zaffre via NetGalley for the opportunity to read an ARC.

In particular I relished the interaction between the family members and between the family and the six Pacific Islander men who come to help them make a success of their attempt at self-sufficiency on a remote volcanic island. Especially effective is the continuous switch between a third-person narrative, often from Lizzie’s perspective, recounting events as they happen in the present day and two years earlier when the family first arrived, and Kalala’s first person account showing how the family and their behaviour appear to an outsider - outside the family, but emotionally sensitive to the family dynamics. An interesting aspect is that the Islanders are educated far beyond the Peacock children who cannot even read and write and one of the brothers is on the way to becoming ordained as a minister. The children of the family come to realise that there is a great big world out there and they are ill equipped for life away from the island. They are all in fear of their father, a monstrously driven bully of a man who terrorises anyone who disobeys him or fails to pull their weight and who is especially hard on his delicate eldest son, Albert. This son’s disappearance sets off a cycle of suspicion and accusation that culminates in confrontation.

I think the pacing of the story is very well handled and it combines all the elements designed to appeal to me - plenty of description of the island, its jungle, swamps and cliffs, and a real sense of the pioneer nature of the family’s existence, well-judged inclusion of facts about the Pacific Islands’ recent history, some engaging personal relationships and evidence of emotional development, and at the heart of it the question of what happens to Albert. I’d recommend without hesitation.

Lydia Syson’s “Mr Peacocks Possessions” is a special, wonderfully poetic and unrestrained book of family and community struggles, survival and division. Mr Peacock has a burning desire to own and operate his own place, to be self-sustainable, and master of his own domain. Swiss Family Robinson may be the dream, the reality will be a lot different!

While the family is encouraged by dreams of a paradise island where they can live as they please, reality will be a cruel companion. A great leader must be driven, have a vision, be robust in determination but must also take others with them on their quest. After years of hardship scrounging out a settlement, the Peacock family now have different outlooks and aspirations which are just about to be exposed and challenged.

The book starts at a linchpin moment in the history of the Peacock family. That moment sees the arrival of a group of native South-Pacific Islanders on the ship Esperanza to help the family establish dwellings, farmland, and grazing land amongst the forests and scrubland. At the same time, Albert, the eldest son goes missing and all attempts at finding him fail. The narration provides two time strands; one from 2 years prior to this pivotal moment leading back to current time and the other from this current time on.

The Islanders: Solomona, Kalala (both brothers), Iakapo, Pineki, Vilipate and Likatau.
The Peacock family, palagi (white non-Samoan): Mr and Mrs Peacock, Lizzie, Ada, Albert, Billy, Queenie and Gussie.

The story is generally told in the third-person although there are recurrent first-person accounts from Kalala and Lizzie, each providing an important perspective from the two groups.

Right away there is a challenge to character stereotyping and perception because Solomona is a man of God, educated by The Reverend, who cites the Bible and carries an air of religious fortitude. Mr Peacock is the intemperate unreligious Master of the Island but cannot be seen to object to Gods teaching and observances – and is impelled into accepting that Sunday must NOT be a day of work. In 1897 the Islanders are deemed servants and are still a subjugated group. Have they moved that far from the repressed and brutal circumstances of slavery? The voices of ancestors that may have been on this island before, ring in Kalala’s mind.

As the book progresses relationships will be put under pressure and the basis of those relationships will be examined and tested. Some relationships will become stronger while others are stretched and even broken. The morality, ethics and beliefs are stretched with all the main characters, as secrets are unmasked.

This is an enthralling, cleverly written and fearless take on the desert island story with multiple characters and relationships that are intertwined to tell a tale of hardship, self-indulgence and the testing of core beliefs and allegiances. I highly recommend this book.

Many thanks to Bonnier Zaffre Publishing and NetGalley, for an ARC version of the book in return for an honest review.