Nevil Norway (he wrote under his middle name Shute to keep his writing career and his engineering career apart) was born in 1899 to a senior English civil servant. In a society as unequal as England before World War I, life was nice if you were near the top: his father had 3 servants, a gardener ...
This old yarn of a novel feels as though after a minimum of plotting and the occasion assisting sip of whisky and soda the author just typed and typed until the book was done.It opens with the framing device of a man listening to another man's story. Logically the point of view in the rest of th...
Keith Stewart is a middle-aged mechanic who has given up the daily grind of a job to make mechanical models—for the joy he derives from them, and for the meagre income they bring him from the magazine Miniature Mechanics, for which he writes articles. He and his wife Katie (a store employee) lead...
‘People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had,’ [Jean Paget] said quietly, staring into the embers. ‘They don’t know what it was like, not being in a camp.’ (page 70)With this simple statement, the main protagonist of A Town Like Alice hints ...
Nevil Shute led a full, varied and active life in peace and war, which informed his work as a novelist. Shute was an aeronautical engineer with a successful business career in aviation, specifically airships. He flew his own plane to Australia after World War Two (to research On the Beach), and u...
Few writers could turn a book about investment banking, unemployment and governemnt corruption into a beautiful romance about second chances and the triumph of the human spirit, of cooperation and common sense. Ruined City can be resumed as a cross between Frank Capra's Mr Deeds Goes to Town ...
It's interesting to re-read a book after a long time, and see whether your opinion of it has changed. I first read [authoer:Aldous Huxley]'s Brave New World when I was about 17, and found it very exciting and stimulating. I re-read it when I was 57, and after 40 years found it rather flat and dul...
Peter Moran is driving home one evening in the rain when he comes upon a man walking along the road. He offers him a ride and recognizes him immediately as a fellow pilot from his regiment during WWI. He asks if he's Maurice Landen and the man denies it, giving another name. Peter pushes it be...
I have yet to read a book by Nevil Shute novel that will not let his generosity and kindness, his understated, amiable nature shine through and illuminate the saddest and depressing themes. The Far Country is no exception. It is a delicate and touching love story between two young, lonely souls,...
Apparently, this is the first book Nevil Shute wrote. In his introduction, he mentions that he had to write it through three times. It seems pretty similar to vintage Shute, which means that it's a GoodRead, well worth one's time. It has many elements one finds in later Shute books, airplanes, sm...
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 w...
I am a big fan of old English paperbacks, especially Ian Fleming and Nevil Shute novels. Something about them is just timeless. Landfall is a good example of a Nevil Shute book, combining a war story and a romance. Here we have Jerry Chambers, a hapless RAF Anson pilot who is involved in a fri...
I confess I don't know how Nevil Shute does it. This novel, written about 1951, purports to be the autobiography of an airline entrepreneur after WWII. He starts in England with a single small plane and gradually builds an airfreight empire centered in Bahrain. He has no interests other than his ...
When, in 1953, Alan Duncan returns to the Australian sheep farm where he grew up after a long period of absence, the sudden death of a parlour maid mars his parents's joy about his coming home. Jessie Proctor had become very dear to his ailing mother who is now berating herself for not having pre...
I have read quite a bit of Nevil Shute in the last few years, in part because the stories are very enjoyable, and in part because his characters have a romantic and very attractive quality about them. They are good people.This story more than any other makes me wish I could have met the man and u...
Nevil Shute is one of my favorite authors. This book was widely distributed during its 1939 publication under the title What Happened to the Corbetts?. About 1,000 copies were sold in the United States under the title Ordeal. I happened to find a copy in my local library under that latter title. ...