February 2013 Discussion: A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (spoilers)
 

The time has come to discuss the fascinating February 2013 MobileRead Book Club selection, A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute. What did you think?

As I said in another topic I was thrilled to realize this was in fact the film and mini-series I had both enjoyed so much way back when!
I can't say i remember a lot from the film and TV versions (apart from liking them - and Bryan Brown...), but I have a feeling the book gave more of a back story, and I liked that a lot.
The book felt "modern" considering it was written back in the 50's. It's interesting to see a man tell a story about such a strong woman.

While the blatant racism (mostly in the 3rd "act" of the book) was uncomfortable, the story as a whole was entertaining. Like Black Rain, from last year, A Town Like Alice took me by surprise. I think I will be less apprehensive of war time novels, going forward.

This did not read like a Romance to me. Yes the elements were there (again towards the latter half of the book) but this was certainly more Historical Fiction.

I haven't read this in decades, but I remember it well enough that I'm going to comment. I think the story is entertaining, but it's badly written. I doubt I'd be able to read it now, my tolerance for shoddy writing having been greatly reduced.

The use of Strachan as a narrator was an obvious and tempting device, but Shute didn't play by the rules. It was fine for him essentially to transcribe Jean's ordeal in Malaya as she related it to him, but after that he showed an impossible knowledge of Jean's activites in the Far East and most especially in Australia. We're supposed to believe that Jean even wrote in her letters to him about how she ended up bruised after snogging with Joe? Moreover, at times Strachan even seemed to be able to tell what was going on in Joe's mind! Generally speaking, the detail and knowledge of minutiae was impossible at Strachan's distance. Shute used Strachan to be able to comment on Jean's beauty and pluck and intelligence, etc., without using the direct authorial voice, but he didn't let it constrain his narrative as he should. Fail.

And just a couple of preposterous plot points. At the same time that Jean inherits a fortune, uses it to travel to the Far East and learns that Joe is alive, Joe learns that Jean was single, wins a pool, and travels to London? Oh, c'mon.

Then, there's the absurd closed economic system that Jean was able to parlay on the basis of a shoe factory employing four. The World Bank missed out when she wasn't made Czarina for life. I expected Willstown to beat Sydney to an opera house, at the rate she was going. Shute had a story he wanted to tell, but he left reality in the dust.

Add to that wooden prose and unnatural dialogue. I won't go into detail about the rampant racism, but Mrs. Boong fails to charm, even before we see the attitude toward the aboriginal people in Oz. Even if you tolerate the cringe-inducing moments as a reflection of its time, it's not worth such a flawed book.

I'm calling Shute a hack who no longer deserves to be read.

For me, historical fiction is set in a time before that in which it was written, ie, it's historical fiction from the get-go. Town was contemporary fiction when it was written and it remains so. Historical fiction relies on research and can reveal an author's expertise or lack of knowledge regarding the setting; it also frequently benefits from authorial knowledge of what happens next.

It was the first time I read something of Nevil Shute and I rather liked the book. Perhaps the fact that I read it straight after Nabokov's Lolita did attribute something to this.

I read it in a day and liked it; a nice uncomplicated romance, about nice people; a bit old fashioned. It remembered me of my early reading days, when there were not many childrens book around and I made do with what I could find in the house.

It was written in 1950 and is very much a contemporary novel. I think it was common to speak about coloured people in, now seen as, racist wording. Colonialism was still a normal thing then, although many countries were in the process of decolonization.

Some things in this book are too good to be true; the coïncidence of Joe and Jean Paget both hearing news about each other and others. Also the story of how its told by Strachan is a bit far fetched, in the sense that he is, wrongly, presented as an omniscient narrator. He seems to hover above all, knowing all and that is just not possible.

What surprised me, although I should have known it, is the story of the capture of British and Australians by the Japanese. I only know the tales of the Dutch that have suffered in the camps of the Japanese (women and children) and the men working on the Burma Railway. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanes...n_of_Indonesia
In that sense this book has contributed to my awareness of their history.
Also it was one of the few times that I read something about life in Australia in the 50ies.

