feather_ghyll (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
feather_ghyll) wrote2025-02-26 05:43 pm
feather_ghyll) wrote2025-02-26 05:43 pm
REREAD: The Far Country
As it happens, I saw a copy of this book (a more modern reprint) at a charity shop today.
The Far Country: Nevil Shute. Pan, 1967.
So, it looks as though I’ll be rereading all the Nevil Shute books that I have. That is, I assume this was a reread, and I must have last read it years ago, if I did, because it felt as though I came to it fresh. If you were to categorise this book, I suppose it would be as a romance, because while it’s a compelling enough story, it’s not aiming to be literature, although its topic was the state of (some parts of) the world. Set circa 1948, what struck me was that it was very much about migration.
It starts slowly, by way of Tim Archer, who works at Leonora sheep station in the Australian state of Victoria, which is owned by Jack Dorman. Tim grew up in Melbourne, but escaped to the country as soon as he could, where he fell in love with the youngest Dorman girl, who has escaped to Melbourne as soon as she could, but they aren’t the main focus. As we get to know the Dormans, who have finally, after thirty years of toil, made a profit because of the price of wool, they’re at a crossroads. All their children are adults now and have left home. Jane Dorman’s main connection to the England she left to marry against her family’s wishes is her now elderly aunt, the only relative who supported the match with Jack. Aunt Ethel’s most recent letters have been puzzling Jane, suggesting that things aren’t quite right in post-war England.
The Dormans, like Australia, seem to be flourishing, although the more established British/English and Irish settlers are having to deal with the latest wave of migrants, the New Australians, who left Eastern and Central Europe, having to work in limited capacities for two years. They have a slightly different culture and work ethic, and are held at something of a remove. One of their number is a lumberman called ‘Splinter’, a trained doctor from Czechoslovakia, who has no license but dispenses first aid.
Meanwhile, in England, Jennifer Morton receives a phone call informing her that her grandmother, Ethel Trehearne, had a fall and is at home in a bad way. It turns out that she – Jane’s Aunt Ethel – is in a very bad way indeed. Born to leisure, having travelled the world with her husband, the pension that should have kept her comfortable has run out, and in a world of rationing where meat is scarce, she has barely been eating. Twenty-four year-old Jenny has to meet the emergency and look after her grandmother in what turn out to be her last few says.
The Australian connection and a bequest that the now well-off Jane had thoughtfully sent to Ethel make Jenny reconsider life in England. She works at the Ministry of Pensions and finds herself suddenly cynical of the ‘Socialist experiment’ (er, nobody quite seems to face up to the realities of post-war economics, although I grant you, as the south Walian grand-daughter of a collier, I wasn’t going to be all that sympathetic to the views of the British Empire’s officer class.) Before dying, Ethel wanted Jenny to use Jane’s money to go to Australia, seeing it as a land of plenty and possibility, unlike England, and Jenny’s parents, wrapped up in each other, her father a doctor in Leicester, concur.
And so, Jenny comes to Australia, planning to work and stay for some six months, even as she realises how loose her ties were to England when it comes down to it. But the Dormans, meeting her and visiting Melbourne for their first real holiday in years, whisk her away to Leonora to be their guest. The contrast between someone from ‘Home’ and the New Australians is made (there are no aboriginal characters, only a few passing mentions to them, and the pretence that the land was empty and virgin, although some of the characters encounter the remains of a gold-mining town.) Jenny could get a job immediately and is in a much less precarious position when she has to interact with the police.
Jenny and Jack meet Carl Zlinter in a dramatic sequence, where an accident at the lumber camp leaves two men in grave danger. The ‘local’ doctor is away, the ambulance to the nearest hospital will not arrive in time. Surgery is needed, and Zlinter has the training to do it. Jenny, with her clean, small hands, and a predisposition for healthcare, even if she has no training, helps him carry it out under less than ideal conditions.
The aftermath throws the young woman, falling under Australia’s spell and with some strong moral convictions, together with a lonely, educated man in his mid thirties. The Dormans wonder whether it’s wise, as Jenny and Carl go investigating a curious coincidence, and get ever closer. And then, some troubling news about Jenny’s mother’s health arrives. You can predict some of the plot developments easily.
