Here are three Nevil Shute novels that are better known and which I'm sure I have read - ages ago, of course!
As usual, you can read the novels by clicking on the title and/or enjoy a preview via the Amazon.com book covers.
A Town Like Alice 'US title: The Legacy. The hero and heroine meet while both are prisoners of the Japanese in Malaya (now Malaysia). After the war they seek each other out and reunite in a small Australian town that would have no future if not for her plans to turn it into "a town like Alice."' - Wikipedia
It was made into a film again, later, and there is also a TV series - alas, I can't offer you more than just another trailer:
As usual, you can read the novels by clicking on the title and/or enjoy a preview via the Amazon.com book covers.
A Town Like Alice 'US title: The Legacy. The hero and heroine meet while both are prisoners of the Japanese in Malaya (now Malaysia). After the war they seek each other out and reunite in a small Australian town that would have no future if not for her plans to turn it into "a town like Alice."' - Wikipedia
Official film trailer - 1956
In Nevil Shute’s most beloved novel, a tale of love and war, we follow Jean Paget, its enterprising heroine, from the Malayan jungle during World War II to the rugged Australian outback.
Paget, a young Englishwoman living in Malaya, is captured by the invading Japanese and forced on a brutal seven-month death march with dozens of other women and children. A few years after the war, Jean is back in England, the nightmare behind her. However, an unexpected inheritance inspires her to return to Malaya to give something back to the villagers who saved her life. But it turns out that they have a gift for her as well: the news that the young Australian soldier, Joe Harmon, who had risked his life to help the women, had miraculously survived. Jean’s search for Joe leads her to a desolate Australian outpost called Willstown, where she finds a challenge that will draw on all the resourcefulness and spirit that carried her through her wartime ordeals.
It was made into a film again, later, and there is also a TV series - alas, I can't offer you more than just another trailer:
The thing about this book is that it’s wonderfully nostalgic in a very specific way. It reminds me of the piles upon piles of old, musty novels that my Grandad had stored in the shed by his farmhouse, sitting on home-crafted shelves made of wooden planks and lived in by small, thin spiders and sparrows’ nests. They were from all the decades before the computer was invented, with leathery backs, ripped paper jackets, and pages the colour of sand at dusk. But they were books, and the magic of a book, if I can be emotional for a second, is that the story in it, if it is good, forgives everything else; in fact, transforms everything else into part of the happy experience, into part of the magic. A Town Like Alice is one of these books.
Next we have Round The Bend 'a 1951 novel by Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Constantine "Connie" Shaklin, an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion transcending existing religions based on the merit of good work. It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950.' - Wikipediaa 1951 novel by Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Constantine "Connie" Shaklin, an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion transcending existing religions based on the merit of good work. It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950.a 1951 novel by Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Constantine "Connie" Shaklin, an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion transcending existing religions based on the merit of good work. It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950. a 1951 novel by Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Constantine "Connie" Shaklin, an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion transcending existing religions based on the merit of good work. It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950.
Round the Bend" is a curious book in many ways. To me, it actually has a flavour of science fiction. It's writing about a world very different to mine - the world of my parents.
Technology is very different. Aviation is still taking off. It takes a couple of weeks to travel half-way round the world in a small plane. The world is still a large place and people have very little knowledge of what life is like in other countries.
Racial prejudice is a basic fact of life. The idea of marrying someone of another race is inconceivable - not in the sense that it is terrible, but because you literally would never conceive of doing so. People of non-white races get lower wages as a matter of course, or may be banned totally from working in some places.
Set against this background, what we actually have is a novel about people of different races and faiths working together in harmony. It's the world of aviation pilots and engineers, where the shared fascination with planes leads to respect and friendship.
It's also a world (which reminded me a little of 'Stranger in a Strange Land') where one man can start a new form of religion.
What I like about Shute is that he tells the story. He never rants on (and nor do his characters) about things being good or bad - they live their lives and deal with things as they are. He doesn't try to manipulate the reader.
His characters are seen through the eye of the engineer.
he meets his old friend Connie Shaklin - a first class aircraft engineer, half European, half Asian, who joins his operation as Chief engineer,
Connie's method of teaching aircraft maintenance combines the practical and spiritual - right thinking and good work are inseparable. An ascetic and modest man, Connie is soon established as a religious teacher in Bahrein gaining the respect of the local Imams and Sheik. The book unfolds the story of the spread of this teaching throughout the Middle and Far East among ground engineers and religious leaders. This spread parallels the development of Tom's aviation business eastward from Bahrein to Australia.
The Far Country 'In this novel, Shute has some harsh things to say about the new (British) National Health Service, as well as the socialist Labour government, themes he would later develop more fully in In the Wet. He describes the lot of the 'New Australians'; refugees who are required to work for two years where they are placed, in return for free passage to Australia.' - Wikipedia
The title, The Far Country , refers to the distance not only of Australia from England, of Jennifer from her parents back in Leicester, when most travel was by sea, but also of England from Australia, of the austerity in Britain only dimly perceived by the now prosperous Dormans in the back blocks of Victoria. So yes, I enjoyed The Far Country as a simple story well told, but also as a social history of the times and locales of my earliest years.
In the next post we look at In the Wet, Slide Rule, and Requiem for a Wren, the middle one being autobiographical.
a 1951 novel by Nevil Shute. It tells the story of Constantine "Connie" Shaklin, an aircraft engineer who founds a new religion transcending existing religions based on the merit of good work. It deals with racism, including the White Australia policy, and also with the importance of private enterprise. It was one of the first novels Shute wrote after emigrating from Britain to Australia in 1950.
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