Back when my mom was growing up and general practitioner doctors were the norm, people used to refer to having a family doctor. We don’t have a family doctor, but we do have a family author (as in, an author the family loves, not an author to whom we are related). All the women on my mom’s half of the family, and there are a ton of us, are obsessed with the writings of Nevil Shute. I don’t know that many Americans that stockpile Nevil Shute books like we do, but all you have to do to get a McGowan woman excited is say, “So…tell me about A Town Like Alice” and we just fall all over ourselves with enthusiasm (you can read my enthusiastic review here).
One of Shute’s lesser-known books is Pastoral, a lovely romance between a British bomber pilot and a W.A.A.F. officer (Women’s Auxiliary Air Force). This is a book that is deceptively low on plot. The pilot (Peter) falls in love with the W.A.A.F. officer (Gervase) while stationed in Britain. She likes him, but she doesn’t believe that she is in love with him and she isn’t interested in a relationship that isn’t serious. However, she agrees to a trial courtship to see if her feelings of fondness might actually be something deeper.
Shute often uses the everyday to provide a contrast to a shocking or disorienting or harrowing situation. This means that when you hand a Nevil Shute book to a new reader, you often have to coax them past the first few chapters, which can be mundane to the point of dull. But it also means that when drama actually occurs, the understated way in which people approach it, and the previous establishment of these character’s most everyday, mundane lives, makes the drama much more effective than if the entire book consisted of hair-rending and explosions.
In Pastoral, the characters spend most of their time doing the most ordinary things (mostly fishing) in a lovely countryside setting. However, at night the men who crew the bombers fly over Germany while Gervase and other officers attempt to guide and assist them via radio. Most of the time not all the bombers come back. The calm, quiet, almost boring passages are devastatingly poignant when the reader realizes the context of danger and loss in which these passages take place.
Whether as a coping mechanism or as an innate characteristic, Gervase and Peter have a healthy sense of sardonic humor that is quite adorable. As a professional worrier, I liked Peter’s attempt to cheer Gervase, who worries about her inability to help a missing pilot: “I used to worry about things a bit. But then I took up golf and found what worry really meant.”
Peter and Gervase are very kind each other even when quarreling – their relationship is both accelerated and strained by the pressure of knowing anything can happen at any moment and the fact that as people who are stationed on the same small base they have to see each other every day. The wartime setting means that they go from an afternoon together to fighting about marriage in about one day, and it feels plausible because the sense of urgency in their lives underlies every sunny afternoon’s walk.
I liked it that Gervase doesn’t want to marry because of commitment to the W.A.A.F. It’s refreshing to see the “did I not love duty more” type of conflict with the woman as the person who won’t quit duty for love:
“Look at it the other way round – suppose it was you instead of me. Suppose you went to Wing Commander Dobbie and said you were going to stop flying and leave the R.A.F. because you were in love.”
He glanced up at her, grinning. “That’s all different.”
“It’s not different at all,” she retorted. “The only difference is that you can’t do it and I can, if I care to go the whole hog. But that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve both got jobs to do.
There’s no sex in the book, although Peter and Gervase joke about it and neck quite a bit and get caught by an air commodore while they are making out during a picnic. If there’s anything funnier than a badass pilot acting like a teenager who just got busted by his mom I don’t know what it is.
There’s also not a lot of action – but when there is action, it’s absolutely terrifying. At one point Gervase is working the radio while Peter is on a mission and she has to excuse herself and have someone take over for a moment so that she can go outside and vomit. She’s neither pregnant nor sick – it’s just that tense. I felt queasy myself. Gervase, who is made of sterner stuff than I, just wipes off her mouth and gets back to work.
Despite that scene, the book is for the most part what it says it is (a pastoral). It’s a peaceful breath of happiness and loveliness and optimism in the middle of a terrifying time in history. Like Shute’s books A Town Like Alice and The Pied Piper, it’s also a celebration of people who are both utterly ordinary and utterly extraordinary in their kindness and heroism during extraordinary times. This is a great comfort read about a couple who are comfortable friends as well as enthusiastic lovers. Just be prepared to read a lot of scenes about fishing.
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Thanks!
Great review – off to find a copy. Thanks for the rec.
Not one of his that I’ve read, although I’ve read Pied Piper, No Highway, On the Beach, So Disdained (which I must read again – I didn’t understand a lot of it), and The Far Country. I adored The Far Country – it’s so much the story of this country (yes, I’m an Aussie).
