Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Collections
Publication
London : Pan Books in association with William Heinemann, 1962.
Description
"A rich middle-aged man finds his lonely life turned upside down when he falls in love with a pretty dance hostess and becomes involved in exposing a conspiracy to sabotage the British General Election. But his dogged pursuit of the criminals will throw his life and the lives of those he cares about into grave danger."
User reviews
LibraryThing member AlexBrightsmith
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
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?
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
Show More
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?
Show Less
LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey
Not a favorite - it's interesting, but depressing. She's a sweetheart and deserved a heck of a lot better; he's depressed and depressing (most of the time...there was hope, for a while), and his idea of justice is nasty. Deserved - all of them - but nasty. And the whole convoluted plot is so
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incredibly _stupid_...and fell apart because of total coincidence. Glad I read it, but I doubt I'll ever reread. Show Less
Language
Original publication date
1932
Physical description
221 p.; 18 cm
ISBN
0330202685 / 9780330202688
DDC/MDS
| Fic Adventure Shute |