A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute

If you’re looking for a story with characters who happen to live in a time of war and who take the circumstances as they come, trying to make the best of it, I would recommend this 1950 book by Nevil Shute, which was voted a place on the BBC’s 2003’s list of “the nation’s 100 best-loved novels”. Although the heroine is British and her story concerns British colonialism in the Asian country of Malaysia, the hero is Australian and his life in the wilds of Australia can be likened to our own history of pioneer settlement.

Shute writes in a detailed quiet fashion, using as his principal narrator an interested observer, lawyer Noel Strachan. This device helps support the narrative by giving us the interest of Noel, the older man, hearing of the heroine Jean Piaget’s experiences as a Japanese prisoner in Malaysia, and of her meeting with the Australian rancher Joe Harmon, also a prisoner.

The amount of brutality in the book appears less in comparison to narratives of current crime fiction, or compared to stories of rape and murder in Darfur. However, Shute based his novel on true experiences of women and men who were Japanese prisoners in World War II. While the brutality may have been less horrific, more than 16,000 men died building the Burma railway for the Japanese, through sickness and exhaustion and malnutrition. And the experience of the women prisoners in the novel also happened, although in Sumatra, not Malaysia. Shute shows their suffering and how they died quietly one by one.

The love story is a good one, with their meeting by chance, then slowly making their way back to each other. Just when one obstacle is dealt with, another comes along to keep things interesting. The book presents the racial setting of Australia as it was in 1950, with native people considered as being below the white settlers. Interestingly enough, Jean notices a rancher married to a native woman, sees his intelligent face and wonders at his choice. But she herself is in love with Joe, a rancher who has had no real education and whose family emigrated to Australia out of the slums of London.

In the end, it is Shute’s essential humanity that resonates in his fiction and keeps your interest, even when the characters have the prejudices of an earlier era. That’s how he keeps them alive. When they come to a crossroads, they do everything they can – like when Joe sees Jean being beaten, and when Jean sees the world pushing Joe away from her. We want them to act, and we also want to act as they do, knowing our limitations but still risking everything for the things that count.

Tongues of Serpents by Naomi Novik

The latest book in the Temeraire series, book 6, finds Will Laurence and his dragon Temeraire in Australia, at the time of the Napoleonic wars. The author Novik is a history buff and writes convincingly of the details of war as waged at that time. However, this is an “alternate” history, and these Napoleonic wars, while covering much of the same territory as their real counterparts, differ significantly in events, such as Napoleon actually invading England in Victory of Eagles, Book 5. While many praise Novik for her realistic portrayal of historical settings, and others imply that readers who simply love dragons are lining up at book signings, in my opinion the strength of these books goes far beyond possessing those two elements. Her ability to pull you into the action and circumstances of each chapter, without your noticing it, shows what some reviewers have commented on – prose that carries no excess weight or dreary detail. What I have found tremendous is her consummate skill in ending chapters, so that just as you feel as despairing of circumstance as Temeraire or Laurence might be feeling, in one stroke all is changed.

The two are in New South Wales, a British prison colony, since Laurence was condemned as a traitor to Britain and Temeraire along with him. Neither are prisoners, however, since Laurence’s sentence was changed to being deported. While they continue on adventures with British forces, their status has changed and they might, if they wished, leave it all behind and retire to a farm in the interior. Somehow you know this will not happen. Novik likes showing the underside of politics --- how fine or not so fine intentions of leaders or countries end up being implemented with consequences brutal to both soldiers and civilians. This book has struck some readers as dreary, as there is a long overland passage involved, as in Book 3. In my view, Novik is depicting how tiring and numbing such journeys can be. And if I can’t actually be there, I appreciate feeling as if I am. (there are some nice excerpts of an interview with Naomi Novik at io9.com/5634183)

Muriel's Wedding (DVD) 1994 / w/ Tony Collette & Rachel Griffiths

"You're terrible, Muriel."

Muriel Hislop likes life . . . even if the favor's not exactly returned. Just out of school, she's two things a girl's not supposed to be: un-hip and unattractive. She’s also unintelligent, untalented and irresponsible but that's not enough to interfere with her ambitious fantasy-life of wanting--more than anything--to be a bride. Grabbing out at ‘friends’, fashion, and good times in an aimless effort to corral her desire, Muriel finds that her intentions, genuine as they may be, just aren't lining up with her disco-ey montage of a white wedding. Neither do they line up with other people's expectations as her antics prompt some abrupt (and vivid) recoils among family and peers. Left alone but still intent on her desire, Muriel embarks on her next best option: she agrees to marry a foreigner seeking citizenship.

This movie is comedy but it still captures a lucid realism following Muriel--a bit dim but no pretender--in her search for fulfillment, ultimately realizing that life's zest isn't always about where (or how) you look. Even juxtaposed events like her mother's suicide tend to clarify her world of emotional isolation and deferred enthusiasm. Priceless comic relief is never far off though; Muriel's impeccably satirized queen bee counterparts, all hopelessly into themselves and out of touch with reality, filling the gaps where necessary. Juggling both humor and drama doesn't always work, but exceptions like this almost credit the failures for trying. "Toni Collette doesn't play Muriel as much as she inhabits the role"*; realizing the offbeat heroine with enough authenticity to flesh out, not just a character, but an entire persona. Throw in Rachel Griffiths performance as the bosom buddy, and you have two Oscar nominees in a film which wasted no time adopting cult status.

*Schneider, Steven Jay., ed. 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Hapuppauge: Barron's, 2005. p. 247.