A Town Like Alice in The Roundtable

Jun 04, 2017 Petra rated it it was amazing

One of the best "make lemonade out of lemons" books I've read. Warm, witty, real.
Told by Noel Strachan, an aging solicitor who is the trustee of Jean's estate, this story unfolds quietly.
Jean is a strong, delightful woman; just the sort needed in the development of a section of Queensland, Australia that was left as a ghost town after the gold rush ended.
Although a story of love and connectivity, this isn't a sappy love story. It's a solidly told story of a determined man & woman who want to ...more

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Oct 29, 2011 Julie rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, read-in-2011, 1001-books, group-read-bnc, australia

This book was pretty good for awhile. Then some of the plot line began to annoy me. I am about to describe it, so if you don’t want to know, stop reading.

The first half of the book describes an English woman’s experiences as a prisoner of war in British Malaya during WWII. She, along with a group of other women and children, are forced to walk from place to place for many months (10+ miles a day) throughout the country with some Japanese guards and battle hunger and sickness and death. She shows This book was pretty good for awhile. Then some of the plot line began to annoy me. I am about to describe it, so if you don’t want to know, stop reading.

The first half of the book describes an English woman’s experiences as a prisoner of war in British Malaya during WWII. She, along with a group of other women and children, are forced to walk from place to place for many months (10+ miles a day) throughout the country with some Japanese guards and battle hunger and sickness and death. She shows great strength and leadership skills and helps the group survive (well some of them anyway) with her leadership and her knowledge of the Malay language which the others didn’t have, including the Japanese. When their last Japanese guard dies, she manages to make arrangements for them to live in a little town and work in the rice paddies safely until the war is over 3 years later. At the end of the book, the author says that such a “march” did not happen in Malaya but it did happen in Sumatra. After the war, the woman (Jean) goes back to England and a few years later inherits a great deal of money from a relative she only met once as a child (she was the only one left alive). She decides to quit her typist job and go back to Malaya and build a well and a wash house for the women in the town in where the prisoners had ended up staying. She wanted to do something for them since they helped her. So far, so good. But then the plot gets weird. While there, Jean discovers that an Australian man she met during the war and who had helped get food and medicine for the group was not dead as she thought he was. She decides to travel all the way to Australia to find him and show up on his doorstep. She spent about a day with this man 6 years prior and now she suddenly needs to be with him. And AT THE SAME TIME, he finds out she wasn’t married as he thought she was and he travels halfway across the world to England to find her and show up at her doorstep. Really?? It was kind of amusing at the time I read it, but when I think back about it, my eyes start rolling. Eventually they meet in Australia and decide after only a weekend (a weekend in which she received bruises in bed, a point mentioned twice even though it had nothing to do with anything and didn’t fit in) to get married. They planned to live in Australia in a town in the middle of nowhere with nothing in it. It was a place where no one wanted to live, especially women. Jean uses her money to start one business after another in this town until she has an alligator shoe factory and a whole street full of shops and a swimming pool too, all successful (sarcasm alert) because of her vast business skills obtained from when she was a typist and because of one shoe lady from England who came to help her with that business. The population of the town triples in 3 years and people actually like to live there for once. Ok, whatever. And on top of that, she takes over her household and her husband ends up seeming to me like the very opposite of the smart, strong woman he is with. It’s good to have strong female characters, but they should be equal with the men and that’s not the impression I was left with. The bad Australia section of the book was relieved a bit with a little side story of Jean helping to save an injured man stuck out in the middle of the outback. At least that had a little excitement to it, unlike all the shoe talk.
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Sep 20, 2017 Heather(Gibby) rated it really liked it

Shelves: audio-book, 1001-to-read

this is a sweeping epic story which covers quite a bit of time and geography.

I found the front half a lot more engaging when Jean is a prisoner of war with the Japanese, but was continually walked around the country as they had no actual woman's prison to put them in very interesting. The love story side of it in Australia, I found to lag a bit.

Jean's story is told by her solicitor who is the trustee of her inheritance. ...more

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Mar 30, 2020 Pamela rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: guardian-1000-read, boxall-1001-read

Entertaining story about a young woman, Jean Paget, who finds herself stranded in Malaya during WWII with a group of women and children. As they are being marched from one place to another by the Japanese, she encounters an Australian soldier who tells her about his life in the outback. When the war is over, she finds an unexpected legacy gives her the chance to visit Australia, hoping to meet up again with the helpful soldier.

I enjoyed this story, particularly the second half when Jean reaches ...more

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May 29, 2019 Janice (JG) rated it really liked it

I do love a good story and this is excellent storytelling - simple, clean, straightforward, and incredibly engaging. Except for the fact that it relies on a historical basis of race relations in Australia to tell its story, which is both enlightening and somewhat uncomfortable, it's actually a cut way above most books written and published in the 1950s regarding gender issues and the empowerment of women. I think Shute was very sly in his depiction of the influence and capabilities of women. Rec ...more

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