success in the novel as they care about their own hard work and success. In Ruined City , Shute describes the unglamorous side of working hard in investment banking. He makes it fascinating by showing what happens to a capitalist who begins to realize what capital means to ordinary hard-working people. The banker risks everything to reopen a closed shipyard and revive a town devastated by corporate cronyism and misguided government policies. He goes to jail for his free-market principles. When he’s released, he travels back to the town, anonymously, and finds a statue of himself at the shipyard gate inscribed: “He Gave Us Work.” In A Town Like Alice , Shute’s heroine first survives capture in Japanese occupied Malaya by working hard with the local peasant women. After the war, she goes to a
woebegone sheep station in the Australian outback and, again with hard work, turns it into a thriving community using the only resources available – crocodiles. “Willstown” becomes a center of crocodile purse and shoe production that’s almost as prosperous as central Australia’s largest city, Alice Springs. And in Trustee From the Toolroom , Shute’s protagonist, Keith, is – dull as it gets – an expert adviser to hobbyists who make scale-model precision machinery (tiny steam boilers and the like). Keith works hard at his job. He also helps his wealthy brother-in- law hide a fortune in diamonds in the engine of his yacht – to escape post-war Britain’s confiscatory taxes and export restrictions. The yacht breaks up on a reef in the South Pacific. Keith’s niece (for whom he is guardian and trustee) is orphaned. Keith must retrieve her inheritance. This is hard work for a man of modest means. But it turns out the slightly nutty (and bolty) fraternity of model machine-makers is far-flung, and Keith is their hero. There are 20 other Nevil Shute novels and novellas. They’re mostly out of print but readily available thanks to Vintage Books reprinting them all in 2009. Every one of them is delightful to read – Nevil Shute did the hard work for us – and all but one feature hard work. The exception is On the Beach , which is about people taking the easy way out and having a nuclear war. It kills everybody. – TBG
Shute works hard at turning hard work into a good story... readers care as much about the hard work and success in the novel as they care about their own hard work and success.
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