Jean Paget is just twenty years old and working in Malaya when the Japanese invasion begins. When she is captured she joins a group of other European women and children whom the Japanese force to march for miles through the jungle - an experience that leads to the deaths of many. Due to her courageous spirit and ability to speak Malay, Jean takes on the role of leader of the sorry gaggle of prisoners and many end up owing their lives to her indomitable spirit. While on the march, the group run into some Australian prisoners, one of whom, Joe Harman, helps them steal some food, and is horrifically punished by the Japanese as a result. After the war, Jean tracks Joe down in Australia and together they begin to dream of surmounting the past and transforming his one-horse outback town into a thriving community like Alice Springs...Starting in London, then on to the invasion of Malaysia by the Japanese in World War 2 before moving to Alice Springs and then the east coast of Australia - there didn't seem like a more appropriate follow-on from The Glass Palace than A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute.
My edition of the novel actually included a touching introduction from Eric Lomax, the writer of The Railway Man that I read at the end of last year. Having read Lomax's memoir, then The Glass Palace and now this, I feel I'm just starting to really grasp what it was like in South East Asia during and after the war. This is particularly interesting to me as my grandparents lived in Malaysia for decades and my mum was born out there.
If you're a woman and need to feel empowered, you have to read this book. This basically paints a world where one woman shows everyone else how it's done. She's a little annoying in places, and that probably makes me anti-feminist in some definition or other, but ultimately Jean Paget is pretty awesome. I can't imagine what it must have felt like reading this novel if you were Eric Lomax, reading the descriptions of the all too familiar insane heat, the death and disease, the starvation.
Shute's novel definitely paints a convincing scene but its ambition is of course not that of The Railway Man, or even The Glass Palace. To read, the book felt dated but in a good way, like I was reading one of my grandad's books or something - a nice alternative to the more modern reads I normally find myself with. There is a strong romantic thread in this book, which I appreciated - you definitely root for all the characters - but, for me, this is where the dated element of the book didn't quite work. It was all a little too trad for my liking, which is saying something as Jean Pagets life is far from traditional - for now, let alone then! But yeah, I guess it must have been the influence of The Glass Palace, but I surprised myself by wanting a little less romance, and a little more of the history, culture and time. For some reason it just started to feel a bit two-dimensional. I hate saying that as this is a good book, it is. And a great choice for my trip considering the route I took. I just think it's a case of a modern reader being used to a certain amount, or more a certain kind of drama that this book just didn't provide I'm afraid.
Overall, though, this gets a 5/10 - by 5, I mean 5, not 1. I have a tendency to lump any rating from 1 to 5 together as 'not very good', but I enjoyed it on an average level, so it gets a half score. It's a great insight into a particular time, not just in Asia and Australia either, but of the world and the way it got so much smaller after the Second World War, and then better technology and transport, brought so many people together.
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