Few writers could turn a book about investment banking, unemployment and governemnt corruption into a beautiful romance about second chances and the triumph of the human spirit, of cooperation and common sense. Ruined City can be resumed as a cross between Frank Capra's Mr Deeds Goes to Town and Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru . Capra provides the well intended man who uses his money and power to help those struck down in the depression and is brought to trial for his efforts, Kurosawa provides the civil servant questioning his priorities in life when he comes face to face with his own mortality. Nevil Shute's protagonist, Henry Warren, is one of the biggest bankers in the City at the time England was suffering from the effects of the Great Depression. He is a workaholic, not so much obsessed as passionate and dedicated to his job. In one of the opening scenes, he refuses to grant a loan to a suffering city council, as he considers the risks to high: We take in money on deposit, and it is my business to keep that money safe. We lend it out again at small interest on good security. It is no part of our business to take risks, or to make speculations with the money deposited with us. That is not our understanding with our depositors, and that is not our policy. Dry, analytical, cold hearted, Warren is dealing with facts, not with emotions. Or so he believed at that moment of his banking career.His 14 hours workdays, his endless journeys to unblock difficult contracts in the country and on the Continent, the stress of finding out his wife is carrying out an affair, all lead Warren to physical collapse in a remote spot of Northern England. Sharples is the ghost town from the title, whose single shipbuilding industry folded down in the recession. There's no work, no food, nothing to look forward to. Almost half of the patients in the hospital die after an operation, from complications resulted from anemy and despair.Warren finds a new scope in life in his effort to bring the city of Sharples back to life. It is a daunting task, as the Depression is extended to all industrial sectors and to most of the countries in the world. For all the melodrama of the subject, Nevil Shute proves once again that he has the delicate touch and the understated strength of character to carry it to its conclusion.Warren is ready to sacrifice his wealth, his good name in the business circles and his long held moral principles for a cause that he considers noble and just : One can't just give up working, and do nothing. And so one's got to find a motive, an excuse for going on doing the job one knows. I had time to think about all this when I was here in the hospital. I was right away from it then, able to see my job from the outside. And it seemed to me, as it does now, that there's only one thing really worth working for in the City. That's to create work. [...] I believe that that's the thing most worth doing in this modern world. To create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work. There's no dignity. no decency, or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today: without work men are utterly undone. The book was written in 1938, and it may not be as polished and well plotted as his latter books, but the fundamental themes of respect for the professional man, faith in the basic goodness of his fellows and self sacrifice will be constant companions in all of his later books. I believe the second part of A Town Like Alice is revisiting this subject of putting money to work for helping the less fortunate and is a good companion to the present book.There's even time for a bit of romance and a touch of humor to relieve the serious themes of the book. Warren is tentatively getting his heart open to a girl in the hospital, and a running joke has every inhabitant of Sharples explain to Warren : "There was seven Barlow destroyers at the Battle of Jutland. Did ye ever hear that?" Some of the humor didn't sit as well in my stomach, and is the reason I cut down one star. Shute is quite vicious in his portrayal of an imaginary Balkan state where every official is corrupted and greedy and uneducated. My view of corruption, coming from a native of the Balkans, would make the giver just as guilty as the asker in the matter of bribes in the race to obtain unfair advantages in contracts. In Nevile Shute's defense, he probably had some direct experience of the difficulties in starting a new business venture. His biography says something about a couple of his companies that failed.I will close my review with the observation that this book is of painful actuality to us in 2013 : We are just coming out of a severe economic depression, unemployment is at record levels in Europe and elsewhere, 'banker' has become a dirty word and the right to work, to a decent salary and a decent life has become an unattainable dream for far too many people. (view spoiler)[ It is refreshing to read about a generation that considered it right and proper for a banker to go to jail for misleading his investors and making false declarations (hide spoiler)]
