Nevil Shute Books

I have just discovered Nevil Shute and I love his works. This book may start off a little slow in the first chapter (as all his seem to do) but it is an incredible story. I highly recommend it!

The story of Alan Duncan begins with his return to Coombargana, a sheep farming station in the Western District of Australia. On the day before his return, the trusted parlour maid on the station, of whom his parents were very fond, died in her room unexpectedly, causing an awkward homecoming

Beginning with the pursuit of a law degree at Oxford University, the years of Alan's absence from family and homeland taught him very much, very quickly. Not surprising, he is drawn into World War-II action as a fighter pilot, risking all he has in life, just like his younger brother Bill.

Also like his brother, he is attracted to the same English girl, Janet Prentice, a WREN on active duty, assigned to maintenance of ordinance used in preparation of the D-Day invasion. The terrible war has left each one with terrible losses, of which the consequences carry the reader through Alan's quest to find Janet in the years that follow its ending in 1945.

In London, Viola Dawson, Janet's friend, is Alan's greatest source of information to lead him through his search. Where will he ultimately find her in this world that both separates and binds together those on opposite sides of the globe?

A terriffic story, beautifully written; also published under the title "The Breaking Wave."

This is one of Shute's best, an old-fashioned love story and suspense tale linked to the Australian countryside of post WWII. Not wishing to reveal the plot, I will only say that a young Australian returns home after the War to find that a young woman has recently died in his parents' home under mysterious circumstances. He tries to unravel her identity and he is in for a shock - all is not as it seems. Gives the reader an insight into central Australian life just after WWII,with the hardships and battles with droughts, fires and isolation of the sheep ranches. Anyone who enjoyed "A Town Like Alice" would enjoy this one.

I have recently discovered Nevil Shute, and what a find! I highly recommend this book. It's a story that takes place during WWII when a man returns home to australia to find that his parents' parlor maid has committed suicide. As he searches for her identity he reminisces about the war and the people he met.

Nevil Shute's gentle and very clever way of telling a story really shines here. This one sneaks up on you as you slowly find yourself caught up in the emotions of the characters, all of whose lives have been forever shaped and scarred by their experiences in WWII. Masterfully told in partial flashback, the mystery of the suicide of a parlourmaid at an Australian sheep station turns out to have profound implications for everyone involved in her life. A deeply moving and haunting novel, Mr. Shute deftly shows us how "Like some infernal monster, still venemous in death, a war can go on killing people for a long time after it's all over."

This is a stunning novel by a master storyteller. Highly recommended.

NOTE: This is also published as 'The Breaking Wave'

The basic story is that Albania sends a plane with another country's markings to bomb the U.S. and we retaliate. However this is not a pacifist (don't build bombs book). This is not a sci-fi book. It could be a speculative fiction or just speculative.

The story begins after the war is completed and radiation is now covering the world. Australia is the last place to be covered. You read how different people are about to meat their end, some with hope, others with reckless abandon. Still there are those like the US sub commander Dwight Towers is loyal to his country to the end by not allowing U.S. property in the end to fall into the hands of the Aussies.

The book was written in the Cold War Era environment. So many people think that it is about countries and war; others think this story is some anti war story. The reality is that it is a study of people meeting a sure end and how they react. Other readers will balk at the actions of the people in this story; yet when they meet the same situation we will see how realistic the characters are. Still others will balk at the predictability of the characters. Still this is how many people get over a crisis by being predictable. It is these characteristics that make this novel timeless. Someone else must think so or they would not have made an updated version for our not too distant future.


On the Beach

The beach, when one beholds it as such, is the end of the world.

Nevil Shute's incredible novel is not about surviving a global nuclear holocaust. The reader will follow the lives of several people, some of whom are related, some who are friends, and some who have been brought to Australia by inevitability. One of these strangers, Dwight Towers, is an American commander for the U.S. Navy who oversees a vital submarine mission to the United States' western shores. And there the servicemen will observe, on the beach, the unsettling lack of human life.

When not commissioned, Lieutenant Commander Peter Holmes lives with his brand new family, Mary and his young baby Jennifer. There they spend their days living in labored bliss, on the beach, and frequently visited by family friend Moira Davidson, a young blonde in her 20s whose hobby was once gin, but is now brandy. She consumes more liquor than even Alistair MacLean can wave an empty glass at. Though her disposition is one of genuineness, she begins enticing the submarine captain Dwight into falling in love with her. By the end of the tale, Moira becomes the most beautiful and haunted character and her faithfulness and loyalty brought me to tears more so than any other character.

