Wirral Libraries Bookbuzz discussion

This was the April 2021 Book for the Bebington Central Reading Group.

After a couple of long books I enjoyed the 240 pages or so of this novel. I was entertained by the story and interested in discovering how the author would bring the tale to an end. In many ways I think the story itself was quite simple and could have been handled as a short story rather than as a novel. The length was built up with the detailed description of the Australian Outback and the technical exposition of 1950s oil drilling practices - which I found interesting.

I was struck by the way in which the story was pushed to the second half of the novel - I'd also noticed that arrangement in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice when re-reading that book recently. The key characters decided on marriage in Chapter 6 and were breaking up just three chapters later. The earlier Chapters were dominated by the process of introducing characters and setting the scene for the action. I found the description of the over-heated dry sheep farming (for meat not wool?) quite interesting but suspect that the wealth of those sheep farmers has not lasted. The Australian sheep farmers were, of course, one reason for the decline in sheep farming in the UK.

It was interesting to read Wikipedia's description of Neville Shute. That article said he moved from England to Australia after the Second World War because he was concerned about the decline of his home country (with the suggestion that he disliked the socialism of the Atlee government). It also says his Australian novels included some disparagement of the US by comparison with the standards found in Australia. That point was quite visible in this novel with the differences in social attitudes driving the ending of the planned marriage of the key characters.

However I think I've picked up that that confidence in Australian standards has not survived into the present day. I have read some articles about the Australian's treatment of migrants in recent years which indicate a total lack of respect for people from many other countries and the attitudes towards the Aborigine peoples have changed too. (I saw an article, earlier this week, that said the Snowdonia National Park Authority was being asked to use just traditional Welsh names for Snowdon and Snowdonia. The article talked about the way in which Australia has done this to a wide range of it's big features e.g. what was Ayers Rock is now known as Uluru - part of a wider reaction to the mistreatment of the Aborigine peoples in the past).

I also noticed that attitudes in the oil industry must have changed - gas fields and oil shales are no longer treated as being assets which should be discarded.

So a good book - but perhaps not a great one. This novel was first published in 1956 with Neville Shute dying only about 4 years later (a stroke and related heart problems). Those four years were enough for him to have written and published the very famous 'On The Beach' - perhaps more easily described as being a great book!