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I really enjoyed this story. I tend to agree with Issybird about the writing. It was fairly unsophisticated. At the beginning I felt it resembled a shopping list of activities rather than a narrative.
It was the story itself that drew me in. I loved the Malaya saga. It was a movie in words and although I stand by my claim that the writing wasn't brilliant, I still managed a very visual experience.
I didn't have as much trouble as some regarding the turnaround of Willstown due to one woman. I believe the first part of the story taught us what we needed to know about Jean Paget and I think her actions in Australia were not that unlikely given her character. If I hadn't read about the journey through Malaya I might have had a bit more trouble picturing it - but with that out of the way, everything seemed quite plausible.
I also enjoyed the romance. It was lovely to see something a bit more understated and restrained. The circumstances of him being in London and she being in Australia were far-fetched but were clearly there more as a device to delay gratification. But I was engrossed in Jean's adaptation to Willstown, so I never felt any impatience.
I did notice the "narrator problem". It didn't really occur to me as problematic until Jean arrived in Australia. I remember at one point thinking - who's me? Then I realised we were still reading this from Strachan's point of view. I thought it was logical to have him as narrator in the first part, but I was naturally assuming that once Jean left for Malaya/Australia that the narrative would switch. But at that point, I just turned off the niggle in my head and forgot about it until I read Issybird's post in this thread.
For me, there were two romances in this book. One was the obvious Jean/Joe romance. But I thought there was a bit more to it than that. Towards the end, I felt that this was also the unrequited romance of Strachan and Jean. It wasn't a realistic romance and it was clearly one-sided, but at the same time it was always there. Shute based the novel on the real life story of women who were marched around Sumatra by the Japanese and he was honouring an extraordinary woman that he met. To some degree, I felt that he was Strachan in the story - the vehicle to admire and love Jean Paget as he may well have loved and admired the muse of this story had he met her shortly after the war.
I'm not really try to give this book extraordinary literary depth by saying that. I just felt that A Town Like Alice may have started of a bit of a daydream about a woman Shute had met and although the story forked from the real life equivalent, it still retains some of Shute's awe of that woman. It's in the beauty he constantly references, the feeling that this woman could do anything - and he puts her through one trial after an another to show not only that she will always triumph, but that she does it with admirable composure. Even her own romance is conducted impeccably.
Anyway - that's just another thought I had about the book. I might not have noticed this as much if I hadn't read the small note about the real life woman to whom the story was dedicated.
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