Shute's novel frightened me. We are, all of us, led to believe that much of Fate is in our own hands. Every day we make decisions that affect the rest of our lives, and this we do not need to be reminded of. What we forget, however, is how fragile and ephemeral our lives are, and at any given moment, our lives are not necessarily in the hands of God, but very possibly in the hands of other human beings. It is worthwhile to remember, lest we forget, that all humans err.

It is only at the very end of the book that some of the characters, who have been living a life restrained, must finally accept the truth. Peter states, "[I]f a couple of hundred million people all decide that their national honour requires them to drop cobalt bombs upon their neighbour, well, there's not much that you or I can do about it" (229). The small matter of pride is what tears marriages and friendships apart. Unfortunately, it can also destroy the world.

It is so subtle, it is easy to overlook, but Shute's motif with beaches pervades the story and ultimately becomes the one thing that never changes.

I read the 1963 Signet edition. My dictionary dash consisted of "sedulously" (31).

Both the novel and the film (which is extremely faithful to the novel) are moving and unforgettable. They tell the story of an American submarine crew stranded in Australia right after a global nuclear war. The atmosphere, the rain, the oceans, and the clouds are loaded with radiation that has already killed most of the Earth's population, and will eventually get them all. What do you do with your time when the world is ending? That is the question to be answered by these ordinary, decent people. They answer it to the best of their ability, and the results are a story that cannot be forgotten. Like "Alas, Babylon", "On The Beach" takes humanity's worst-case scenario and moves forward with it. When I was a child, a global nuclear war did not seem implausible. It now seems less likely, but who can say after 9/11/01? Read or watch "On The Beach" and think. Hopefully, this story will forever remain fiction.

I read The Rainbow and The Rose , along with most of Nevil Shute's novels, many years ago. Interestingly, I've never read On The Beach. I have, however, recently begun buying copies of Shute's novels for rereading. I wish to see if my sixty year old personna interprets them differently than I did as an eighteen year old.
At the time I first read The Rainbow and The Rose, I thought it as good as A Town Like Alice. I could not wait for Ron Clarke to become airborne once again, as he made his way across Australia, so that he would continue to experience the visions that were some sort of gift to help him sort out his feelings toward the woman he once loved and the man who'd won her heart so many years ago.
I thought back then, and I think today that the book would make a wonderful movie, if done correctly and with the right people.
I urge anyone with even a passing interest in Shute's work to read The Rainbow and The Rose.

Totally enjoyed this book as I have many others by Neville Shute - he truly can tell a story with wonderful detail and intrigue that keeps the pages turning!

I was going to give this book four stars until I reached the end and it moved me almost to tears, hence 5 stars. Live many of Shute's books the feelings he invokes are beautiful and powerful, all coming from rather controlled, unemotional characters. "The Rainbow and the Rose" is about lives twined and brought around in a full-circle effect. There are no surprises in the plot, but there doesn't need to be. It works even as you know what's coming. There is a great deal of detail on flying and airplanes that may or may not appeal to you--I enjoyed it. Shute writes those sorts of technical details very smoothly so they integrate into the characters' traits. Not Shute's best novel, but decidedly worth reading.

Nevil Shute's On the Beach was written in 1957 amidst the Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation. It has been made into two movies, one in 1959 starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, and Fred Astaire and a smaller budget film in 2000. Shute was a bestselling writer in his time. "In 2007, Gideon Haigh wrote an article in The Monthly arguing that On the Beach is Australia's most important novel." (From the Wikipedia article on Nevil Shute.)

It's now probably categorized as science fiction, but there really is no impossible or futuristic science throughout the book. At the time it was written, it was an expression of the fears of many. Now, it is more of an alternative fiction, which is really what all fiction is anyway, of what the world would have been like if a nuclear war had broken out. To not get into the details too much, the story centers on Australia after a nuclear war had totally destroyed the northern hemispehere. Slowly, the radiation spreads south. Shute focuses on a group of people located in Melbourne who know that they are going to all die soon from radiation poisioning that is spreading south. It sounds bleak and depressing, which it is. The sadness of the book is the only reason I did not give it a perfect rating. It is excruciatingly sad.

