Stephen Morris

In my experience, aviation fans (a bit like railfans) tend to read with more zeal than critical acumen, at-least in regards to narrative style and technique. That said, I consider this novel to be not an example of Shute at his best, even though Shute on an off-day, could beat most other modern novelists in cards and spades. My problem with this particular opus is that the characters aren't very interesting, and sometimes the pronoun-references and dialogue left me in doubt as to who was speaking or being spoken-about. Was Shute too big a shot to be edited? Even so, a decent read, if by no means a great one.

Not as well-written as later Shute novels, and very much in a 'men doing valiant things whilst women hover pathetically on the sidelines' vein. Nonetheless, entertaining enough.

This was pretty tedious. I think I know why Shute didn't publish it during his own life. It could have been a decent story, but was very uneven. And, it dragged. Shute is one of my favorite authors, and this book is not up to his standards. As I said, he kept it buried during his lifetime.


So, at the beginning, young Stephen Morris has lost his job in rubber and decides he can't afford to marry Helen Riley. So he breaks off their engagement. Then, since his real passion had been flying—he'd been a pilot in WWI—he hooks up with a small "commercial" flying outfit run by Helen Riley's cousin, Capt. Malcolm Riley, who was a sort of famous flier in the war. Riley and his partner, Stenning, hang out around vacation spots and take people show more on joy rides. It's the early days of aviation, and people find it exciting. It's also the early 1920s, so people still have some extra cash, the depression being some 6 or 8 years in the future, and no one knew it was coming in 1923 when this book came out.

Well, things go along for a while, but business falls off and Riley and Stenning decide to throw in the towel. As a result, poor Morris is out of a job again. But he hooks on with a guy who designs planes. Morris, having earned a degree in Mathematics at Oxford, could help out on the design side of things, although C.G.H Rawdon can't afford to hire him to work in the office. So, they agree that Morris will work for free in the office for a while (which is to say, being an unpaid intern is not a new thing) and also be on hand to do some piloting when the need arises.

Well, things drag on, but I've set the scene, so to speak. Generally, this book is packaged with a second novella, Pilotage. But I was afraid that Pilotage might be similarly deadly, so moved on to something else. Sometime in the new year, I'll give Pilotage a "fly". show less

If not his first, certainly a very early one, I think I read somewhere that it was autoboigraphical. Interesting.