The more I work on this series about Nevil Shute novels the more I think it hard to disdain them!
So Disdained 'published in the US as The Mysterious Aviator, and written soon after the General Strike of 1926, reflected the debate in British Society about socialism. The principled narrator initially chooses loyalty to a friend who betrayed Britain to Russia, over loyalty to his King and country. The book concludes with the narrator joining forces with Italian Fascists against a group of Russian spies.' - Wikipedia
A more biased view says that it is
for the most part a laid-back, spy novel, perhaps the first in which the communists are the villains, albeit tentatively. The second, more exciting half of the book, is marred by the protagonist allying himself with Italian fascists, depicted positively, to oppose the reds.
With that kind of sales talk, I'm sold! What an utterly fascinating blend of the most exciting manifestations of those times.
In So Disdained, as our hero prepares his plane for a long distance flight set for early the next morning, all I could think was “Somebody has to cut him some sandwiches!” But it was already late at night and his chaste love interest wasn’t on the scene. Who in the hell was going to cut him some sandwiches? When he returned to his cottage later that night, the love interest shows up and finds out about his impending flight. She makes no indication she is going to see him off, but I know my Shute. I knew as I read that somehow she was going to get him some sandwiches to take along and probably a flask of something. Alcohol? No he would be flying, can’t fly under the influence. Coffee? Yes, she was going to give him a flask of coffee to go with the sandwiches. That must be it.
The more the reviewers crib, the more enchanted I get:
So Disdained is an odd creature. It’s a terrible thriller, but it’s actually a nice bit of lit fic. In a thriller, we expect the outer action to be an outworking of the inner action. A thriller about a man regaining his patriotism would see him achieving some great goal for his country, with or without the cost of his life. The triumph of his inner journey would be expressed in the triumph of his outer journey. In lit fic, the rules of the thriller genre don’t apply, and we’re able to focus on and appreciate the inner journey despite the total futility of the patriot’s attempt to serve his country.
If that's not enough, we have an article which claims that Shute was almost prophetic:
After I read Shute's book, I checked with an archivist who handled Anne Morrow Lindbergh's papers. He could find no hint that the Lindberghs ever met Shute -- that they ever talked about the eerie similarities of those two flights, one real, one imagined.
Of course you and I know perfectly well that the future is not ours to know. But that's exactly why I find Shute's writings so unnerving -- that anyone might create fiction that so mirrors the opaque future. Then do it again and again from every crazy angle.
The Mysterious Aviator
Next comes Lonely Road 'This novel deals with conspiracies and counter conspiracies, and experiments with writing styles.' - Wikipedia
Though the Amazon cover above is dull as ditchwater it offers a preview.
Shute attempts some innovative writing quite successfully, when in the first chapter Stevenson, on the drunken evening out that leads to his encounter with the smugglers, goes through stream-of-consciousness scene shifts between present and past. In the preface he writes:
The first chapter was quite frankly an experiment, and one which pleases me still. It was a dangerous experiment, however, for a young writer to make in the first pages of a book, for it defeated a good many readers who might have enjoyed the story if they had been able to read on. In spite of this the book did moderately well in this country and in America. In 1936 a film was made from it at the Ealing Studies, starring Clive Brook and Victoria Hopper.
Alas, though there is a film of this book, no trailer exists.
I'd read it in a blink as I like the sound of it:
this book does work beautifully as a good yarn. It’s internally consistent, beautifully paced, and sparsely told. In fact, throughout it is beautifully told, which is for me pretty much a given with Shute. Where he writes about what he knows well – aircraft, usually, but in this case the sea and small boats, and the fast, damaged young men of the years between the wars – he is unsurpassed. He also writes the most beautifully moving tragedy I’ve ever read . . . small scale tragedy, little passages that toy with your heart and will take me to the edge of tears, even when I know them well, single lines that will take everything you have half learnt in the last three chapters and crystallise it into a single moment of heart-breaking sadness.
I wish I belonged to a mostly male book club so we could read Nevil Shute novels all the time and talk about what excellent manly virtues his heroes exhibit. We could sip our whiskey/port/other suitably manly beverage and toss off comments like “but Warren never lost his dignity” and “he sacrificed himself to save an entire town” and then get slightly teary and sentimental and it would all be wonderful. Since I don’t, let us pause for a moment to imagine how pleasant that would be.
As usual, the dull Amazon cover provides a preview:
Ruined City is a “there but for the grace of God go I” story, in which the main character concocts an elaborate scheme to resurrect a moribund town and create jobs in the midst of the Great Depression. Shute seems to be pushing his readers, asking them “And how far would you go to get out of this mess?”
Every machine that’s put into a factory displaces labour. That’s a very old story, of course. The man who’s put to work the machine isn’t any better off than he was before; the three men that are thrown out of a job are very much worse off. But the cure isn’t Socialism—or if it is, I’m too much of a capitalist myself to see it. The cure is for somebody to buckle to and make a job for the three men.
My favorite part of Ruined City are the chapters in which the protagonist has to obtain consent of a foreign government to back his scheme. Shute provides us with a vivid, step-by-step account of bribing Balkan officials during the 1930s. Entirely a piece of fiction, no doubt.
Last night I watched No Highway but more about that later. All I can say is that I'm glad I read so many Nevil Shute novels and I would read them again without hesitation.
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