This old yarn of a novel feels as though after a minimum of plotting and the occasion assisting sip of whisky and soda the author just typed and typed until the book was done.It opens with the framing device of a man listening to another man's story. Logically the point of view in the rest of the book until we reach the frame again should be the storytellers - but it isn't (at least not consistently). Slightly oddly the end of the story doesn't match up with the storytellers situation in the introductory chapter which is set some years after the events that he is going to describe. That's ok, the story is entertaining enough and a sip or two of your whisky and soda might help you get past this.The book was first published in 1940 with the action is set in the early 1930s. The attitudes displayed in the novel are very much of its time. The race theory underpinnings of colonialism are important, our storyteller the aircraft pilot Donald Ross has an Irish mother and a Scottish father and his Celtic heritage is significant - the dreaming Celt has an important part to play. Ross has been employed by Oxford Don Lockwood and is travelling with him and his daughter to Greenland with the intention of carrying out an aerial photographic survey of the area of the Norse Eastern settlement. At one stage the party are forced to stop by bad weather en route at an Inuit hut on the Greenland coast.The colonial situation of Greenland is clear and intended or not the colonial message is hard to miss. Ross has to radio the Danish Governor to ask permission to land which is granted on condition that they don't give weapons or alcohol to "the natives" and Ross advises the Don's daughter to slap the Inuit women if they bother her too much (Clearly he hasn't had the chance to read How to win friends and influence people). The Norse settlement to Greenland was of course a failure and this comes across as a warning to the reader (presumably the author assumes that Greenlanders won't be reading). The failure of the Norse colony is explained here as been due to the settlers having (gasp) "gone native". The occasional Inuit with European features demonstrates to them the frightful miscegenation that occurred when the Norse way of life was no longer possible after their abandonment by "the mother country". All that the colonists had needed to survive was "a square deal from the Mother country". In 1940 when this book was first published the British Empire still looked strong to uncritical eyes, but by 1965 when it was reprinted decolonisation was well underway, although possibly the ending looks forward to the USA replacing Britain in its role of providing the goods needed to preserve top down colonial regimes in unsuitable environments. Having arrived in Greenland our Celtic storyteller begins to dream. These dreams are brought on by the combination of fatigue and German-made sleeping pills. The rendering of Ross' fatigue and strain is I think the best part of the book. Because this is not the book to pass a stereotype by but rather prefers to embrace it with great affection the Oxford Don and his daughter are, obviously, hopeless impractical. So Ross has to plan the expedition, fly the plane and maintain it. Shute reminds us of Ross' concern about fuel levels, the weight of the plane and the fears of the deterioration of mechanical parts that leaves him awake at night, desperate for a sleeping pill. The weather determines when they can fly, the refueling is arduous work and Ross gets less and less time to sleep.Over-strained, in Greenland and under the influence of the Germanic sleeping pills, Ross dreams. Maybe he taps into the collective unconscious or maybe he remembers a past life, in any case in his dreams he revisits the Norse settlement in the time of Erik the Red and Leif Erikson and if you are familiar with the Vinland Saga you can probably imagine how the book ends. Overall this is one of those irritating books were you get a sense of the author's skill, but are exposed to their clumsiness and unwillingness to be consistent. Very much of its time, it has some interest as a period piece.
I'm not even sure I should call this fantasy, but whatever, my shelves don't claim to be an exhaustive list of categories. Ride-along time-travel In A Dream is SF for people who don't want to write SF; I probably shouldn't comment until I've read more Shute, but I get the feeling he thought SF had to have a certain plausible deniability and be separated hygienically by framing narratives in order to be respectable. (There's a really weird half of a framing narrative right at the beginning with an unnamed first-person narrator; after setting up that first-person intimacy and some questions one might expect the narrator to answer, it dives straight into the story of the actual characters and we never see the unnamed 'I' again, not even at the end.) The time-travel bit was weirdly unconnected to the contemporary bit, and there wasn't any tension or reconciliation between the two: all three main characters wondered if Ross (the one who had the time-travel dream) was nuts, but no one seems particularly bothered by it, and when they find out fairly definitively that his dream was true, they all just sort of shrug and go to New York rather than realising the implications. I think it would have been more successful if the parts had been more balanced in size, and if two characters, or even all three, had time-travelled too, so that the last section could have involved sharing impressions and arguing 'Did we? Or are we both nuts?', rather than Ross being all 'I had this really weird dream, it felt totally real' and the other two going 'Hmm. *side-eye*' for thirty pages.That said, it was totally absorbing, with a subtle but effective change of register for the Viking bit, and I loved the expedition to Greenland. Whatever else Shute has (and I should mention that it was published in 1940, with all that implies), he has a great deal of I-want-to-read-it-osity.
What do You think about An Old Captivity (2002)?