Much of what I was to say about this book has already been stated by others, especially Issybird. The racism in Australia, the implausible occurrences, and Shute's playing fast and loose with the story narration.

I would also add that it made me uncomfortable to be reminded of the superior attitude of the British colonial occupiers towards the Japanese and the Malaysians. Taking a quote from the book:


Even defeated and prisoners of the Japanese the British expected to be treated like hothouse flowers. I was reminded of this quote form the film The Bridge on the River Kwai:

I was also struck by the sexist attitudes prevalent in the book.

So I can understand that attitude about the competence of women being accepted in society, and by Strachan, but Jean Padget who had survived the ordeal during WWII and since then making her own way just fine agreeing with it?

I did think that this was definitely in the correct category as a romance. It was a fairy tale type romance, two people destined to be together meet under trying circumstances, are parted by history, yet in the end come together through almost miraculous means and live happily ever after.

From the author's note section of my ebook edition:

I didn't realize it was written/published in the 50s. So yes, Contemporary Fiction.

The main point for me was that it did not feel or read like a Romance, IMO.

For me it was definitely a book of two halves. At the outset, it felt like a story from Robbert Goddard (a good thing) - a story rooted in the past, where decisions made years and even decades ago has a impact on current events. However, once the narrative moved from Malaya to Australia, it felt like a different book altogether. It became a simple romance weaved around a faintly ridiculous story of the single-handed regeneration of a town by one person. Donald Trump eat your heart out. Fun, but not too believable. The casual racism was hard to take at times, though was no doubt an accurate reflection of the times. The thing that struck me in the Oz section was the intimate detail that the narrator Strachan knew about the unfolding events. I found myself brought out of the story as I contemplated how he could have known what was happening to that level of detail at such a far remove.

On balance, an enjoyable read which I liked more than I thought I would. The writing was simpler than I was expecting, but the story, particularly the early bits in Malasia during the war, were absorbing and at times fascinating.

Excellent review Orlok.

I guess I just didn't take the book that seriously. I read it for what it was, a story of trials, tribulations and triumph. I'm guessing that my having little expectations going into it, helped as far as my enjoying it. I really didn't care how or why Strachan knew what he knew, because it wasn't really about him. It was easy for me to push his voice into the back ground as "just" the narrator, when he wasn't directly involved in whatever was going on.

If you ignore the narration blunders like Strachan knowing too much about things he'd never know about, then the story sort of works. But it just seems a bit much at times. Also, when Strachan didn't tell Joe about Jean on her way to go see him, that was just mean and cruel. It's at that point, I lost any respect for Strachan.

I did like the story in Malaya. That was good. But it got a bit fanciful when it got to OZ and we had Jean basically building a town. The romance was silly. When they met in OZ, it wasn't romantic. It came off more like a business deal. If I can get he town going, we'll get married. otherwise, I'll go home. That's not love. That's a business deal.

To me this is definitely a romance book even thought it takes quite a while for the romance to actually happen.
Putting it in that "easy-read-romance" category probably makes me less critical than I should be.
Oh yes, coincident too good to be true, I agree. Immediate and unrealistic success of pretty much everything Jean touched, absolutely. But it was kind of a feel-good-read for me.
It's not a book I'm likely to re-read, but it put a smile on my face when I needed it.

I read strictly for pleasure, so if a book entertains me I make few other judgments about it. For that reason I rarely review a book. I can overlook many flaws if I remain eager to turn the next page.

A Town Called Alice passed that test for me. I often felt amusement by the improbability that Strachan would know the most intimate details of Jean’s life. I was going to write a ridiculing sentence about the idea that Jean could single-handedly cause a town to flourish until I remembered that the resurrection of my own lovely town was initiated by one individual.

The racism that permeated the characters’ attitudes was uncomfortable as it always is in a book that accurately reflects culture and era. But I am even less comfortable with historical novels that do not reflect prevailing attitudes so that the writer and readers can all feel better. If old books are expurgated and new historical novels free from the taint of racism, who can then understand the pain of the past and the enormous courage of the people who stood against it?

A Town Like Alice is not a historical novel. Historical fiction is fiction written in the past. The author's past. This is a contemporary piece of fiction given when it is about and when it was written.