As for the themes, the book tackles suicide. The government manufactured pills for people to take once they began to show signs of radiation sickness. There would be no possibility of recovery once the radiation started poisoning people; nobody could win this battle with death. Through the story, Shute asks, "Would suicide in such a situation be okay?"

The book made me wonder (not that my little bout with cancer hasn't also done this) if I am doing what I would like to do if I knew that I would die in three months. The people in the book were forced to ask this. In the book, most of the people just kept on doing what they had already been doing. I think I would do the same.

In the end, the book really caused me to examine what should be valued in the world we live in. I think I am a better person for having read this book.

Entertaining: 4/5
Inspiring: 5/5
Ethical Thinking: 5/5

This book was so depressing that I do not know if I will ever read it again. I will definitely keep this book. It was great to read and challenging to my thoughts. It would also be a great discussion starter.

Faulkner nailed it. The plot of Shute's book is as timely as it was in the late 50's. Why? How?

Why should you spend under $5 for a used copy from Amazon?

What Shute wrote about is going to happen!

The 'nuk-ler' secret, to quote the only President the US has, now, is in the hands of a dozen or more countries, many of them angry at great parts of the world. Few know that apartheid South Africa had 'the bomb'.

There's an inevitability of atomic bombs, again, being used in war. It will happen.

But, we face a slightly different end of civilization than Shute envisioned. Solid circuits, computers, banking, automobiles, cash registers, McDonald's, will disappear in the first flash, ElectroMagnetic Pulse, EMP. How far away? In the early 60's, long before today's circuits were envisioned, an H-Bomb test 800 miles from Hawaii blew out gadgets from circuit breakers to street lights. Luckily, we don't know the exact answer. Yet.

A. Einstein was asked what WW III would be fought with. He didn't know. He DID know what WW IV would be fought with. "Rocks."

'Brother, it's not too late.' (that's the banner at a Salvation Army rally ... also the last image in the movie.)

Read the book, it'll make you think. A half century later, its theme is almost inevitable.

It'll make you think. That's rare in books these days. Even more for books written 50 years ago.

Other reviews give a synopsis, so I'll skip that and go straight to an analysis/critique.

I first read Nevil Shute's On the Beach when I was a teenager--about the same time as I read Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon--and I've retained a morbid fascination with it ever since. As science fiction it's not all that great, since it isn't really SF at all. Instead, it is more of an allegory with a heavy touch of absurdism thrown in. Think about it: the denizens of a functioning civilization go about their business with near-normality, behaving one minute as if everything is fine while in the next acknowledging (usually with a large degree of detachment) that a sword is hanging over their heads. This description fits both the book and the actual nuclear/Cold War world of the late 1950s. The only difference is that in the book the blade is already, and inescapably, whistling downwards, while in the real world (and this is Shute's point) the danger might be avoided, if people act right away.

Indeed, Shute goes to great pains to get his original readers to identify with the characters and civilization in On the Beach. The Australian setting is accessible to the English speaker, as a South American or African setting wouldn't be. Aside from the gasoline shortage, which he mentions cursorily on occasion, the characters seem discommoded almost not at all by the war (Moira has to darn Dwight's socks; Dwight has to drink Australian whiskey), and Shute greatly downplays even the travel problems, making them seem only a modest inconvenience. Government and the market both appear to function normally, only beginning to falter a bit at the very end. In fact, most people behave even in the final days as if everything were going to continue. A clerk insists on giving Peter Holmes a receipt for a purchase even though the store is about to shut down; the admiral discusses in some detail the reimbursement procedure that an admittedly-nuked Washington, D.C. will follow for the Australian upkeep of the U.S. submarine even as radiation sickness forces him to bolt for the bathroom. These people know the end of the world is days, even hours, away; they aren't deluding themselves; but still, they can't let go. This fabric of functionality and forced normality makes the world of On the Beach resonate with the real Cold War world: in each the danger, while quite real, is remote from everyday circumstance, leading to an almost schizophrenic existence. (Think "Duck and Cover" commercials airing during a "Leave it to Beaver" episode and you get the idea.)

