A Town Like Alice
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...
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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. But it turns out that they have a gift for her as well: the news that the young Australian soldier, Joe Harmon, who had risked his life to help the women, had miraculously survived. Jean’s search for Joe 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.
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ISBN:
9780435270483 (0435270486)
Edition language: English
‘Oh my word.' What a confused book. A Town Like Alice has been such an intriguing read. The writing had an easy flow to it and the story was certainly gripping, even though this decidedly is a book of two halves. The first half deals with the history of Jean Paget, in which we follow her to Malaya...
Here's an Australian novel by the very popular English-born author Nevil Shute, a classic first published in 1950 and never out of print since. A Town Like Alice is the story of a young Englishwoman who inherits the small estate of an old uncle whom she hardly knew, even though in trust until her ...
This was not a new story for me, having previously watched both the Peter Finch/Virginia McKenna and Brian Brown/Helen Morse film versions when I was a young girl. Yet I found it interesting how perceptions change as one gets older. When revisiting a known work either through re-reading or by compar...
19/7 - This was written in 1950, it uses language common to 1950. These facts have to be remembered when reading A Town like Alice, and reacting to said language. The characters use words like 'Abos', 'Nips', 'Boongs', and other offensive names for the indigenous people of Malaya and Australia, and ...
bookshelves: published-1950, adventure, fraudio, spring-2010, wwii, war, filthy-lucre Read from May 18 to 20, 2010 ** spoiler alert ** What a wonderful story based on a hotchpotch of believed facts and opportunist meetings. Full of the chauvinism redolent of it's time of writing, it's a cross bet...
10 years ago
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