Lonely Road

Not a favorite - it's interesting, but depressing. She's a sweetheart and deserved a heck of a lot better; he's depressed and depressing (most of the time...there was hope, for a while), and his idea of justice is nasty. Deserved - all of them - but nasty. And the whole convoluted plot is so incredibly _stupid_...and fell apart because of total coincidence. Glad I read it, but I doubt I'll ever reread.

Love, regret, vengeance and the possibility of redemption in unlikely places.

I owe this book a review because I rather misjudged it the first time I read it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it from the first, but I loved it as a straightforward adventure yarn, tied up with a touch more romance than would usually be to my taste. Nevil Shute is possibly better known for bitter post-war novels, and to my shame I didn’t at first realise that this book, first published in 1931, falls very much in that category. But more of that later.

Firstly, this book does work beautifully as a good yarn. It’s internally consistent, beautifully paced, and sparsely told. In fact, throughout it is beautifully told, which is for me pretty much a given with show more Shute. Where he writes about what he knows well – aircraft, usually, but in this case the sea and small boats, and the fast, damaged young men of the years between the wars – he is unsurpassed. He also writes the most beautifully moving tragedy I’ve ever read . . . small scale tragedy, little passages that toy with your heart and will take me to the edge of tears, even when I know them well, single lines that will take everything you have half learnt in the last three chapters and crystallise it into a single moment of heart-breaking sadness.

I could say the same for almost any Shute novel. Where Lonely Road stands out is in its opening chapter, half dreamscape, half the genuine if mangled memories of a man suffering both concussion and a well-deserved hangover. It captures better than most attempts I’ve seen the fragmentary nature of dreams, the way in which everything, however surreal, makes perfect sense to the dreamer, and the odd common details that can shoot through and tie together the most disjointed dream, and take on unreasonable prominence in doing so.

It even works for me as a romance, despite my exacting standards in this area. Any barrier is so often either implausible in the first place or implausibly overcome (or, worse, conveniently forgotten), so that I tend to find myself fighting the impulse to shout ‘oh for heaven’s sake just talk to the girl’ or earnestly wishing to grasp the lead characters by the scruff of their necks and bang their heads together. I’m not really the best person to review romance. What I will say is that at the heart of this story is a relationship that is absolutely plausible and suffers a realistic impediment.

This may be the place for a brief defence of the charge often levelled at Shute, that he writes weak, silly women. Well, he does, and when I get round to reviewing one of the novels they appear in, I’ll explain why I don’t find that a problem in more detail. Briefly, because there is usually a reason for their weakness or silliness. And in Lonely Road we have Sixpence, a palais de danse taxi-dancer, who is not weak or silly, though she is ignorant and naive.

I’m unlikely to review Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, because if you know it you probably already suspect that it was one of those books that made me want to give the protagonists a slap, and I don’t see there’s much to be gained by my writing a bad review of a book that was simply not to my taste. It would tell you more about me than the book. I mention it now because there are strong parallels in the central relationship, but the difference is what makes Lonely Road, for me, a more satisfying read. Molly, though she is dismissively referred to as Sixpence almost throughout, though she makes some silly mistakes, is a more intelligent, subtler, warmer, and overall less generally hopeless heroine than the second Mrs de Winter.

And finally, Lonely Road as a serious post-war novel. I’ve touched on it in those fast, damaged young men. Forewarned, you will pick the element easily out of the opening dreamscape. Our narrator has done things in battle that he would never have considered in normal life. Can he forgive himself? Can he forget? Can he be sure it was only the circumstances of war that shaped his actions? show less

Wow, another gem from Nevil Shute! He reminds me a bit of Willa Cather. Real life is presented in a calm, matter of fact way. This book involves a man who owns a boat yard, was a naval officer in WWI, is single, and who drinks too much. During one of his drunken drives, he may have had a bad accident, or perhaps not. Not too long thereafter, after befriending a dance-hall girl in Leeds (sixpence a dance) and hearing her chatter about her brother, hearing his cousin's spouse talk about small shipping routes from Europe to England, and seeing the effects of a burned out truck carrying a load of guns, he begins to see some tie-ins between these three seemingly unrelated things and his nightmares. So begins an investigation involving show more Scotland Yard, the homeland security folks (whatever they were called in England in the late 1920s). So also begins a romance with the dance-hall girl. show less

One of the more disappointing Nevil Shute novels that I've read. The story just didn't work for me, and the relationship between Mollie and Malcolm struck me as implausible.

Det er svært at skrive holdbare politiske thrillere, fordi man helst skal tro på, at den afværgede trussel faktisk kunne blive til noget, og at det ville gøre en forskel. Den præmis er svær at leve op til, når man læser en bog, der hastigt nærmer sig de hundrede år, og det er en af grundene til, at Blind vej aldrig bliver mere end en roman på det jævne. Den anden grund er, at der langt fra er tale om stor litteratur, selvom skildringen af det engelske klassesamfunds forsøg på at overskride sig selv bestemt er interessant.

Fortælleren er kaptajn Stevenson, der under 1. verdenskrig var i flåden, hvor han var involveret i et dramatisk og morderisk slag med en tysk ubåd, og som nu lever som ungkarl på den engelske sydkyst. show more Han er velhavende, driver et lille skibsværft og tilhører den traditionelle overklasse. Første kapitel er et impressionistisk eksperiment, hvor han i en brandert kører galt i sin bil og bliver indlagt på hospitalet. Hans erindringer passer ikke på den forklaring han får, og efter nogle rekreationsdage i Skotland sker der flere underlige ting. Politiet har fundet en udbrændt lastbil med nogle våben af ukendt oprindelse og nu har de brug for hjælp med opklaringen.

På vej hjem fra Skotland har han mødt pigen Mollie Gordon, der arbejder som professionel dansepartner på en natklub i Leeds. Det viser sig, at hun har en forbindelse til den udbrændte lastbil – et helt usandsynligt sammenfald – og han påtager sig at hente hende ned til afhøring. Det sker under påskud af, at han vil invitere hende på ferie, men da han først har overladt hende til politiets undersøgelser, får han dårlig samvittighed. I stedet for at lade hende i stikken får han fat i sin egen advokat, og sammen giver de sig til at opklare, hvad der egentlig foregår.

Våbentransporterne har lyssky spor til udlandet, måske til kommunistiske grupper, og målet synes at være at forstyrre det kommende parlamentsvalg.
Men der er også en anden grund til hans handlinger. Han er træt af sit mistrøstige ungkarleliv, og sammen med Mollie føler han sig glad. Selvom hun har en helt anden klassebaggrund er hun både pæn og velopdragen, og efter krigen bør det vel være slut med de skarpe skel i samfundet. Som en af bipersonerne bemærker, så findes der gode mennesker i alle samfundslag, og hvorfor skulle han ikke gifte sig med hende, hvis det er det, der gør ham lykkelig?

Som spændingsroman er Blind vej på det jævne, og persontegningen virker heller ikke overbevisende. Stevenson stritter i alle retninger, og Mollie skildres som lidt for naiv og stille til at matche ham. Det handler nok mere om tidens kvindesyn end om klasseskel. (Kun i kærlighedssager er kvinderne, som f.eks. kusinen Joan, eksperter.) Når det er sagt, så var romanen hurtigt læst og fungerede som vidnesbyrd om, at de engelske klasseskel vitterligt var forandrede efter krigens rædsler. show less