On her return after the War she writes to Noel telling him how she set about organising the villagers to dig the well so that the women would have fresh water close to their houses and also build a washing-house. This section is the best in the book to my mind. She met an Australian soldier, Sergeant Joe Harman, also a prisoner, who was driving a lorry for the Japanese and they became friends with disastrous consequences. Able to speak Malay and being courageous and resourceful, she takes on the role of the leader of their group. Jean and a group of European women and children were forced by the Japanese to walk for hundreds of miles from place to place before finally managing to stay in one village. The second part is about that time in Malaya during the War at the time when the Japanese invaded the island. She tells Noel about what had happened to her in Malaya. She wonders what to do with the money and eventually decides she wants to go back to Malaya, where she had been a prisoner of war, to dig a well.
Until then she will receive about £900 a year to spend. But it is held in trust until she reaches the age of thirty five. It begins a few years after the Second World War, when he tells her she has inherited a considerable sum of money from her uncle. Narrated by Noel Strachan, a solicitor, this is the story of Jean Paget. It is actually set in three parts, with just the third part set in Australia, not in Alice Springs but in Willstown, a fictional town in the outback. It was not quite what I had imagined it to be, about Alice Springs in Australia. First published in 1950 A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute is one of those books I’ve been meaning to read for years and now I have at last read it.
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