Overall, I liked the story. But the way in which it was written leaves something to be desired.

I understand the distinction between contemporary and historical novels and that A Town Like Alice is a contemporary novel. I was referring generally to cultural attitudes in books about historical eras.

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.

Fantastic review Caleb! :)

I agree, and it is interesting to read all your different points of view. :)

i enjoyed reading your excellent text, Caleb 72. I agree with everything you say.

Yes, the narrative voice is a problem--as Issybird points out. Perhaps Shute should have simply used an omniscient narrator. On the other hand, when reading the book for the first time, I don't think one is immediately aware of the improbability of Jean communicating all of these ideas to Strachan--considering how personal some of them are. And I think Jean's character comes through fairly convincingly--though I wouldn't say the same about Joe.

I agree, too, that there are actually two romantic elements. Strachan clearly falls in love with Jean quite early on--witness his genuine upset when he learns that she doesn't intend to return. This also explains why he doesn't tell Joe where Jean is and that she is searching for him. Mean? Yes. But he is still smarting from his own sense of loss. What Strachan doesn't realise is that Jean does love him--but as a father figure. He adjusts to this in the end and on his visit finds that Jean and Joe regard him as part of their family and even name a child after him.

That final section does reflect certain obsessions of Shute. He was in love with Australia and admired its openness --the way it allowed a meritocracy to flourish. Further, he despised what he regarded as the stifling beauracracy which he felt dominated England. You can see this in other works he wrote--particularly The Far Country.

In the end, A Town Like Alice may not be a great novel--it certainly is rather diffuse and lacks coherence--but it is an entertaining story.

I enjoyed the story elements, especially the prisoner of war section. It was a very easy book to get into and I lost track of time when I was reading it.

I understand the complaints about the narrator, but it didn't bother me when reading since Strachan didn't insert himself into the story much, so if felt more like omniscient narration by the author.

I agree that the star-crossed lovers ending up on opposite sides of the world was over the top, but I presume it's a common romantic theme (not my genre), so I can forgive it.

Interestingly, I wasn't offended by the racism and sexism, since it reflected the world at the time. I've certainly read period books that were much worse on that front.

I never really mentioned that aspect in my little review. I wasn't really offended by any of that either. I think the book would have come across quite strangely if a lot of that wasn't present.

I even found the Mrs Boong reference quite amusing. There was something quite genuinely playful in its use and it failed to generate any shock or outrage on my part.

I had the same reaction. :)

Yes, Strachan was definitely in love with Jean and that does explain some of his actions. This seemed even more apparent to me when I saw the serialization for television a number of years ago. On screen such scenes as Strachan making the journey all the way to Australia to give Jean a pair of ice skates just because he has received a letter from her expressing dissatisfaction with her life there. What turns out to have been just a temporary mood swing of hers.

Anyway by the end Strachan seems content to assume the role of father figure, or perhaps unrelated uncle, to Jean and her family. Very much like John Jarndyce and Esther Summerson in Bleak House, eh?


To me the racism was not so much about things like “Miss Boong.” As for example when Jean is starting up her ice cream parlor she defers building the separate section where Native Australians will be allowed to enter. I suppose that given the overall tone of the book it would have been too much to expect an immigrant to Great Britain to even express any disapproval of such blatant segregation in Australia in the 1950s, but it still in noticeable.

^^I think the casual racism in Australia bothered me most because Jean was quite enlightened for her time toward the Malays and Islam. Somehow she didn't bring the same empathy toward the native people of Australia. I dimly remember an incident that irritated me, her rather superior and intolerant attitude toward a white rancher, his native wife, and their mixed children.

I agree with you. There was a glimpse of that "enlightenment" when she expressed surprise over the suggestion of not allowing the Native Australians to frequent the same side of the ice cream shop as the White Australians. However, that empathy quickly and completely disappeared once she decided to open a "separate but equal" part of the store - which, if I remember correctly, was not always exactly equal.

Strong points--both.

