A Town Like Alice (1950)

A friend recommended this to me. Actually, when she learned I’d never read it, she ran out of the room, returned with it, and stuffed it into my hands. A story of romance during and just after World War II although it was set in Malaya and Australia. I enjoyed seeing WWII fiction not set in Europe. And it was a very sweet story. [Jan. 2009] ( )

I loved the first half of this and couldn't put it down. The second half was just okay.
I thought it was weird that the author could recognize that Malaysians are humans (they are sometimes even portrayed as actual people with different personalities), but not indigenous Australians? Like, he would literally say something like, "there were two girls working there, and one lubra" (which is apparently an old and offensive word for an Aboriginal woman), as if she didn't count as a person. ( )

While the movies concentrated on the war atrocities I found the enterprising spirit of Jean Paget the real core of the book. ( )

Initially, I was totally captivated by this story of Jean Padgett, a young English woman working in Malaya who became a Japanese prisoner of war. The hardships that the women and children endured during their trek to one nonexistent prison camp after another and the alternating kindness and inhumanity of their captors kept me reading (well, listening; this was an audiobook) at a rapid pace. Under such an unlikely circumstances, one wouldn't expect to fall in love, but we do sense that it is happening to Jean when she means a resourceful Australian named Joe Harmon. But the war intervenes . . .

The novel opens with the narrator, a solicitor, tracking down Jean to tell her that she has just come into an inheritance, and it is to Noah that Jean tells her story. After hearing all she endured, he could hardly be more surprised when Jean tells him her plans for the money: to return to Malaya.

I won't spoil the book by telling what happens next, but there are quite a few surprises in store. I have to admit that the last third of the novel--the part that reflects the title--was somewhat less interesting to me. Still, this is one of those books whose title was familiar but about which I knew nothing, and overall, it was worthwhile. ( )

Jean Paget is an ordinary English young woman who heads off to Malaya to take an office typist job, but has no interest in life there outside of her closed world of English expatriates. But when the Japanese invade, she finds herself part of a group of women and children prisoners of war forced to walk the island searching for refuge. This experience brings out the strength of character and leadership qualities that have been dormant inside her. She leads the ragtag group to a safe haven to wait out the war and is ultimately inspired to use an unexpected inheritance to make her world better -- and she also falls in love.

One of the best things about this book is the character of Jean Paget. Although she is modest almost to a fault and would certainly never have called herself a feminist, she is a feminist heroine in that she is the one with the vision to change her world and the ability to accomplish her goals. None of the male characters come close to her. Reading about the way she changes the tiny outback town where she lives with her husband Joe, I was reminded of economists who have touted the importance of microcredit and female-owned businesses in helping lift villages out of poverty in Africa.

For all the dramatic events described within -- war, torture, lovers separated by death and distance and then reunited -- the writing style is fairly dry and not much concerned with the characters' emotions. Clearly, to Shute, the really interesting stuff was the parts about living in the outback and setting up a new business. If you're looking for passion, look elsewhere. But I found Jean's story involving enough to carry me through, and the details about wartime experiences and outback life certainly seem authentic.

It should be said that this book is marred by racist and sexist attitudes that are probably accurate for the time but made me wince more than once. It's more thoughtless than vicious, but still uncomfortable for a modern reader. ( )