When, in 1953, Alan Duncan returns to the Australian sheep farm where he grew up after a long period of absence, the sudden death of a parlour maid mars his parents's joy about his coming home. Jessie Proctor had become very dear to his ailing mother who is now berating herself for not having prevented the presumed accident that Alan actually believes to be a suicide.Alan wants to know what really happened and tries to find out what kind of woman quiet, reticent Jessie Proctor was.The mysterious death and its background are an important aspect of the novel, but we also get to know a lot about Alan himself who has been grievously wounded in the war and is still grappling with the consequences. Also, the loss of his brother Bill, who was killed in Normandy, has left deep scars.The second storytelling voice of the book is Bill's fiancée Janet, who was in the WRENs during the war and discovered some amazing talents there.As it was with "A Town Like Alice", it is pretty difficult to sum up the plot of this book and make it sound interesting without letting on too much, so this summary may appear a little thin. I liked the book tremendously, though. I like Shute's simple language and his way of telling a complex story on merely 250 pages, of painting comprehensive character portraits with a few brushstrokes.Alan's reasons for doing certain things weren't always quite clear to me, but I didn't mind that too much. I loved the quiet but suspenseful storytelling and Alan as a protagonist.It took me a while of getting into Janet's story, but that might have been due to the fact that I needed to familiarize myself with all the details of the Wrens' world - the ranks, the weapons and some abbreviations gave me some trouble in the beginning. When the book was first published in the 1950s all that background information might have still been present in the readers' minds; for me, reading the book almost sixty years later, a little glossary might have been helpful.Apart from that, I loved reading this book and am very glad that I discovered Shute in the first place. This certainly wasn't my last book by this author.
I didn't find this terribly gripping at the start, and that surprised me. Recently I was reading Shute's autobiography; I had intended to skim-read, only to give that idea up as Shute is incapable of writing a boring paragraph. But then I struggled through the first few pages of this one. Now, I don't demand that novels start with a bang or a high-concept hook (what are we, children?) but the first chapter had a little too much of the Mary Shelley school of fiction-by-travelogue for my taste. Well,Shute has to set the scene, and to be fair he may not open with a hook but he does throw a nice softening-up jab on page two.Anyway, over that bump I started to enjoy it. It's a story of how the war and fate in general fractured lives, rebuilding random new futures and relationships out of the fragments. Like many of Shute's protagonists, the narrator is in a dark place, which makes things all the more interesting, and the war he looks back on is full of high contrasts of despair and exhilaration. Shute, of course, is not one to put any glorious shine on war. It's the curse left on these people that, having lived through a time when death was always at hand, they find peacetime almost unendurable. The quiet desperation is palpable.I liked the time-fractured narrative, Shute's simply crafted prose, and the matter-of-fact way he can unload a cannon shock of a plot development that leaves you reeling.
What do You think about Requiem For A Wren (2002)?
Requiem For A Wren by Nevil Shute Shute reveals the end at the beginning, but only part of it, the devastating part. A young woman's suicide that seemingly has no rhyme or reason starts the returning home Aussie pilot on a journey through his past. The attention to detail is fantastic and the reader learns much about the nitty gritty of maintaining the gunnery parts of British WWII ships. I had no idea that there was such a thing as Ordinance Wrens in the War. They were an integral part of the War Effort and they suffered as much of what we know now as PTSD as any of the soldiers that saw action. All of this plays into Shute's story and is worked beautifully into a story of love, war, regret and family. While the author pulls no punches, he does not dramatize, he tells it like it was, laying bare the hearts of the characters. Even knowing of the eventual end of the pivotal character does not take away from the dramatic tension Shute creates throughout the story. He brings us to slow realizations in a wonderfully artistic manner, dawn breaking finally revealing the true depth of each character.Highly Recommended.
—Cateline
Nevil Shute has such an interesting way of writing and once again in this book I felt that I was discovering how the character thought and felt as he muddled his way through life. The story is fascinating in its description of life before and after the WW2 in England and how those involved in the forces were left puzzled and directionless in this new world of peace. Nevil also describes the difficulty people had in finding those who had once been close in a narrative that is a bit like a tv crime drama - what will happen next?One thing I truly love about his writing is his understanding of Australia and its people. I love this quote -'It takes a long time for an Australian to accept the fact that the wide, bustling, sophisticated world of the northern hemisphere cannot compare with his own land in certain ways; I was nearly forty years old, and I was only now realizing that by any standard of the wider world my own home was most beautiful.'Australians are great travellers but Nevil has us pegged.
—Sally
Alan Duncan had been a fighter pilot in WWII prior to his injury. After the war, he completes his law degree from Oxford and then returns home to Australia to help his aging parents manage their ranch. The day he arrives home he learns that the parlormaid who had been there for the last year had died that morning - an apparent suicide or horrible accident. There seems to be absolutely no information about who she was and his parents are at a loss, both from the help and with what to tell the authorities. That night Alan locates her effects and what he finds brings him up short: she isn't who she said she was. Why the double life and why the tragic end? For me, this ranks way up there as one of this best books I've read. Using flashbacks, Shute fills in all the details to make a complete story. The back cover of the edition I read calls this "one of Nevil Shute's most poignant and psychologically suspenseful novels" I agree. As things unfolded, I began trying to come up with the answer to the Why question. It's a story of how war can have a deep effect on people, or to quote Alan" "a war can go on killing people long after it's over."
—Sue
