Read Merrily

Sunday, February 19, 2006

A Town Like Alice

Unusually for us, Max read this book before i did. I'm so glad he did, because if he hadn't, he wouldn't have read it based on how i would have described it. But the look on his face as he finished it told me i would enjoy it; it is fairly unusual to see Max moved by a book but he certainly was.

In short, the book is about the life of a girl caught up in the Far East'd WW2 experience; the stroy is told after it has occurred, as her experiences affect the life she has aftewrward. She was part of a group of women and children prisoners who march across country, having been effectively abandoned by the Japanese. The account is set fictionally, but apparently based on real life and it made fascinating reading. The second part of the book goes to London and to Australia and is a love story, which is why Max would have not read it, but it really is rather a wonderful love story; i think i loved it because it felt familiar. Love growing from a chance and inopportune meeting, againt the odds of it being successful and with much to overcome is somewhere i've been and i felt warmed and encouraged by the gentleness of it.

I know i can get the Chalet School into anything, but oddly enough, this book made me think of CS books a lot. In those stories, brothers and fathers are often on plantations in Kuala Lumpur or India. They are places that feature heavily - and if you read the unabridged versions that cover the war years, there are illusions to more than one father or brother who die in those places. EBD, their author, was not afraid to allude to real and brutal life, thoguh she did it in a subtle way, suitable to the audience and sensibilities of the time. In many ways her careful but respectful recognition of atrocities bore the hallmarks of how she believed children should be brought up - with knowledge but with care. What i like about her writing is that she was largely fair and unbiased and i think i recognise a flavour of a writer with a similar ethos in Neville Shute.

He spoke with gravity and fairness about the Japanese; both about their brutality and about the way they helped and cared for the captured children who were dying because of their invasion. He wrote respectfully about the culture of the people in the country and to illustrate that, he used a phrase from the Koran as a main theme for his belief in the real humanity of people. he painted the white colonials as people who had stood high and demanded homage and who were brought low and made to pay when there culture no longer brought them respect. He painted his heroine as a true Chalet School girl - a Joey Bettany, a Jo March. All those honourable and upright young white girls that were so much a part of the jolly hockey sticks culture of 20's, 30's and 40's England.

It made me wonder, reading her story as she went off to do the right thing, pay her dues and follow love borne out of the acknowledgment of a man's sacrifice doing what he knew to be right, who the heroines of young girls are going to be now? Who will Fran and Maddy and Amelie and Josie aspire to be? Will Joey Bettany be too far in the past? Will Hermione Granger be a suitable role model? Can you aspire to be a Rainbow Fairy? Now we've put aside neat hair, a willing, godfearing mind and a desire to be a stay at home mummy, where will the literary heroines lie? I'm not saying those CS values were right, or suitable for the 21st century but i do wonder who my girls will aspire to. I had a good opportunity to choose; i had high powered career mum and i had Joey. i chose, Joey. I wonder who my girls will want to aim for, rather than aim for being me.

4:22 PM

Comments: Post a Comment

<< Home

An attempt to get through everything i haven't already read in the BBC Big Read Top 100 during this year (hmmmm... maybe a little longer than 2004 actually... didn't bargain on the pregnancy and baby!!!!!)

: Name:merry

View my complete profile

About Me