A Town Like Alice

A very good read about how one person can change everything and can overcome any challenge laid before them. There are some pretty dark themes covered by the earlier half of the book but it is done with a sense of humility and serves to make the latter half of the novel all the more uplifting.

Surprisingly good book! This is the oldest book I have read so far (voluntarily, not including required reading from school) and I really loved it. I like the two separate stories, from Jean's life as a prisoner in Malaya, to her building Willstown up to be a town like Alice. There were a lot of racial slurs used in this book, which was quite off-putting, which was disappointing, but definitely predictable from a book of this time.

Overall, I enjoyed this book and may read it again.

This is probably the most popular of Nevil Shute's books, accounting for almost half of all his 118,000 ratings on this site, and with some 3800 reviews.

It is a book you hear of often enough, but don't see about as much as you might expect, so I picked up a copy when I saw it. The story takes place over three parts, all narrated by Noel Strachan, an elderly solicitor who is acting for a client - making out his will, and then on his clients passing becoming a trustee.

In the first part , set in London, we follow Strachan tracking down Jean Paget, who is the inheritor of the mans money, although the capital is in trust until she reaches the age of 35 (young women cannot be trusted in the matter of money, don't you know!)

The second part flashes back to Jean Paget's time in Malaya during the war. She was working there and was taken prisoner by the Japanese with a group of British women and children. Speaking Malay, she takes a leaders role in the group, who are forced to walk large distances under guard to the women's POW camp, although this becomes a journey of many parts as there doesn't appear to be a camp, and the responsibility for them is passed from commander to commander. Along the way the women meet an Australian POW who is working as driver for the Japanese, and they strike up a friendship.

From that point on spoilers abound, so I won't go on, but as is pretty obvious from the title of the book, the third part of the book takes place in outback Australia.

It was an enjoyable book, very easy reading, and had it's moments of sadness and amusement, but the story wasn't without some poorly conceived aspects. The romance was pretty lamely written, and contradictory they 'spent that day in a curious mixture of love-making and economic discussion' in one chapter, and then she apologies for 'making him wait until they are married', and as mentioned below, follows the conservative conventions in the town.

It is, of course, a product of it's time, and shows its age with things like the derogatory terms for the Aboriginal stockmen, the casual mention of Aboriginals not being allowed to be in shops, and their completely subservient positions. Also dated was the strict morality of the time - not wanting to employ a girl as she was ‘a slut', a woman not being permitted to stay overnight with a fiance, and a man even not being able to visit in her room. I suspect much of this would be foreign to modern readers.

Nevertheless with these flaws I am still glad I read this well known book, but I am not sure I will seek out further Nevil Shute books immediately.

4 stars.

A young woman enduring war-time hardship and defying the conventions of her time, this made for a great binge-read. The first half is set in WII in Malaya, and our heroine Jean Paget becomes the unappointed leader of a group of English women and children, who are marched across the island by Japanese prison guards. She uses her knowledge of the local language and an empathetic approach to foreign customs to negotiate for the group's survival. Returning to the site years later, she develops a good sense for how to help the Malay women and subsequently improve their communities. A skill she employs again in the second half of the book, as she explores the dusty and hot Australian outback. I liked her entrepreneurial spirit and success, which made up for the rather too comfortable love story.

Feminism as written by a rather conservative man in 1950. Some blunders, but mostly laudable. There's also some racism, that mostly - but not always - gets attributed to the characters. Still, this was a great read.

I was hooked by the first chapter, and knew a few chapters later that this author is a great writer of stories. A Town Like Alice tells a sad story that turns hopeful. I was engaged and looked forward to each new chapter. My interest in Australia also helped. I will look for other books by this author.

I read this novel years ago and had remembered it as a good read. My feelings about it now are mixed. I really enjoyed the beginning which centered on the main character's experience of being a POW in Malaysia. The second half of the novel which centered on her in Australia dragged a bit. Also it was a bit hard to just causally read the institutional racism in regards to the Australian native people.
But overall it was a good read.

One of my mum's favourite books, I finally got around to reading it myself. I enjoyed the story, but found myself shocked at the outstanding sexism in the way Jean is considered incapable of handling her own finances where her inheritance is concerned, but once she is married there's no problem because the man can deal with it all. Huh.

Sweet, moving, but really two books. The first half merited six stars; the second... well, it was more of an upbeat story of Entrepreneurship and Economic Development brought to us by the Queensland Ministry for 1950s-style Family Planning. It felt flat. So much so that my initial click upon beginning this was four stars. But that's not fair: Shute's language is beautiful; his depictions of scenery and people remarkable; his compassion stunning. The book's ending cannot take away from the rest of it.

The first-person narrative is awkward, only really serving to tell a third but far-background story. I found myself distracted by it too often. Maybe on rereading—and yes, I think I will reread in 5 years or so—I won't find it so jarring.

An all around good, satisfying read that didn't turn sappy when a bit of a love story came into the plot. I found the myself pretty interested in the details of how rice is grown and harvested, or how Australian outback stations are run, or how a town can be grown out of pretty uninspiring beginnings. I wasn't surprised to read that the author was an engineer. :-)

I wasn't aware of the WWII battles in Malaysia, and the roles Britain played there. This book's historical detail opened my eyes.

The book is definitely dated with some pretty crude attitudes toward aborigines, women and other cultures. But, I really came to like the main character and initiator of all progress in the book, a strong woman named Jean Paget.