Drop City by T. Coraghessan Boyle. First of all, don't pick this book if you read mainly on the train and in waiting rooms. There's full rear-view nudity on the cover, which isn't terribly explicit but does make it somewhat inappropriate for reading in public. I'm rather baffled as to why they chose to put nudity on the cover, because considering that one subplot is a hippie commune and the other subplot is a newlywed couple, there's less sex than one would expect.

The premise of this novel is a hippie commune relocates from California to Alaska, where they find themselves faced with the challenges of the natural environment and the backwoods-plaid-shirt-type area residents. Unfortunately it doesn't do as much as it could with such a promising premise. We're halfway through the novel before we head for Alaska, so there's a lot more character development than necessary, and a lot less action. While I have no objection to character development, in this case we simply don't need so many characters, or we don't need to know so much abuot them. The commune's neighbours accept them rather too quickly, and while all the challenges of living in the harsh Alaska environment are mentioned, they are more enumerated than made into plot points. The ending isn't really much of an ending, the story sort of just stops and we have no idea what happens to most of the characters, although there is some lovely schadenfreude on some of the more unpleasant characters.

Overall it's a decent read, but could have been done much better.