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Read What Happened To The Corbetts (2002)

What Happened to the Corbetts (2002)

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Genre
Rating
3.83 of 5 Votes: 1
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ISBN
1842323024 (ISBN13: 9781842323021)
Language
English
Publisher
house of stratus

What Happened To The Corbetts (2002) - Plot & Excerpts

Nevil Shute is one of my favorite authors. This book was widely distributed during its 1939 publication under the title What Happened to the Corbetts?. About 1,000 copies were sold in the United States under the title Ordeal. I happened to find a copy in my local library under that latter title. Peter Corbett is a solicitor who lives with his wife Joan and their three young children near Southampton, England in the later 1930’s. The story begins just as their country has gone to war against an unnamed enemy. Their world is torn apart by nightly high-level through-the-clouds, indiscriminate bombing of their city. They are forced to cower in a trench Peter dug in their backyard. He parks their car over them for protection. Soon they have to contend with food and water shortages. A further critical shortage is milk for their infant. What little water their can get has to be boiled before using because of a cholera outbreak and later the area is hit with a typhoid epidemic. Just as they decide to move from their home to the small yacht they have some distance away, the diseases result in their area being quarantined. They are finally able to get to the yacht but soon the bombing begins in that area also. Finally, they decide that they must sail off to a safer location. They must overcome severe challenges to accomplishing this. Peter wants to join the military to fight for his country but first of all wants to see that his wife and children are safe by sending them somehow to live with his sister’s family in Canada.This is an exciting story with lots of difficulties which must be overcome. I did enjoy it fairly well, although it is not nearly as good as many of Shute’s other novels. It was good enough to give it a reasonably good recommendation.[Book 60 of revised 2012 target 70 (Jan-10; Feb-11; Mar-9; Apr-8; May-7; Jun-8; Jul-7)]

This is vintage Shute. Literally, it is! Written in 1939, it's one of his first novels, a precursor of his wonderful later works. It's interesting too in that it anticipates the Blitz, which didn't occur until a year after its publication.Ordeal, like such later novels as Pastoral and Trustee from the Tool Room, makes heroes of humble middle class Brits and makes a great story out of a simple plot. As with the later novels, Ordeal is dated: Shute manages to tell his story in simple, grammatical English. The major characters are all straightforward and honest. There are no histrionics. There isn't any sex or violence (even though it is a war story). Yet the story is gripping. I found myself rooting for a happy ending because I cared about the heroes and their family.

What do You think about What Happened To The Corbetts (2002)?

Despite a very tragic theme the book sounds very optimistical and maybe this is the reason why I couldn't evaluate the book higher than 2 stars. On the other hand I appreciated the author didn't emotionally blackmail readers. It may be, because the book was written by male author, the book is more concetrating on daily and tedious routine - making dinner, putting children to bed, lack of milk and water, and no description of deeper feelings.I liked the part when the Corbetts took the milk by power, what are the decent but desperate people capable of doing.Still, I read the book at once, Shute wrote it well and short. If I hadn't been given the book I would not have bother to look for it.
—Ariska

I'm a big fan of the WWII genre, but until I read this book (not strictly a WWII story as the events are fictional - perhaps apocryphal is a better word) I hadn't realised how cosily plucky little Blighty's fight has been portrayed. I've read books that detail the most appalling and life-shattering events but nothing ever before that has conveyed the sheer terrifying and exhausting grind of trying to survive while not being sure quite which is the right choice at any point.At first I was so irritated by spoilt Joan who couldn't manage without multiple maids and a nanny that I thought I wouldn't enjoy the book, but I soon realised that I couldn't put the book down. I have young children too and found myself wondering how on earth I would hold it together for a single night if bombs were falling around us. I knew water supplies were interrupted and various foods became scarce, but I hadn't brought it down in my mind to the level of how long it would take to run out of water and then how you'd feel if you knew there was a chance that any water you did find could kill you all.As the story wound on I was sobered by the fear and fatigue, the requirement to carry on finding something to feed your children, the squalor of the out-of-town camps that wore on, the mismatch between the official version of events and reality on the ground, the total inability to relax, ever, about anything - this must have been far closer to people's experiences than anything else I have read. It's my first Nevil Shute and has me wanting to read more.
—MrsCordial

This particular book of Shute’s always slightly confuses me – am I supposed to be reading a story about how a bunch of uptight conservatives are forced to truly confront how much they love their family? Or am I supposed to be reading a story about how an already-loving family is torn apart by a war and forced to get really tough and cold? Shute seems to be writing both stories at once, in how Mr and Mrs Corbett give up their nanny and begin to actually look after their children themselves and love them, but then also at the end completely resign themselves to no longer being together as a family.
—Andrew

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