The characters' ultimate, and universal, reaction to the approaching end of the world further strengthen the allegorical nature of the book. British apocalyptic fiction has always been more fatalistic and pessimistic than its American counterpart, and in no case is this more true than in On the Beach, which is perhaps the most devastating work of its kind. Shute's post-holocaust characters--in fact the entire civilization--simply give up. From an American perspective--the sort that produced the contemporary Alas, Babylon--this is frustrating and unrealistic. To paraphrase a statement of Colonel Graff in another famous American SF work, Ender's Game, our genetic heritage simply doesn't allow us to give up without a fight. But that's exactly what Shute's world does, without even any show of resistance. In the entire book there are only two, or perhaps three, real outbursts of emotional reaction to what's happening. No drastic mobilization to prepare a bunker to wait out the twenty year period of radiation, no desperate attempt to continue the species at any and all cost, as in When Worlds Collide ("Waste anything but time!"); just passive acquiescence and, in the end, mass suicide. This fact--this long, drawn-out, and ultimate loss of hope, which few other works can match--is what makes the book so important. In sum, Shute asked the Cold War reader how s/he will respond to a threat that, unlike the one in On the Beach, was still only potential. Peter Holmes, in his deathbed speech, suggests education. The book's meaning and purpose is best summed up in the closing shot of the original film; the banner proclaiming to an empty Melbourne "There is still time, brother."

On a literary level the book leaves much to be desired. Particularly grating to this American is the terribly contrived American dialect of Dwight Towers, the American sub commander. But despite this, On the Beach is a classic of the genre--if you can stomach it.

It's impossible to say that I enjoyed this book. How can one enjoy a book about the end of humanity? Most of the people in the world are already dead when the book begins and those remaining in southernmost Australia, South America and South Africa are just waiting for the inevitable fallout to get to them. They know it is coming and there is nothing they can do about it. This is the depressing part. The upbeat part, if you can really call it that, is the way the inhabitants of Melbourne go on with their lives - working at jobs that really don't matter anymore, planting gardens they will never be able to harvest, building fences to keep in livestock that will soon be gone, going to school to learn skills they will never be able to use, etc. They don't just roll over and play dead. They don't go looting all the stores and stealing everything. If fact, merchants more often than not just let people have what they need without payment at all. To me the best part of this book is the grace with which most of the people accepted their fate. Though I still like 'Alas Babylon' better, this is a very good book too.

This book is beautiful, beautiful in a sad and heart wrenching way... like finding a dead butterfly. The world is winding down; an all out nuclear war has ravaged and wiped out the entire northern hemisphere. Those who weren't claimed by the bombs themselves died from the radiation. The southern hemisphere waits patiently for their time, as the radiation sweeps slowly southward, taking with it town after town.

In southern Australia the last of the large cities prepares for their demise. One of two remaining American Nuclear Submarines has made it and it's crew reports in to the Australian Armed forces.

This book mainly follows two men, Peter Holmes an Australian in the Navy who is a new father, and Dwight Towers, an American Commander of the Submarine "Scorpion," a refugee in Australia. Peter is assigned to Dwight's submarine as the Australian Liaison, however the military aspect of this novel is truly nothing but background. This is a book about people, who know that death is swiftly approaching through the air and that there is nothing they can do to stop it. At the start of the book it is December 27th, and the radiation is due to reach them in September. We follow several members of the town as they work to go on with their daily lives all the while knowing that everything will be ending. Some live in a state of denial, planting gardens they will not live to see bloom, others attempt to live out what fantasies they can, racing fast cars with reckless abandon. Still others accept what is coming and live their lives the best they can.

This is a story of quiet desperation, terror, acceptance and the decision to die with dignity. The writing style is fine, though not brilliant, perhaps this is because of the time it was written in, or perhaps Shute's idea was grander than his literary ability. Some of the words were awkward, which I simply attributed to my not knowing Australian slang, also many of the male characters can come across as fairly detached while the women verge on a touch of insanity. I contribute this to the fact that it was written in the 1950's when the men were expected to be both strong and reserved, and the women were still considered the "weaker sex." There is also a deep rooted sense of morality and duty that courses through the novel, there is no looting, rioting, or mass pandemonium, rather we see a quite resolve, camaraderie and sense of dignity.

Many have said this novel brought them to tears, though I can see my mom bawling if she read this, I did not cry, instead I found myself feeling empty, disturbed, and emotionally drained. There is no action in this book, save a car race, so if you are looking for fighting, explosions, and mutilations, look elsewhere. This is instead a powerful study of what those last days could be like. I wish they made books like this required reading in school, the next generation might think a little harder.

All i need is to read someone elses review on No Highway.

