A Town Like Alice

This is probably the most popular of Nevil Shute's books, accounting for almost half of all his 118,000 ratings on this site, and with some 3800 reviews.

It is a book you hear of often enough, but don't see about as much as you might expect, so I picked up a copy when I saw it. The story takes place over three parts, all narrated by Noel Strachan, an elderly solicitor who is acting for a client - making out his will, and then on his clients passing becoming a trustee.

In the first part , set in London, we follow Strachan tracking down Jean Paget, who is the inheritor of the mans money, although the capital is in trust until she reaches the age of 35 (young women cannot be trusted in the matter of money, don't you know!)

The second part flashes back to Jean Paget's time in Malaya during the war. She was working there and was taken prisoner by the Japanese with a group of British women and children. Speaking Malay, she takes a leaders role in the group, who are forced to walk large distances under guard to the women's POW camp, although this becomes a journey of many parts as there doesn't appear to be a camp, and the responsibility for them is passed from commander to commander. Along the way the women meet an Australian POW who is working as driver for the Japanese, and they strike up a friendship.

From that point on spoilers abound, so I won't go on, but as is pretty obvious from the title of the book, the third part of the book takes place in outback Australia.

It was an enjoyable book, very easy reading, and had it's moments of sadness and amusement, but the story wasn't without some poorly conceived aspects. The romance was pretty lamely written, and contradictory they 'spent that day in a curious mixture of love-making and economic discussion' in one chapter, and then she apologies for 'making him wait until they are married', and as mentioned below, follows the conservative conventions in the town.

It is, of course, a product of it's time, and shows its age with things like the derogatory terms for the Aboriginal stockmen, the casual mention of Aboriginals not being allowed to be in shops, and their completely subservient positions. Also dated was the strict morality of the time - not wanting to employ a girl as she was ‘a slut', a woman not being permitted to stay overnight with a fiance, and a man even not being able to visit in her room. I suspect much of this would be foreign to modern readers.

Nevertheless with these flaws I am still glad I read this well known book, but I am not sure I will seek out further Nevil Shute books immediately.

4 stars.