Town Like Alice
Neville Shute
Post WWII, Jean Paget a secretary working in a London shoe factory, is informed by the solicitor Noel Strachan that she has inherited a large amount of money from an uncle she barely knew. Placed as her trustee, Strachan - also the narrator of the story - acts as Jean's adviser. He reluctantly agrees to give Jean some of her inheritance to build a well in a small Malayan village in return for the kindness the villagers had shown her during the Japanese invasion of the island.
As a POW during the Japanese invasion, Jean along with a group of women and children are marched from one village to another by their captors. Not allowed to settle in any spot and not used to the hard physical labour, many die. Speaking fluent Malay, Jean takes leadership of the group and after many months on the road, finally convinces a village elder to let the remaining group to live amongst them for the duration of the war. It is during this time that she meets and strikes a friendship with a young Australian soldier, Sergeant Joe Harman. Risking his life, Harman steals food and medicine for the women but finally caught, is crucified and left to die by the Japanese.
When Jean returns to Malay, she by chance hears news that Harman having survived, has returned to Australia and decides to travel to the outback town of Willstown to meet him. In a bizarre twist of events, Harman also hears that Jean lives in London and at the same time she is travelling to meet him, is on his way to find her. They eventually meet and romance blossoms. Deciding to stay in Willstown, Jean sets out to transform the town to a town more like Alice Springs. Again drawing on the same ingenuity and resourcefulness that helped her survive Malay, Jean achieves her goals, breathing life into the stale outback town.
Despite the strong story line, I feel hard pressed to shower praise on this book. For one thing, I cannot fathom why Shute decides to narrate the story through the solicitor rather than Jean, hence keeping the main (and the strongest) character at an arms length to the reader. I also find the Laconic Harman and his cliche euphemisms, cartoonish. With such story line, there is ample opportunity to draw on the readers emotions. Yet oddly, Shute's execution is dry, the narrative soldiering through the text with the stiff upper-lip formality of post-war English middle-classes. 2.5 stars
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