A Town Like Alice
by Nevil Shute
Blurb:
Nevil Shute's most beloved novel, a tale of love and war, follows its enterprising heroine from the Malayan jungle during World War II to the rugged Australian outback.Jean 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. Jean's travels 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 war-time ordeals.
My Reaction:
I went into this book knowing little about it. I knew it was famous and thought it had something to do about digging a well in Australia, with maybe some romance thrown in. It turned out to be quite a ride, and on the whole, I enjoyed it-- but with a few caveats.
Positives:
-- The main characters are all admirable, though toward the end I did find Jean almost annoyingly perfect.
-- The part of the book dealing with Jean's wartime experiences were gripping. (However, at a certain point the repetition of the march became tedious, and I was ready for something different!)
-- The romance was sweet for a very brief while. And then... Well, see the "Not Positives" list below.
-- I actually found the story of the building of "a town like Alice" rather interesting, for a time. I'm not sure it would be quite as easy as the book seems to suggest, but... Still interesting. I like reading about people doing things, accomplishing things, building things.
-- I enjoyed learning a little about the Australian outback, during this time period.
Not Positives:
-- The format... It does lend the tale a sense of authenticity, but at the same time, it loses immediacy when one character's direct experience is filtered through another person's mind and voice. Particularly as regards the romantic aspects of the book, this format was an odd choice. Did the author do this because he was better at writing in a more dry, factual tone than with the emotion that you might expect to find if it all came directly from Jean's perspective? (Not that she seems very emotionally expressive, if it comes to that!)
I don't know... I just didn't love Noel's contribution to the tale, if I'm honest. It didn't appeal to me, at all, and I found it very odd and uncomfortable that he was writing about Jean's first romantic encounter with Joe. What are we supposed to think? Surely she didn't tell him all about that in such personal detail, so where did he get his information? What are we meant to think? Is he supposed to have just fantasized about it? Gross!
-- I think it's probably a reflection of the times, with no ill will intended, but once Jean is in Australia, some of the references to the Aborigines are awkward, from a modern perspective.
One instance that stands out in my mind is her reaction to a "sensitive, intelligent" white man who was married to a young Aboriginal woman who was "inarticulate" (which I took to mean that she stayed mostly silent in public) and always brought along a kitten or puppy on their visits to "town". Does it not occur to Jean that this woman might behave differently in the privacy of her home? Maybe she isn't comfortable speaking in this place where she may feel under the microscope. And why bring up the pets at all? Is it meant to indicate that she's very young/immature-- or that she's somehow mentally deficient or inferior, because she needs what we might today call an emotional support animal? It left a bad taste in my mouth, honestly. This woman hasn't done anything wrong, and Jean seems to be pitying the poor "sensitive, intelligent" man for having been driven by desperation to marry what Jean deems his inferior. It's unpleasant.
-- The bruises incident. Yuck. I don't get it. Joe seems like a very nice man who wouldn't leave bruises on a woman. And Jean, she's perfectly healthy, in her prime; she shouldn't bruise so easily. How in the heck did she end up with so many bruises after a passionate make-out session? What was Joe doing? I don't believe that kind of bruising from a little "romance" is normal. Even more disgusting is Jean's repeated flirtatious references to her bruises. It reminded me of some stupid teenager bragging about a hickey and showing it off to her friends. Gross, gross, gross!
-- The level of detail might lend a feeling of realism, but it can be overdone, and I think it was, in this case. I don't actually need this much (boring, inconsequential) detail. It made the book longer than it needed to be.
Well, as I said, on the whole, I liked the book. It won't be one I'll want to read again, most likely, but I might try to see a TV/movie adaptation, sometime.
