A Town Like Alice
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A Town Like Alice (U.S. title: The Legacy) is a novel by the English author Nevil Shute. It was first published in 1950 when Shute had newly settled in Australia. The "Alice" in the title refers to Alice Springs, Australia.
It was made into a motion picture in 1956 starring Virginia McKenna and Peter Finch, directed by Jack Lee. This film was known as Rape of Malaya in U.S. cinemas, and by various other titles in non-English-speaking countries.
In 1981, A Town Like Alice was adapted into a popular television miniseries, starring Helen Morse and Bryan Brown (with Gordon Jackson as Noel Strachan). It was broadcast internationally: in the United States, it was shown as part of the PBS series Masterpiece Theatre.
In 1999, the Modern Library ranked the novel seventeenth on The Reader's List of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.[1]
Contents |
[edit] Plot summary
A few years after World War II, a young woman, Jean Paget, who was working in Malaya when the Japanese invaded, tells her London solicitor the story of her experience in Malaya during the war. As presented in flashbacks, she is one of a party of European women and children who are marched around Malaya by the Japanese, since no camp will take them in and the Japanese army does not to take responsibility for them. Many of them die on the march, and the rest survive only on the charity of the local villagers.
On their march from one village to another, Jean meets a young Australian soldier, Joe Harman, also a prisoner. He steals food and medicines to help them, and is severely punished by the Japanese authorities. The women are marched away and believe that the soldier died.
Jean survives the war and returns to London. A few years later, she unexpectedly inherits a substantial amount of money from a distant relative. After some thought, she tells her solicitor, Noel Strachan, that she had decided to return to Malaya to build a well in a village where the people sheltered her and the other Europeans for three years.
When she arrives, she learns that Joe Harman survived his punishment and returned to Australia. She travels on to Australia, visits the town of Alice Springs, where Joe lived before the war, and is much impressed with the quality of life there. She then travels to the primitive outback Queensland town of Willstown, where Joe has become manager of a cattle station. In the meantime, Joe has learned that Jean survived the war and is unmarried, and so he has drawn down money he won in the state lottery in order to travel to Britain in search of her. On Noel Strachan's advice, he returns to Queensland, and the two finally meet again.
They eventually decide to marry. Using her inheritance, Jean and Joe start several business enterprises to help build the small outback town of Willstown develop into a place where people would like to live — "A town like Alice".
[edit] Historical accuracy
Jean Paget was based on Carry Geysel (Mrs J. G. Geysel-Vonck) whom Shute met while visiting Sumatra in 1949.[2][3] Geysel had been one of a group of about 80 Dutch civilians taken prisoner by Japanese forces at Padang, in the Dutch East Indies in 1942, and forced to march around Sumatra for two-and-a-half years, covering 1,900 kilometres (1,200 miles). Fewer than 30 people survived this march.
Shute based the character of Harman on Herbert James "Ringer" Edwards, an Australian veteran of the Malayan campaign, whom Shute met in 1948 at a station (ranch) in Queensland.[4][5] Edwards had been crucified for 63 hours by Japanese soldiers on the Burma Railway. He had later escaped execution a second time, when his "last meal" of chicken and beer could not be obtained. Crucifixion (or Haritsuke) was a form of punishment or torture that the Japanese sometimes used against prisoners during the war.
The fictional "Willstown" is reportedly based on Burketown, Queensland, which Shute also visited in 1948.[6] (Burke and Wills were well-known explorers of Australia.)
[edit] Themes
The protagonists share the colonial attitudes of the time: Aborigines are referred to as "boongs" or "abos", terms now considered racial slurs. It is also assumed that non-whites must use different shops and bars than whites and that they are less reliable than whites.
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100bestnovels.html
- ^ "Too Good to Be True" (Time, June 12, 1950) Access date June 6, 2007.
- ^ Special Broadcasting Service, 2005 "She was Nevil Shute's inspiration for a Town Like Alice" Access date June 6, 2007.
- ^ Neville Shute Norway Foundation, "1948" Access date June 6, 2007.
- ^ Roger Bourke, 2001–2002, "‘Cultural depth-charges’: Traditional meaning and prisoner-of-war fiction" Access date June 6, 2007.
- ^ Neville Shute Norway Foundation, Ibid.