A Raindeer airplane crashes in Labrador after a little less than 1440 flying hours. In the official report the accident is ascribed to pilot error but Denis Scott at the Royal Aircraft Establishment in Farnborough is not convinced that this explanation is true. Neither does Theodore Honey, a slightly eccentric member of Scott's staff, who has an as yet unproved theory that the tail plane of the Raindeer is bound to succumb to metal fatigue after 1440 hours in the air. What if Honey's experiments prove him to be right?

Nevil Shute writes a good, technically-sound tale of the perils of aircraft design in the immediate post-war era. His material is therefore dated -- yet because it is so obviously dated it has a charm that is difficult to fault.

Memorable characters: you probably know people who are like the protagonists. Memorable plot. Written from the viewpoint of a semi-detached observer, though one with a keen stake in the outcome.

The ending was a little disappointing, with a literal "deus ex machina" providing the solution to a really knotty problem -- perhaps it was feasible in the forties, but certainly wouldn't work today. But don't let this keep you from reading the book: it's a good tale that deserves dusting-off.

When Dr. Theodore Honey, a boffin of an aviation scientist, predicts that the wings on a new type of aircraft will begin falling off, he is sent across to Canada to investigate a previous crash. Bad choice--he is so unimpressive that when he learns that the aircraft he is on has already exceeded his estimated time to failure, he can only stop the flight by wrecking it when it stops to refuel at Gander. Almost everyone believes he's crazy except for a few--including the assistant director at his place of work, a stewardess, and a movie actress.

Shute is at his best in his characterizations--such as Monica Teasdale the fading American movie actress, who falls in love with Honey as she once did with a man before she became famous. She soon realizes she can never have Honey and must step aside for the stewardess, who can give him children and maintain him in his work, as well as give him love. The details are amusing--the actress, from Indiana, uses the word "hoosier" to the mystification of the British characters

As in most of Shute's books, there are no villians. The fact that many of the characters are working against each other does not make any of them evil, and when the truth is revealed, they quickly begin to work together.

For the information of readers, the book made a fairly poor movie starring (I kid you not), Jimmy Stewart as Honey. But as so few of Shute's books were made into movies, it is worth watching for that reason.

...after all, this is an age of cynicism. It's the story of nerdy scientist Theodore Honey (the British term of that time was "boffin"--it specifically targeted scentists) who discovers a potentially deadly flaw in a new airliner. The problem is that nobody but his boss Dr. Scott (from whose viewpoint this story is told) has any faith in his theory. After all, oddballs don't have very high credibility factors. So Scott sends Honey over to Canada to investigate a recent crash of one of those planes, only to have it turn out that the plane he takes is also one of that model. Which makes for a particularly gripping scene--it's the centerpiece of the James Stewart movie based on this book. Other important characters here are Honey's motherless daughter, an actress he's a fan of who's also on the flight--he reminds her of an old friend she knew before she became famous, the plane's captain who is increasingly unsure that Honey is a crackpot, plus a stewardess who not only shares her captain's point of view--but finds Honey strangely compelling in an even more important way. Nowadays you don't often find this human a story in so short a book. Shute's best known book is "On The Beach".

An Old Captivity is an overlapping tale of what Shute began in Vinland the Good. Shute's stories can be considered quaint, or old fashioned, by some, but in today's rushed society his characters are refreshingly dedicated to their trade/duties, and well thought out in their actions. This story is about an air adventure to seek archaeological data in a remote area of Greenland with just the right amount of reality to make the reader feel like they could be there.
Shute always does an excellent job in making the reader "feel the struggle" on a personal level. In today's novels, the inner struggle, or process of dealing with moral dilemmas, is too many times minimized or completely missing. Shute does a service to those who acknowledge the greater aspects of ones choices. He acknowledges in great detail the struggles within which we all face, yet rarely talk about or teach to the next generation. While Shute's novels are fiction, his characters are more real than the ones we will find from most any other author. A great adventure, a great read!
For those wishing to know more about Nevl Shute, an internet search for the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation will put them in touch with much information as well as other Shute enthusiasts.

Initially published in 1940 it is a touching story of a pilot, a scientist and his daughter who in the early 1930's are early North Atlantic aviators as they fly from England to Iceland and on to Greenland to search for evidence that the Irish may have accompanied the Vikings in their year 1000 AD colonies. Nevil Shute combines his incredible love of aviation and his admiration of pilots, with the mysticism which later becomes very much of a trademark in many of his books. A sensitive love story ties the present day characters to the ancient Norse sagas. Further underlying the tale is the question of how far west did the early voyagers to Iceland and Greeland actually get. I personally find it fascinating to note that years after Nevil Shute wrote this book, compelling evidence of Viking settlements on the North American continent itself has been found.

