"A Town Like Alice" by Nevil Shute

[Spock]

I recently bought "A Town Like Alice" on Kindle. It was a favorite book in my youth but I haven't read it since the 80's and then only as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book.

Still love every word of the book and it reminds me of a fun story about an airplane seatmate in the mid 90's.

At the time, we had a VHS version of the Helen Morse/Bryan Brown iteration of the book.

Me and Mrs. Spock were rowmates with said female seatmate who was about our age. We talked for the whole flight and it was like we were long-lost friends.

She bore a remarkable resemblance to the "Malaya" version of the main female character and even wore her hair in the same fashion.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPjWpm_OTPI

Anyway, I have carried a little crush on that airplane girl since the mid 90's and I like to think of her as one of those "In another life, maybe?" people.

I also just ordered the DVD of the movie.

[Bob Juch]

It sounds depressing as hell.

[Spock]

It sounds depressing as hell.

I beg to differ.

It is an absolutely wonderful love story with a fun twist.

Spoiler-He was crucified for stealing chickens to help her and the other women-she thought he was dead.

Conversely, he thought she was married.

A couple of years after the war-she inherited some money and went to dig a well in Malaya to help the women in a village where they had lived. While there she heard that he had survived the crucifixion.

Meanwhile, at roughly the same time, in Australia-he heard that she was single.

She heads for Australia to try and find him and at the same time he heads for England to try and find her.

Much comedy ensues and my favorite episode of the book is when she dons a sarong to break the tension between them. It works with flying colors. Instead of the prim and proper English lady-she was suddenly the girl he remembered from Malaya.

[silverscreenselect]

I recently bought "A Town Like Alice" on Kindle.

Not quite the same subject, but I just read "Five Decembers" by James Kestrel. It won the Edgar Award for best mystery of the year recently, but it's much more of a historical drama than a whodunit. It's the story of a Honolulu cop who chases a murder suspect to Hong Kong just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He then spends the next several years in various types of captivity before returning to Honolulu after the war to follow up on the case. There's a lot of fascinating detail about what happened in Hong Kong and Wake Island as well as Honolulu those last few days, and a lot of detail about Tokyo during the war as well. Plus, it's a darn good story.

Kestrel is the pseudonym of thriller writer Jonathan Moore.

[Spock]

I recently bought "A Town Like Alice" on Kindle.

Not quite the same subject, but I just read "Five Decembers" by James Kestrel. It won the Edgar Award for best mystery of the year recently, but it's much more of a historical drama than a whodunit. It's the story of a Honolulu cop who chases a murder suspect to Hong Kong just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He then spends the next several years in various types of captivity before returning to Honolulu after the war to follow up on the case. There's a lot of fascinating detail about what happened in Hong Kong and Wake Island as well as Honolulu those last few days, and a lot of detail about Tokyo during the war as well. Plus, it's a darn good story.

Kestrel is the pseudonym of thriller writer Jonathan Moore.

The core of the A Town like Alice is the story of a bunch of women who the Japanese would not put in a camp in Malaya-they wandered around for awhile and kind of settled in in one village for the bulk of the war.

While the author uses English women in Malaya for his story-he said it is based on a true story but the true story was actually Dutch women on Sumatra.