A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute is a celebration of the overwhelming power of love.
Jean Paget, a young English woman, is captured by the Japanese army in Malaya during World War Two. She is forced on a brutal march across the country with a group of women and children. During this appalling ordeal she befriends Joe Harman, an Australian soldier who risks his own life to help the women.
A few years later, and back in England, Jean receives an unexpected and substantial inheritance. She decides to use the money to repay the Malayan people who risked their lives to help her and her fellow prisoners during the war so she travels back to the village where they stayed. From there she travels on to Australia in search of lost love. Cut off in the Australian outback and thousands of miles from home, Jean once again draws on her admirable determination and entrepreneurial spirit when she sets out to build a thriving community.
‘A ripping tale of budding romance and grace under pressure’ The Times
A Bonza Town
I first heard of Nevil Shute’s A Town like Alice (1950) when I was a schoolboy, and long before I read it I was fascinated by the title. How, I wondered, could a town possibly be like a person?...
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