Nevil Shute's style will probably not please the modern reader much, and that is unfortunate. His love of detail and the pains he goes to make sure of what he is stating are characteristics that I enjoy in his texts. Sometimes, he goes to an almost ridiculous extent to flesh out the reality of his background, when it probably would not be missed. Yet just as he does this, you can see him entering a truly fictional world in which, whoops, his characters suddenly do resemble real people and his narrative suddenly comes to life. It might be the extra effort Donald Ross goes to get the wireless to work, something banal and silly like that, but we know, almost without realising it that Shute is suddenly expanding a fictional context to include the all too likely possibility of future danger, and we realise just how much care is being taken. The work is not sloppy; it is methodical and I admit, at times a little dry. Yet when Shute's work really fires, it is because of this attention to the right kind of detail.

"An Old Captivity" has long been one of my favourite Shute novels. In a way it's an experimental sort of book: it takes the long wide arc of a journey from Britain to Canada via Iceland and Greenland, as its background. The path of a small seaplane is traced with infinite pains to capture the solitariness and the arduous nature of the voyage. Its three passengers are linked together in interesting and diverse ways. Slowly, against the further background of the Icelandic sagas, the tale emerges and, as usual with Nevil Shute, it is not what we are expecting. Just when the clean, crisp, almost mechanical prose has us thinking one thing, Shute leaps off into a void composed of history and imagination. It's an extremely disciplined piece of writing and I hope you'll enjoy the ride.

I enjoyed every bit of this story, but it wanted more. More of an ending. More of a wrap-around of set-up plot elements. More expansion on some very critical scenes.

And yet, the book as is remains vividly and fondly in memory a couple weeks after reading it. The writing is lovely, the main character soundly developed (secondary characters are somewhat shadowy at times), with a lot of excellent and smoothly written detail. But... the thrust of the story came in a bit late and without complete set-up. Elements that were set-up and needed resolution were left undone with some characters left hanging.

What was extremely good... the wonderful detail of flying from England to Iceland to Greenland. Beautifully done. The book is worth the price for that alone.

Most people today think nothing of getting on airplane, and a few hours later, arriving at their destination half the world away with no more to complain about than poor service by the stewardess. It wasn't always this way, and even today going to some remote locations has at least some difficulties associated with it. This book details the adventures of three very disparate people, an Oxford don, his class conscious daughter, and an independent-minded pilot as they embark on a trip from England to Greenland during the mid-thirties in an attempt by the professor to prove that the Celts came along with the Norsemen during their exploration and colonization period of about AD1000.

Greenland is not a very hospitable place, with few inhabitants, almost no ports, unpredictable and typically highly inclement weather, and ice-locked most of the year. The preparations needed to go there at the time of this novel were extensive, approaching the level of effort of the Scott and Amundsen polar expeditions, though on a much smaller scale. Almost all of this effort falls on the shoulders of the pilot, from purchasing, assembling and testing an appropriate sea-plane to ordering supplies, obtaining the required documents, setting up logistical support bases, and finding and hiring an appropriately skilled photographer, all while working under a time deadline dictated by Greenland's very short summer.

Nevil's description of all of this work and the thought processes of his pilot are vivid, detailed, and highly believable. While progressing in the story line, his characters are richly developed. There is a natural antipathy between the working-man pilot and the daughter, who has led a very sheltered upper-class life, who naturally can't believe the cost and preparation required for the trip, so naturally believes that the pilot is merely out to pad his own pocket. But once they embark on the trip itself, the pilot's unstinting devotion to his work slowly wins her over, and a very predictable attraction starts to form between the two.

This is very typical of Nevil's work, as he was excellent at characterization and defining romantic attractions in a very believable and satisfying manner. Also typical is the fact that there are no bad guys or any high dramatic tension here. Instead his stories revolve around his characters, often very ordinary people dealing with the very mundane realities of life. This is a somewhat slow-moving book, typical of English novels written prior to WWII, but once adjusted to this novel's pace, I had no trouble remaining engrossed in the story.

