BOOK REVIEW / Paperbacks: Island of Dreams by Tony Williams, Signet pounds 4.99

From Alexander Selkirk to Lucy Irvine the challenge of island life with no mod cons and lots of coconuts has spawned tales in which, usually, the idyll turns out to be not so simple. Tony Williams is an ex-schoolkeeper from Swansea who, reacting against the squalid materialism he sees around him and buoyed up by nave optimism, gets permission to squat with his young family on a tiny palm-planted mound of sand in the Cook Islands. The result is a wish-fulfilment which nearly turns sour.