The problem with the racial discrimination which is certainly implied in A Town Like Alice and the contrasting abilities of Jean to cleverly push just the right buttons to use the Malayan Islamic sexism against the men themselves in the building of the well for the benefit of women is interesting. Perhaps it derives from the possibility that writers--and the characters they create--may sometimes unconsciously compartmentalize their values in an odd way. Jack London was a believer in social equality--but this didn’t extend to racial equality.

So, though it is only marginally relevant, I’ll share with you another recent literary experience I had on this subject. I read a remarkable novel. I Pose, written in 1915 by Stella Benson {1892-1933). Benson was a militant suffragette and had a deep compassion for the socially deprived poor. She was actively and practically involved in both areas.

I Pose is her first novel and it could be loosely classed as a travel-romance focussing on a young militant suffragette and a gardener--neither of whom is named. However, it is certainly a highly ironic {and ultimately tragic} look at the social conventions or “poses” people adopt rather than finding their own inner selves. Benson satirizes gender and social stereotyping and attacks the Church as being a prime supporter of the regime.

But, in one section of the travels of the two characters, the young gardener works with the black natives of an island. What bothered me was that Benson’s character used language that now would be considered racist in a context that treated the social contexts of the natives in a comedic way. I can accept the language as that which would be used by the dominant classes in 1915 but the tone bothered {and bothers} me much more. Considering Benson’s deep compassion for the poor in London, dramatized by the young suffragette, it seems odd that she would create a central character who would be so obviously racist.

I’m still not certain whether or not Benson is simply using the gardener to ironically show another form of social discrimination--if she is, (and I so want to give her the benefit of the doubt} she doesn’t make it clear enough and this remains a failing in this otherwise brashly iconoclastic youthful novel.

I intend to read her later work to see if it has a more mature outlook. { BTW Everything she wrote is in the public domain}

To return to the topic and book at hand, I suppose it is possible that Shute was completely unaware of the racism in that latter part of the novel and was reacting to built-in stereotypes. If so, it still weakens the book for a modern reader.

Hmmm - I see it quite differently. I don't see Jean's decisions about the ice cream parlour to be very revealing on the point of racism casual or otherwise. I saw it purely as an example of her being shrewd. She asked for advice on the matter and then followed that advice. It is revealing about outback society at that time, but that's not necessarily the same thing.

Yes, that's the one incident where I felt she actually seemed to be expressing an attitude on the matter. It was mainly shock and disbelief - although it probably was quite shocking and unbelievable at the time.

In any case, I found the whole native Australian handling quite interesting especially as an Australian. A lot of what's written now would portray all of this under a sinister cloud to make it absolutely clear to the reader that the author was not racist. It's somewhat of a national pastime here. There is no pontification and I found the lack of agenda quite exhilarating.

Well, I have been thinking why I found this book " old fashioned".

The casual racism is one of the things that led me think this. I grew up, was brought up wth the same casual racism. That was rather a part of life then, and though I never questioned it at the time, I didn't share it of course. So, when reading this book I hardly noticed it, wasn't bothered by it, as I somehow expected it, being a book from the fifties.

The other thing is the omniscient presence of the narrator. Again, this didn't bothered me and I "expected" it as well, being brought up by strict religious parents with a God who was said to "see all, even the tiniest hair on your head". So, such a narrator would be acceptable for me.

These two things goes to show, for me that is, how initial upbringing can influence a view on book, rather than a subsequent academic education. Interesting......:)

My reaction is that the racism in the Australia portion is that, unfortunately, it really was unconscious. Shute went to great pains to show Jean as understanding in the Malaya portion of the book, so the contrast is telling to me.

I know it's outside the purlieus of this story, but think about Jean's prewar life in Malaya. The situation with the white rancher and his wife must have been fairly common on the rubber plantations in Malaya, although most of the interracial couples wouldn't have been married, and the woman and any children would have been abandoned if the rancher went back to England. In any case, Jean would have been well aware of it even if she didn't meet the men and their women socially. So why the shock and dismay in Australia? Especially since this seems to be a far better situation according to the morals of the time. The couple was married and the rancher wasn't leaving. The key element has to be race. So either it's because Shute has a different reaction to miscegenation with Asians or he just wasn't thinking about the implications of his story; I suspect some of both.