There are some items here, though, that are not so good. Shute was an avionics engineer, and his knowledge of airplanes is very much on display here, probably a little too much so, with too many details about the plane gone over multiple times. There is a section near the end that digresses violently from the main story, almost a separate story in itself, that I did not think Shute did a proper job of preparing the reader for. The final ending that ties the main story and this other one together reeks of mysticism and was, I felt, unnecessary to completing his character's story arc.

Still, a very likeable read, probably not at the incredibly high level of things like his On the Beach or A Town Like Alice, but worthwhile reading.

"Beyond the Black Stump" may be the weakest of the novels set in Australia, but it is still an enjoyable book to read. There are no mystical elements here ("In the Wet") nor has his ability to write dialogue for American English improved any. Having said that, the book has a quickly moving plot, some excellent character development and lots of Shute's dry, killingly funny sidelights. You don't want to miss the Chinese cemetary. And there is a fine twist to the dénoument.

The story of an American man (Stan Laird) who falls in love with a Western Australian girl (Mollie) in the 1950s, but how their cultures can't really allow them to stay together. I'm not so sure I agree with the idea that the theme was materialism vs. spiritualism. For me, it was more, perhaps, the idea that civilization comes with a price tag. That while it can and will bring nicer material things and formal marriage etc, it can also detract from the human spirit as well. The Americans Mollie meets must maintain a certain amount of hypocrisy, apparently, to cope with life. But as Mollie wisely perceives, they shouldn't be judged too harsly for that because civilization has made things more convenient for them, both physically and emotionally. I liked very much her (Schute's) perception that the Americans of 1955 Oregon probably wouldn't welcome the Oregon settlers of 1890 in their homes because, like the contemporary outback Australians, they'd find them too coarse and vulgar.

Schute is a remarkable writer. Traditional, I suppose, but compassionate and insightful. His women characters are very well drawn and, unquestionably, the wisest, toughest and the most admirable ones in the book. Although I found it hard to sypathize with Stan Laird because he seemed like kind of a philistine, Schute showed empathy for him too. A good read.

This book is an exceptionally crafted one and affected me profoundly.It brings out the disparity between materialism and spiritualism.The characters in this book are very vivid and this helps in the readers' involvement with the story.

The gentle and very English urbanity of Nevil Shute comes through strongly in this work. It is obvious he likes Australia and is not exactly rapt in the US.
His characters, similar to many of the others he has used, vary from the earthy but wise Irishmen who run the station, to the brash yet sensitive young Americans who come to work the oil rig. Central to it all is Shute's archetypal heroine, the English/Australian lass brimming with common sense who gets the heart of the good man...in the end. In the process, our heroine discovers there is more to materialism than meets the eye.
Shute writes lovingly of the Austraian outback, and knowledgeably of airline travel in the fifties. Although his writing is detailed, it is never dull, and he weaves a believable web.
I have most of Shute's work and consider this one of his best; though what an American would think of it is open to question! Buy it and find out.

I like Nevil Shute's books because the stories do not follow a certain pattern. They are usually about interesting people and their lives. There is none of this modern day gory or sexy description. He makes his characters very human and mostly humane.

A nice satisfying, fast-paced novel with a touch of romance, adventure, heroism, & glimpse into the human side of business. I had read this book as a teen, & remembered it long enough to want to read it again.

The book arrived in good time with good packaging & the condition was as described. Thank you!

The novella "The Seafarers" is the first new work by Nevil Shute published since 1961, and it will come as both a delight and a reminder to readers familiar with his other works.

The story is in many ways a different treatment of some of the themes which were at the core of his later book "Requiem for a Wren", published in the US under the title "The Breaking Wave". Readers of that book will recognize the character of Leading Wren Jean Porter, who finds her direction in life altered but unclear following five years of military service during WW2. Unlike the gothic and ultimately tragic themes of the later book, however, "The Seafarers" shows her finding a path in which her life is built up on the basis of her wartime experiences, instead of being destroyed by them.

It goes without saying that this novella, written around 1946-1947, shows Shute at the very height of his powers as a storyteller. His narrative skill and observation of characters is fully on a par with later works like "A Town Like Alice" and "Round the Bend". While it is perhaps fashionable in these days to decry Shute's storytelling as overly-simplistic and out-of-date, readers who have enjoyed his other works will enjoy this one also, and will recognise in it the common theme of almost all of his books - that '. . . the true success is to labour.'