A Town Like Alice in Around the World in 80 Books

Jan 16, 2015 Bogdan rated it liked it

Shelves: brits

A good novel especially as the main characters are inspired from real life persons. This made up the difference in this case between a mediocre novel and good one, as Nevil Shute writing style is not extraordinary good. Carry Geysel and "Ringer" Edwards were the actual persons that inspired Jane and Joe Harman characters, and this exceptional prisoner of war fates makes the reader to relate very much with the fictional Jane and Joe.

The book is clearly a love story in exceptional conditions, tryi A good novel especially as the main characters are inspired from real life persons. This made up the difference in this case between a mediocre novel and good one, as Nevil Shute writing style is not extraordinary good. Carry Geysel and "Ringer" Edwards were the actual persons that inspired Jane and Joe Harman characters, and this exceptional prisoner of war fates makes the reader to relate very much with the fictional Jane and Joe.

The book is clearly a love story in exceptional conditions, trying to prove that love is more powerful than war and also beyond the horrors it may inflict to prisoners of war. If you take into account that the novel was released in the first few years after the World War II and that in many countries rationalization was still on, it also tries to prove that life goes on and everything can be better than it was before the war. Interesting and very well delivered message, so I'll give it a 5 for premise.

Regarding the form, my impression is that Nevil Shute is not a great writer, but does a fairly OK job in this novel. The novel has parts that are boring and fairly descriptive that could be avoided or condensed. But he does a good job in creating an interesting story and following the respective plan. I'll give it a 3 for form.

In terms of originality, I've read quite a bit of similar stories, starting even with folk tales. I consider that the prototype of this story is one of the oldest type of stories available. Nevil Shute made it slightly original with the setting of Malaya under Japanese occupation then with Australian Outback. Plus the real life inspired characters. So I will give it a 2 for the level of originality.

On the characters, the two main characters, Joe and Jane are based on real persons thus it is very simple for the author to create very good characters that the reader can relate to, especially with their experiences as prisoners of war. The narrator is also based on the author, so this is not a problem as well. And the rest of characters are side ones. So I will give it a 3 for characters.

Regarding the complexity and difficulty, the novel refers to a historical period and region I didn't know too much about it. But it is made easy for readers like me as the author carefully details the circumstances of the book setting. It is also not too complex, using a single story thread without altering the time. Thus I will rate it with a 2 for complexity and difficulty.

In terms of credibility, taking into account the inspiration of the main character from actual living persons, it should not have problems here. And also the remote Australian cities that could grow and shrink so easily are not exceptional. So my rating for credibility is 4.

The last criteria is edition. I had a lot of issues with the spelling errors and various other errors that made the reading a lot harder. There were phrases that I needed to re-read in order to understand them. Taking into account all, I'll give it a 1.

To summarize, I liked this novel especially the fact that it is set in that East Asia period and Australia. The love story was also fairly good, but in the rest is fairly average. All in all, my final rating for it is 2.86, which I will round it to 3 on Goodreads system.


+--------------------------+-----------------+
| Criteria | Rating |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Premise | 5 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Form | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Originality | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Characters | 3 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Difficulty/Complexity | 2 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Credibility | 4 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Edition | 1 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+
|Total | 2.86 |
+--------------------------+-----------------+