I have really enjoyed all the Neville Shute books that I have read, this was did not disappoint but did not have the same level of finesse or as good a storyline as some of his other books. The majority of Nevil Shute's other books I have loved, this was I just liked.I did not feel the same level of connection with the characters and did think they were as well rounded or described in this book.I also found the ending of the book dissatisfying. It did not feel like closure or the end of the story, but more like a modern story which had been set up to be a Trilogy or such like. I felt that there were too many unanswered questions for my taste.I did however still enjoy the storyline and the descriptions it is just not one of my favourite Nevil Shute's. The other books are like old favourites which I want to read again and again. Once will be enough for this book I think.
—Lizzy
Nevil Shute's style will probably not please the modern reader much, and that is unfortunate. His love of detail and the pains he goes to make sure of what he is stating are characteristics that I enjoy in his texts. Sometimes, he goes to an almost ridiculous extent to flesh out the reality of his background, when it probably would not be missed. Yet just as he does this, you can see him entering a truly fictional world in which, whoops, his characters suddenly do resemble real people and his narrative suddenly comes to life. It might be the extra effort Donald Ross goes to get the wireless to work, something banal and silly like that, but we know, almost without realising it that Shute is suddenly expanding a fictional context to include the all too likely possibility of future danger, and we realise just how much care is being taken. The work is not sloppy; it is methodical and I admit, at times a little dry. Yet when Shute's work really fires, it is because of this attention to the right kind of detail."An Old Captivity" has long been one of my favourite Shute novels. In a way it's an experimental sort of book: it takes the long wide arc of a journey from Britain to Canada via Iceland and Greenland, as its background. The path of a small seaplane is traced with infinite pains to capture the solitariness and the arduous nature of the voyage. Its three passengers are linked together in interesting and diverse ways. Slowly, against the further background of the Icelandic sagas, the tale emerges and, as usual with Nevil Shute, it is not what we are expecting. Just when the clean, crisp, almost mechanical prose has us thinking one thing, Shute leaps off into a void composed of history and imagination. It's an extremely disciplined piece of writing and I hope you'll enjoy the ride.
—Owen
I returned once again to one of my favorite authors, Nevil Shute. Although I’d read this book before, at least 10 years ago or more, I eagerly got into it for this second reading. Donald Ross is a Scotsman who was raised by his aunt following the death of his parents. Funds were not available to send him to Oxford when it was his time to go to college. Instead he goes into the British Royal Air Force, becoming a very good pilot during his five-year period of service. After this he follows the jobs available to Canada performing innumerable seaplane jobs into the Canadian wilderness – flying in supplies, equipment, etc., for trappers, prospectors, hunting parties, and other with interests of varying sorts in northeast Canada. He became most accomplished in dealing with all the considerable factors that have to be taken into account in flying into such conditions, especially what it takes to keeping a seaplane properly maintained and flyable there. The terrible economic conditions of the 1930’s did not spare Canada. He soon found himself without a job and heading back to Scotland where conditions were marginally better. He applied for numerous flying jobs with no luck, then contacted a friend named Mr. Clarke at the Guild of Air Pilots about job possibilities indicating that he was getting desperate. After a couple of weeks, Mr. Clarke informed him of possible employment for an archeology Professor Lockwood at Oxford. He immediately set out to apply for the job. The professor had discovered information that convinced him there had been early Celtic explorers who had reached Greenland in about the 10th century. He proposed to make an expedition, with the backing of his very successful brother, to the ruins of an ancient settlement named Brattalid on the southwest tip of Greenland to begin an archeological dig and, more importantly, to make a photographic mapping survey of the entire area during his summer break from classes. He was seeking to employ a pilot for that purpose. Donald knew that he had the expertise needed for this job and agreed to accept it when offered in spite of the provision that the professor’s daughter would be an additional passenger. She was quite set against her father going due to his age and tried to get Donald to convince him that he should not do it. When all was settled, the expedition did get underway as planned with the pilot, the professor, and his daughter. They flew from Southampton, England, to their expedition base at Julianehaab, Greenland via Invergordon, Scotland; Reykjavik, Iceland; Angmagsalik, Greenland; and a very small nameless Eskimo village between Angmagsalik and Julianehaab where they had to make a weather-necessitated unplanned stop. Along the way they had to contend with both anticipated and unanticipated conditions and emergencies including having to land in ice fields, frequent very low-level fog conditions, a broken leg of a planned fourth member of the expedition who was to meet then by ship in Julianehaab. This is a very entertaining book as are all of Nevil Shute’s novels. I recommend it quite highly to those who enjoy a good adventure tale.[Book 70 of revised 2012 target 80 (Jan-10; Feb-11; Mar-9; Apr-8; May-7; Jun-8; Jul-7; Aug-9; Sep-1)]
—Gerald