Well, yes. There is nothing more dreary than self-conscious political correctness and when it's retroactive it's even worse. It didn't bother me to read it and it wasn't unexpected in a book of its time, but when an otherwise perfect and noble character like Jean displays an unintended by the author but nonetheless serious flaw in her nature, it's offputting. Had Jean been less of a paragon it wouldn't have been as annoying.

Again, I didn't mind the racism as part of the story, but the book itself just isn't very good. We're not talking Merchant of Venice territory here. Alice, ironically, reads to me like typical book club fare of half a decade ago; it's dated and I don't think it deserves to be read as literature, although it has some interest as sociology. Books and most other matters of art and taste seem to go through a trajectory--current to dated. The issue is whether it emerges as classic or just period or is entirely forgotten. At best, Alice is period and it's good enough of that ilk. The story holds your attention.

That is certainly a fair assessment. :) Thank you for sharing it.

In fact, Shute is lucky to have survived as well as he has. Some of the A.M. & C.N. Williamson "travel" novels {available in the Mobile Read ebook library} have suffered the fate of being "forgotten"--even though some are quite good stories and were best sellers in the Edwardian and Georgian periods and were made into {silent} films.

Tend to agree with this. For me it was the story not the writing that pleased me. Before reading I had it tagged in my collection as Classics, Drama. After reading I removed the Classics and in no way felt compelled to add the tag Literary. Drama is fine for this novel. :)

Not sure what Shute felt about miscegenation in Malaya especially as he never mentions mixed couples or Jean's reaction to them in that section of the story. He may have missed the mark a bit with the handling of Malaya and just went with what suited him for the story.

He lived in Australia in the 50s so he might have had a bit more exposure. I'm not actually sure what exposure he had to Alice Springs and gulf country though. I've lived in Australia all my life and haven't had that much exposure to either. I think the closest I've got to gulf country was a holiday to Port Douglas/Cairns - not exactly a thorough exploration. :o

Funny! I tried reading Set in Silver by the Williamsons a while ago and bailed about a third of the way. I really do enjoy romances of the turn of the last century--think Hope, McCutcheon, Du Maurier (Gerald, not Daphne)--but I think the genre had been played out by the 20s. Period romances of that time seem to have been compelled to adopt an arch, essentially meta attitude, and I don't think it worked.

Honestly, that's why I'm calling him a hack. He's a good raconteur, but I don't think he cared enough about the underpinnings of his story. I suspect, for example, that he knew he ran into a problem with the omniscient Strachan, but essentially said the hell with it.

You're probably right there. But still, I'll happily keep On the Beach on my TBR list. Sometimes it's nice to have a bit of hack here and there. Meanwhile, I'm really struggling with Lolita even though it's clearly well written. :(

I read On the Beach. I did like like it better then A Town Called Alice. It didn't have flaws that were so noticeable.

I read Shute's No Highway last year. It was the first Shute I had read, and happens to be the book before A Town Like Alice. It suffers from the same omniscient narrator issue, and has the same unnecessary ending with the decision to write the book. I just saw it as a stylistic quirk, and went with it.

My general feeling from Alice is that Shute was a great story-teller. It almost doesn't seem to matter what he's talking about, he has the knack of keeping you interested.

The casual racism is really a cause for disappointment with the past rather than with Shute. I think he was generally more aware of it than most - as the Malaya section shows - and I believe his earlier book The Chequer Board covers the subject in some depth, but it's so ingrained that he can't help doing it himself. The attitudes to the role of women aren't exactly modern, either, but at least Jean is a strong and forward-looking character.

Perfectly stated.:thumbsup:

Originally Posted by DrNefario
The casual racism is really a cause for disappointment with the past rather than with Shute.

I agree. I never really consciously thought about it in those terms--and you're right.

I look at racism in books written prior to the Civil Rights movement in the 60s very differently than I do racism in books written since. The phrase "consciousness-raising" was used extensively in the 60s to describe the process of enlightening the unaware and awakening the sleepers. Many people simply never had taken the time to challenge the assumptions with which they had been raised, which is hardly surprising as people generally don't change their learned ways of thinking and acting until something or someone first makes them aware that a change is needed.