I’m curious to know what you thought of “No Highway”. I felt, myself, that it lost a lot by the supernatural element.
Thanks for my reintroduction to Neville Shute. I’ve only read his On the Beach and A Town Like Alice before this. TBH, I have just the vaguest of memories of OTB, but ATLA was beyond wonderful and is forever etched in my brain. I saw the miniseries first and loved it, but I didn’t pick up the book ’til years later and it was even better. (In fact, I’ve just been eyeing the audio book as I’ve been debating “spending” one of my Audible credits on it.) Despite this, it never even occurred to me until reading th is review to check out any of his other books, but you’ve convinced me! For some reason, the Kindle versions are ridiculously expensive, so I may actually have to pick them up in (gasp) paper.
Pastoral is my favourite Neville Shute. I really like contemporary World War II fiction anyway, and this is lovely,gentle book – with the plot slowly creeping up on you. Even the angling scenes are interesting.
The book also has many touching moments. The one that always brings a tear to my eye is the scene where Peter’s plane is circling while he calmly sings “A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square”. No histrionics, just “Whatever happened he would be on his own runway…And Gervase would be there. He sat there staring forward at the stars, and singing quietly to himself”. A lovely, lovely book.
I had completely forgotten about this book! A friend gave me a copy for my birthday when I was maybe 13? I remember it was a used copy and I was slightly confused about the whole thing until I read it and it was wonderful. Of course, then I read On the Beach and that was all the tragic but I still loved it.
Sounds lovely. Thank you, Carrie.
I like A Town Like Alice and Pastoral very much. Also Trustee from the Toolroom, which is not a romance, but delightful.
This sounds excellent! Thanks for pointing us to it.
Somehow, I have never read anything by Nevil Shute, and judging from this review, he sounds like an author whose works I’d like. I recently read a nonfiction book about women in Britain during the Second World War, so the story of a bomber pilot and a W.A.A.F. officer is really appealing, especially since it was actually written during the war. I’ve requested this at the library.
I discovered Nevil Shute’s books a teenager, when I was reading my way through my parent’s bookshelves. Somehow I seem to have missed this one, but it is now in my TBR list. Living in Melbourne, On the Beach is one of my favourite novels, and my parents tell stories about when the movie was made.
I too discovered these books as a teenager. My dad, a former RAF pilot, was a big fan. He loved “No Highway” and the classic James Stewart movie which it inspired. “The Nevil Shute Collection ” (22 novels!!) seems to be available for both Kindle and Kobo for less than $4 in North America at least. I downloaded it today and look forward to re-visiiting some old friends. Thanks Carrie!!
Oh man! My mom loved Nevil Shute – I am pretty sure she read most of his books and he is on my list of authors to complete. Like several SB’s above, I have only read “A Town Like Alice” and “On the Beach” but both were so good that I now own copies. My mom and I watched the mini-series for ATLA with Helen Morse and Bryan Brown which we thought a very good adaptation, except for some contrived drama in the second half.
Thanks for the reminder and I will have to move him up my list.
@Maureen: I’m not coming up with the Kindle collection (US), and the individual books vary in price, with many in the $9.99 – $13.99 range. 🙁
It is wonderful to read that so many people still enjoy the books of Nevil Shute. I love the first half of “A Town like Alice” but am less keen on the second half. One of my favourite Nevil Shute books is “Pied Piper” which is set during World War 2 and is a a heart warming story of the courage and sacrifice ordinary people show in dangerous and difficult circumstances. I haven’t read ” Pastoral” but am inspired by your excellent review to do so. Thank you.
@Susan: try searching for “The Nevil Shute Collection” by title. Hopefully that will bring up the affordable edition.
@Susan, it’s possible too that the cheap edition is only available to Canadian readers. If so, my abject apologies for the wild goose chase.
@Maureen: Unless I really suck at this particular search, I think it must be restricted to Canada. 🙂 But thanks anyway!
Have just reread Pastoral for the zillionth time. It is hands down my favourite novel of all time. The contrast between the horrors of the night time raids and the gentle love story (completel with badgers) gets me every time. I still get goosebumps and my heart in my throats at the end. And I love that Shure wrote it during the war….it makes it a little time capsule of life in the services during WWII, including the social mores and lingo of the time, Thanks for your lovely review. PS Shute is our family author, too…including my brother who us an ex submariner (Royal Australian Navy) so a big fan of OTB of course.