A Book Cover a day for seven days (Day 6). A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

Day 6

I’ve been tagged by Mick Canning to choose and feature 7 book covers in 7 days. The covers of books that mean something special to me. This entry is for my Day 6 cover.

A Nevil Shute Omnibus.

I came across Nevil Shute fairly late and considered him to be too old fashioned to be likely to suit my tastes. I was very pleasantly surprised and the stories in this collection, at least, I found to be exceptional. Iconic, in fact.

A Town Like Alice is a tale of World War 2 survival and ultimate triumph in the face of barbaric experience. It tells of the pursuit and achievement of a dream to establish a place that can hold and reward dreams, just like Alice. Alice Springs, that is, in the Northern Territory of Australia.

The Far Country is also a very appealing tale of post war refugee Charlie Zlinter finding himself and his predecessors in the logging camps up around the Howqua River in Victoria.

It is interesting to me that Shute also draws the leading female characters in these two tales, as refugees of a sort. They are escapees from a stale and stifling England.

I thoroughly recommend Shute, and these stories in particular, for a good read. There is certainly something old fashioned about them, as I had fist suspected, but they an excellent read, despite that.

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