Love, regret, vengeance and the possibility of redemption in unlikely places.I owe this book a review because I rather misjudged it the first time I read it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it from the first, but I loved it as a straightforward adventure yarn, tied up with a touch more romance than would usually be to my taste. Nevil Shute is possibly better known for bitter post-war novels, and to my shame I didn’t at first realise that this book, first published in 1931, falls very much in that category. But more of that later.Firstly, this book does work beautifully as a good yarn. It’s internally consistent, beautifully paced, and sparsely told. In fact, throughout it is beautifully told, which is for me pretty much a given with Shute. Where he writes about what he knows well – aircraft, usually, but in this case the sea and small boats, and the fast, damaged young men of the years between the wars – he is unsurpassed. He also writes the most beautifully moving tragedy I’ve ever read . . . small scale tragedy, little passages that toy with your heart and will take me to the edge of tears, even when I know them well, single lines that will take everything you have half learnt in the last three chapters and crystallise it into a single moment of heart-breaking sadness. I could say the same for almost any Shute novel. Where Lonely Road stands out is in its opening chapter, half dreamscape, half the genuine if mangled memories of a man suffering both concussion and a well-deserved hangover. It captures better than most attempts I’ve seen the fragmentary nature of dreams, the way in which everything, however surreal, makes perfect sense to the dreamer, and the odd common details that can shoot through and tie together the most disjointed dream, and take on unreasonable prominence in doing so.It even works for me as a romance, despite my exacting standards in this area. Any barrier is so often either implausible in the first place or implausibly overcome (or, worse, conveniently forgotten), so that I tend to find myself fighting the impulse to shout ‘oh for heaven’s sake just talk to the girl’ or earnestly wishing to grasp the lead characters by the scruff of their necks and bang their heads together. I’m not really the best person to review romance. What I will say is that at the heart of this story is a relationship that is absolutely plausible and suffers a realistic impediment.This may be the place for a brief defence of the charge often levelled at Shute, that he writes weak, silly women. Well, he does, and when I get round to reviewing one of the novels they appear in, I’ll explain why I don’t find that a problem in more detail. Briefly, because there is usually a reason for their weakness or silliness. And in Lonely Road we have Sixpence, a palais de danse taxi-dancer, who is not weak or silly, though she is ignorant and naive.I’m unlikely to review Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, because if you know it you probably already suspect that it was one of those books that made me want to give the protagonists a slap, and I don’t see there’s much to be gained by my writing a bad review of a book that was simply not to my taste. It would tell you more about me than the book. I mention it now because there are strong parallels in the central relationship, but the difference is what makes Lonely Road, for me, a more satisfying read. Molly, though she is dismissively referred to as Sixpence almost throughout, though she makes some silly mistakes, is a more intelligent, subtler, warmer, and overall less generally hopeless heroine than the second Mrs de Winter.And finally, Lonely Road as a serious post-war novel. I’ve touched on it in those fast, damaged young men. Forewarned, you will pick the element easily out of the opening dreamscape. Our narrator has done things in battle that he would never have considered in normal life. Can he forgive himself? Can he forget? Can he be sure it was only the circumstances of war that shaped his actions?
Commander Stevenson was a bachelor who seemed to have accidents and had been turned down by several suitable wives. He has a bad accident in his car on the way from a drunken evening, but dreams of seeing a boat near shore and a lorry on fire. After rehab, he goes to a visit to his cousin Joan Stenning. On the way home he stays in Leeds and goes to a Palais de Dance recommended by the waiter in the hotel. He meets and spends the evening with a young woman, Mollie Gordon. After he gets home, his friend, Colonel Fedden come to visit and tells him about a gun found by the roadnear the burned out lorry, and Stevenson realizes it has something to do with his accident and the lorry has something to do with Mollie's brother. Stevenson asks Mollie to spend her vacation with him in the country and they get mixed up in the affair with her brother. It's a good yarn, but not as good as Shute's later books.
What do You think about Lonely Road (2001)?
Wow, another gem from Nevil Shute! He reminds me a bit of Willa Cather. Real life is presented in a calm, matter of fact way. This book involves a man who owns a boat yard, was a naval officer in WWI, is single, and who drinks too much. During one of his drunken drives, he may have had a bad accident, or perhaps not. Not too long thereafter, after befriending a dance-hall girl in Leeds (sixpence a dance) and hearing her chatter about her brother, hearing his cousin's spouse talk about small shipping routes from Europe to England, and seeing the effects of a burned out truck carrying a load of guns, he begins to see some tie-ins between these three seemingly unrelated things and his nightmares. So begins an investigation involving Scotland Yard, the homeland security folks (whatever they were called in England in the late 1920s). So also begins a romance with the dance-hall girl.
—Larry Piper
Commander Malcolm Stevenson returns to consciousness and finds himself in a hospital being told by a nurse that he'd been in an automobile accident and had a concussion. Over the next few days, as his brain begins to clear, he tries to reconstruct and remember as much as he can about what happened. What he finds out is that he had been a victim of being in the wrong place at the wrong time as a gun-smuggling operation was going down. He tells what he knows to the police and finds himself pulled in to the investigation. The beginning of this was extremely confusing and disjointed. Suddenly about 40 pages in, I seemed to realize that there was a steady plot line and I was hooked at that point. And yes, the confusion of the first chapter is ultimately explained.
—Sue
I must admit that I have really liked everything I've read by Nevil Shute. His writing is excellent, with lovely prose. It's a delight to read, in my opinion. This particular novel, though, I would probably give 3.5 stars if I could. It's a really good story with an interesting plot, but there can be no question that it is a tragedy, and honestly it didn't leave me with a lot of happy thoughts. Still, such a great tale.This book tells the story of Malcolm Stevenson, an unlikely, lonely (and possibly undeserving) WW2 hero and well-to-do shipbuilder. Malcolm is involved in a driving accident and inadvertently stumbles into a gun running espionage plot to sabotage the British government. Following his recovery from the accident, he meets a lovely and lively social dance girl (Mollie Gordon) with whom he falls in love. Events turn ugly as everything comes together in the end, and Malcolm is sadly left alone again.Shute's characters were well fleshed out and the plot kept me going all the way through. There is a really difficult dream sequence at the first of the book that I thought would drive me crazy because it's about 10-15 pages long and doesn't make much sense at the beginning. But, it does all come together by the end, so it's worth it.This was a totally clean book.
—Terri
