A Town Like Alice

By: Nevil Shute

Narrated by: Neil Hunt

Length: 12 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Eight hundred women and children begin a 1,200-mile journey on foot across Japanese-occupied Malaya. At journey’s end, only 30 will still be alive. This is the story of one woman, of her ordeal, and of how she was saved by the sacrifice of an Australian soldier. It is a story of rare individual courage in the face of certain death, and hope in the face of despair.

©1950 William Morrow & Co, Inc. (P)1990 Recorded Books

Uplifting

Great book! I was apprehensive since the last book I read by this author was depressing. This one was NOT. It has a positive ending and held my attention throughout.

Superb!

I chose this book after reading the synopsis. After listening to over 100 books, it has become my all time favorite.

Now, that is a great story

I enjoyed this audio story so much I couldn't stop listening until it was over. Not is the novel well written the reader is superb with a nice reassuring voice changing his accent to match the character's perfectly. I will be looking for more from both this author & this reader.

Excellent book

Listened to this book by recommendation. So glad I did, will be getting more Neville Shute in my list.

Nevil Shute:vastly under-rated author

Nevil Shute wrote this book based on a real situation that occurred during WW2 when the Japanese treated their prisoners of war, especially the women, despicably. They forced the women to walk from location to location with no support or supplies, counting on their dying of the ordeal, eliminating the "problem" for the Japanese.
Nevil Shute winds a complicated and emotional story around this event. What I especially enjoy in Shute's books is the vast pot of knowledge he obviously draws on to include interesting and little-known facts into his narrative. In this book, for example, he talks about a Japanese custom of allowing a dying prisoner to make one dying wish. If the wish cannot be fulfilled, as is the case in the book, the prisoner must be rescued and restored to health, if possible. (I hope this custom is true, but perhaps Shute made it up. If anybody knows for sure, one way or another, I'd love to hear.)
I plan to slowly make my way through all of Shute's books.

So refreshing!

Mystery/suspense is my usual favorite genre, but when I want a change, this is exactly the book I want. Superb narration by Mr. Hunt, and a wonderfully written, heart-warming story by Mr. Shute. I highly recommend this book.

Positively wonderful

Mr. Shute has written a timeless tale of war and romance and inspiring economic progress. All the characters are interesting, especially the heroine, Jean Paget. Such a clever novel based quite loosely on fact but interwoven with interestingly truthful insights into the many actual times and places written about. Very fascinating.

Neil Hunt, the narrator, is absolutely fabulous. A+

Wonderful. Simply wonderful.

Terrific narrator. Mesmerizing story, beautifully told. We're recently returned from a visit to the Australian gulf country, and it was lovely to revisit it in this story. Love Nevil Shute.

Fascinating story

A Town Like Alice is a book that is partly the story of a group of women who were prisoners of war in Malaya during World War II, partly a love story, and partly the story of a young woman whose vision turned a barely habitable Australian town into a thriving place attractive to women, and therefore to ranch workers, from all over the country.

The story is told by Noah, Jean Padgett’s solicitor. He is tasked with finding her after her great-uncle dies leaving her a small legacy for which, at the uncle’s request, his firm will be the trustees until she reaches something like 35 years of age. Jean and Noah become friends, and after several meetings, she tells him the story of her time in Malaya during the war. She had been raised there and knew the language, and later, when her brother returned to Malaya to work for the rubber company that had employed her father, she went back too to be near him and went to work in an office. When the Japanese overran the country in the middle of the war, everybody attempted to leave, but various circumstances prevented Jean and a family of her friends from getting to the coast in time. The Japanese took them all prisoners separating the men from the women and children.

The men were put to work, but the Japanese had no use for the women. They were shuffled from village to village until over half of the women and children had died and finally, their last guard also died. Then Jean and some of the other women negotiated with the headman of the village they were nearest to at the time and were allowed to live there and help with the farming until the end of the war.

Noah goes on to relate Jean’s subsequent adventures – going back to Malaya to finance a well for the village where she lived out the end of the war, discovering that a man from Australia she had connected while on the long trek across the country was not dead after all, and reconnecting with him (a more tangled tale than just that). On this part of her journey, she came to the town near where he was living in Australia, and, while waiting for him to return from looking for her in England, came up with an idea to turn it from a sunburnt cinder of a place into a nice, habitable town anyone would be happy to live in – or visit.

Different then what I expected

I really enjoyed this book, I thought the book was going to mostly about a group of English women prisoners marched around Malaya during world war 2, But that is only part of the story. It is about an enterprising young woman who not only survives her ordeal in Malaya but becomes a leader in that situation and then the book goes on to tell about her extraordinary life. It is mostly told through the words of her solicitor who is charged with dolling out her unexpected inheritance.
The Book takes you to Malaya, London and Australia and is part adventure and part love story. It is beautifully told and I was surprised to find out it was writeen in 1950, I would have never guessed that.