When we were in Germany we’d take the overnight train to northern Italy, I never slept well because there were so many loud announcements every time we pulled into a station. When we were in China we took some of their fast trains. I loved them! I was glued to the window the entire time!
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I think this is what I like so much about this book is that Jean is very good at being the person people need her to be. She takes care of a baby that is not her own, she is one of the leaders of the women on the march thanks to her ability to speak the local language. She wants the aboriginal people to be able to eat ice cream, but knows the town is not ready to share the space. (One has the sense she wouldn’t have minded.) She never invades the bar even though she does yell at the bank manager. She wants to wait for marriage till the businesses are underway, but she also is willing to go ahead sooner if Joe “can’t wait.”
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I’d say being a financially independent, multi-business owner defied societal expectations for a woman in the 1950’s. And Joe was outside the norm as well; for a man of that era, he was extraordinarily at ease with Jean’s entrepreneurship.
They adhered to 1950’s rules of propriety as regards “sleepovers” before marriage, but I don’t think that stemmed from any strong opinions on morality. They both just wanted to protect Jean’s reputation so that her business ventures wouldn’t be endangered by gossip.
Jean’s attitude toward Annie is probably ahead of her time. Annie is pregnant, unmarried, and doesn’t even know who the father of her baby is, but Jean employs her in the shoe workshop after she gets fired from the hotel. On the other hand, Jean later decides not to hire another young woman on the advice of Aggie Topp, who notes, “Bit of a slut, she was” (p. 212). Rude!
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I loved how Jean turned her experience at Pack and Levy into a thriving leather-goods manufacturing business, and then how she thought ahead to what the residents of Willstown would need at various stages of their lives/the town’s growth. The pluck and determination she showed during the war was obviously an intrinsic part of who she was, and she was able to channel that to her changing circumstances.
I thought that the idea of making sure she recaptured some of the wages she paid her workers by opening an ice cream parlor was really clever. Unfortunately, I’ve never been very entrepreneurally-minded, but I was definitely inspired by her.
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Not extensive train travel, but a number of years ago we (H, D, S & I) did an overnight train from Rome to Zurich. H booked it online and thought we were getting a 4 person sleeper car. Turned out to be a 6 person sleeper car – so us + 2. One of the 2 was a really nice young guy who was working in Zurich for some big bank, and spoke English. The other was a woman who didn’t speak much English but made her wishes known – which included us all going to bed when she did, which was very early. We barely had time to eat our dinner. We all slept quite well, though.
H and I also traveled in Japan, getting around between cities on the bullet trains. OMG – they were great! Absolutely on time, and very fast. If only we had that here in the US!
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I thought the no sleepovers before marriage was hilarious. As though no hanky-panky can happen during the day. And they had no problem going off to Green Island and renting adjacent cabins! (I think The Thornbirds totally borrowed that scenario, but of course with a little more spice.)
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I know! I was kind of shocked (for them/the time) about Green Island!
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Yes, I was struck by the similarities! Both couples even enjoyed an outing in a glass bottom boat.
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I just stumbled across a little bit of trivia for etymology buffs:
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, A Town Like Alice contains the earliest known use of the word dicey: “He… made a tight, dicey turn round in the gorge with about a hundred feet to spare.”
Oxford English Dictionary
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A Town Like Alice is inspired by history, but not really based on an actual event. From the Author’s Note:
On the publication of this book I expect to be accused of falsifying history, especially in regard to the march and death of the homeless women prisoners. I shall be told that nothing of the sort ever happened in Malaya, and this is true. It happened in Sumatra.
Well, not exactly. As @jerseysouthmomchess posted earlier, Nevil Shute met a woman in 1949 who, he wrote, "marched over twelve hundred miles carrying her baby, in circumstances similar to those which I have described. She emerged from this fantastic ordeal undaunted, and with her son fit and well.”
As it turned out, Nevil Shute wasn’t a very good listener and didn’t get the details quite right. Carry Geysel’s group was transported from place to place, but often in vehicles. They spent time in a camp, and there weren’t so many casualties. Still, it was a miserable journey, and she endured many hardships.
If you’re interested in learning her story (including entries in her son’s baby book, which she was allowed to keep with her), it’s here: https://www.nevilshute.org/Misc/Carry’s%20story.pdf
Carry had no idea that Shute was writing a book inspired by her experiences, and was “dumbfounded” (and not terribly thrilled) when she received a copy of the book identifying her by name in the Author’s Note.
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Gosh, it seems like there should be some legal requirement (or at least an author courtesy tradition) to consult with the source before listing her name.
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I’ve been acknowledged in two books but I never got a heads-up for either one.
I’ve been acknowledged in two - I had the entire first draft read to me - but I can’t remember if I was asked for permission. The other one definitely was asked. It was a different time and honestly I don’t think anyone would have expected her to mind. Shute admits she’s only inspiration, it’s in no way her story.
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Those of you who weren’t fans of A Town Like Alice might be interested to know that the “Jean is too-good-to-be-true” opinion was shared by a Time reviewer when the book was first published in 1950 (as The Legacy in the U.S). And what do you know, the title of the review is…:
Any ordinary girl would have settled down and lovingly borne him a few nice children, but Jean is a more fearsome natural force. By the time she has done with her husband’s district, it is in the grip of an industrial revival, soil conservation is breaking out all over, the cattle trade is expanding, new stores are sprouting like mushrooms.
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Laughing at the description of him as “a middlebrow Graham Greene”. I haven’t read much Greene, maybe I should. Interesting that the original American title was The Legacy. I like Shute’s title much better.
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One thing that always confused me…at the end, apparently they gave the women their wedding rings back? Does that seem at all realistic? Wouldn’t they have been melted down for metal?
I thought that was an odd detail. I wondered if it had been based on a true incident.
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Adding shame to shame … I have yet to finish the book. I have about 60 pages left … maybe today.
One of things I enjoy about this discussion is how almost everyone truly likes this book. I’m not there but I’m in no way unhappy that others feel differently. For the record (with 60 pages to go) I don’t dislike it per se but am rather disinterested in Jean and Joe (i.e. bored).
I’ve always found it curious when someone pegs a book as historical fiction when it’s actually written in that time period. If an author today wrote A Town Like Alice as historical fiction it wouldn’t read the same way. I once heard someone quibble details in Little Women as unauthentic to the time period without realizing it was written in the time period. It was odd (and less than impressive).
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That is funny though it’s possible that Alcott could have gotten something wrong because, for example, she might actually have the wrong information (say about something that she heard secondhand about the Civil War, or facts about how poor people lived.)
Shute apparently didn’t get all the details correct. I thought it interesting that the Malays were insulted that they would not have built their own well if a village needed one. There was a little element of colonial patronizing there. It’s interesting, because I think he tries very hard to show that native populations have a lot to teach us, but ultimately he’s still very British (or later very Australian.)
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True but, if I remember correctly, it was little details about the March girls’ life with which Alcott most likely had great familiarity.
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