Despite having virtually no knowledge of either engineering or nautical terms and practices - nor to be honest, any interest in those areas - I found myself engaged in this story from the start. To me the book is really more about how character and connections to others work to solve problems and overcome obstacles than about the details. ( )

A gentle story, written in the days before cheap and easy international travel, that demonstrates beautifully both the principle of seven degrees of separation and also the support given by people to those who share their hobbies - in this case, model engineering.

It's also a reminder that a happy man is the one who has found what he really enjoys in life, and is content with it. ( )

3726. Trustee from the Toolroom, by Nevil Shute (read 5 Apr 2003) This novel, published in 1960, the year Shute (probably best known for On the Beach, that epic of pessimism) died, is such a "nice" story, poignant and a joy to read. It tells of a simple poor man who undertakes to do the best he can for the orphaned niece of his wife and accomplishes the task, showing that, incredibly, good can triumph despite obstacles. Clear, sweet, fiction--such a contrast to so much of present-day fiction of gloom and doom and, for that matter, of this author's On the Beach (read 17 May 1998). ( )