Another gem by Nevil Shute. This time, we're dealing with an investment banker, Henry Warren. He's rather a workaholic, and his lively, entitled spouse is carrying on an affair with a "black man", which in this instance is an Arabian prince, or perhaps a Pakastani one. At any rate, not a "black man" by modern reckoning, by which we mean someone whose origins trace to sub-Sahara Africa (Yup, the Brits were pretty racist 75 or so years ago). When, on a business trip to Paris, he sees his spouse dining with the "black man", he resolves to divorce her, unless she agrees to give up her "gay" life and retire to boredom in the country. She, of course, is unwilling to do that. Shortly thereafter, Warren, feeling run down and depressed, heads north for a bit of walking. He has an attack of something in his gut (twisted intestine I believe) and ends up in the hospital of a small city. He poses as another of their charity cases, an out-of-work itinerant clerk. The time is 1934, and everyone is out of work. This particular town was once a thriving center of ship building. "Did you know that seven destroyers from the shipyard fought in the Battle of Jutland?" is a common refrain. But the shipyard, local rolling mill, and mine have all shut down some five years previously. The town and all its inhabitants are run down, both physically and emotionally. Mortality is exceptionally high at the hospital, and it is despair, rather than poor medical attention that is killing the patients off. Warren befriends the "Almoner" at the hospital, which I think is likely the social worker who deals with the charity patients. Through her, he learns about the town and its troubles and resolves to do something about it, but quietly if possible. Along the way, we are introduced to some international corruption and intrigue, things that always seems to be a part of high finance. We also have a budding romance between the "Almoner" and Warren, but done in the Shute style of two people developing a strong friendship. None of this jumping ino bed stuff like modern literature. Personally, I think the Shute style is more appropriate for building lasting relationships. Anyway, it's a good book. Perhaps a bit calm for those whose taste lies more with warriors, plagues and gore. But it is an apt commentary on the lives of real people in 1934, but the book's concerns also still mostly true today.
What do You think about Ruined City (2002)?
Warren frowned. 'Surely the public assistance rates aren't so bad as that? They're revised from time to time, aren't they? You don't just have to starve?'She shook her head. 'No, you don't have to starve. The rates are all right--in theory, Mr. Warren. You can keep alive and fit on P.A.C. relief--if you happen to have been born an archangel.''What do you mean?'She stopped and faced him. 'It's like this. There's really nothing wrong with the rates of relief. If you are careful, and wise, and prudent, you can live on that amount of money fairly well. And you've got to be intelligent, and well educated, too, and rather selfish. If you were like that you'd get along all right--but you wouldn't have a penny to spare.'She paused. 'But if you were human--well, you'd be for it. If you got bored stiff with doing nothing so that you went and blued fourpence on going to the pictures--you just wouldn't have enough to eat that week. Or if you couldn't cook very well, and spoiled the food a bit, you'd go hungry. You'd go hungry if your wife had a birthday and you wanted to give her a little present costing a bob--you'd only get eighty percent of your food that week. And of course, if your wife gets ill and you want to buy her little fancy bits of things...' (72-3).'I had time to think about all this when I was here in hospital. I was right away from it then, able to see my job from the outside. And it seemed to me then, as it does now, that there's only one thing really worth working for in the City. That's to create work.'I don't know if you've ever thought about machines,' he said. 'Every machine that's put into a factory displaces labour. That's a very old story, of course. The man who's put to work the machine isn't any better off than he was before; the three men that are thrown out of a job are very much worse off....The cure is for somebody to buckle to and make a job for the three men.'I believe that that's the thing most worth doing in this modern world,' he said quietly. 'To create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work. There's no dignity, no decency, or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today: without work men are utterly undone' (167).
—Lucy
Not one of Shute’s more memorable efforts, I believe I had read this at one time because I think I read all of his books, but as I re-read it, it was without an inkling of recognition. Henry Warren, a London banker and workaholic, is being divorced by his wife and feels the need to get away; he goes on a hiking trip in the north of England, with no one knowing where he will be. Taken ill by the side of the road and robbed of his identification and checkbook before he is taken to a hospital for surgery, he lets the hospital personnel believe he is homeless and destitute. Set in the midst of the depression, the small town of Sharples where the hospital is located has had its shipyard closed and the people in the town have become hopeless in their attitude4s. Warren decides to finance the re-opening of the shipyard as a return for the care and attention he received in the hospital. Some of his methods involve shady business deals, which catch up with him in the end. However, the people of Sharples maintain their gratitude.
—Linda
When is it right to do wrong? Can a crime be justified if the results help others and not oneself? It's the Robin Hood question and Shute sets his own morality play in the depression of the 1930s to pose the question....What is the greater good, to play by the rules or to bend them to help those who can't help themselves? Financier Henry Warren unexpectedly confronts life in the industrial desert of Northern England and comes up with his own maverick solution to the woes of a jobless ship-building town. The voice of this novel might jar a little in the PC Britain of the 21st century, but the economic setting and the moral dilemma are surprisingly current.
—Peter