While I didn’t share quite a lot of characters’ views and was acutely aware that this was 1940s Australia as written by an Englishman, so the perceptions of the link with England and its Royal Family was probably influenced by that, the idea of what drives people to emigrate and how immigrants are treated is a timely subject. Doctors looking for a better life in more hospitable and wealthy climates, people who have known war escaping repressive regimes and taking any job, not what they were trained for, the hostility of locals towards migrants – with an added dollop of ignoring that they or their forefathers were migrants once…hmm, plus ca change, even if this is in a very particular context.
It's a readable and humane book, though, even if it’s snobby. (And all these years on, all the smoking of cigarettes that goes on seems like a very bad idea.)
The Far Country: Nevil Shute. Pan, 1967.
So, it looks as though I’ll be rereading all the Nevil Shute books that I have. That is, I assume this was a reread, and I must have last read it years ago, if I did, because it felt as though I came to it fresh. If you were to categorise this book, I suppose it would be as a romance, because while it’s a compelling enough story, it’s not aiming to be literature, although its topic was the state of (some parts of) the world. Set circa 1948, what struck me was that it was very much about migration.
It starts slowly, by way of Tim Archer, who works at Leonora sheep station in the Australian state of Victoria, which is owned by Jack Dorman. Tim grew up in Melbourne, but escaped to the country as soon as he could, where he fell in love with the youngest Dorman girl, who has escaped to Melbourne as soon as she could, but they aren’t the main focus. As we get to know the Dormans, who have finally, after thirty years of toil, made a profit because of the price of wool, they’re at a crossroads. All their children are adults now and have left home. Jane Dorman’s main connection to the England she left to marry against her family’s wishes is her now elderly aunt, the only relative who supported the match with Jack. Aunt Ethel’s most recent letters have been puzzling Jane, suggesting that things aren’t quite right in post-war England.
The Dormans, like Australia, seem to be flourishing, although the more established British/English and Irish settlers are having to deal with the latest wave of migrants, the New Australians, who left Eastern and Central Europe, having to work in limited capacities for two years. They have a slightly different culture and work ethic, and are held at something of a remove. One of their number is a lumberman called ‘Splinter’, a trained doctor from Czechoslovakia, who has no license but dispenses first aid.
Meanwhile, in England, Jennifer Morton receives a phone call informing her that her grandmother, Ethel Trehearne, had a fall and is at home in a bad way. It turns out that she – Jane’s Aunt Ethel – is in a very bad way indeed. Born to leisure, having travelled the world with her husband, the pension that should have kept her comfortable has run out, and in a world of rationing where meat is scarce, she has barely been eating. Twenty-four year-old Jenny has to meet the emergency and look after her grandmother in what turn out to be her last few says.
The Australian connection and a bequest that the now well-off Jane had thoughtfully sent to Ethel make Jenny reconsider life in England. She works at the Ministry of Pensions and finds herself suddenly cynical of the ‘Socialist experiment’ (er, nobody quite seems to face up to the realities of post-war economics, although I grant you, as the south Walian grand-daughter of a collier, I wasn’t going to be all that sympathetic to the views of the British Empire’s officer class.) Before dying, Ethel wanted Jenny to use Jane’s money to go to Australia, seeing it as a land of plenty and possibility, unlike England, and Jenny’s parents, wrapped up in each other, her father a doctor in Leicester, concur.
And so, Jenny comes to Australia, planning to work and stay for some six months, even as she realises how loose her ties were to England when it comes down to it. But the Dormans, meeting her and visiting Melbourne for their first real holiday in years, whisk her away to Leonora to be their guest. The contrast between someone from ‘Home’ and the New Australians is made (there are no aboriginal characters, only a few passing mentions to them, and the pretence that the land was empty and virgin, although some of the characters encounter the remains of a gold-mining town.) Jenny could get a job immediately and is in a much less precarious position when she has to interact with the police.
Jenny and Jack meet Carl Zlinter in a dramatic sequence, where an accident at the lumber camp leaves two men in grave danger. The ‘local’ doctor is away, the ambulance to the nearest hospital will not arrive in time. Surgery is needed, and Zlinter has the training to do it. Jenny, with her clean, small hands, and a predisposition for healthcare, even if she has no training, helps him carry it out under less than ideal conditions.
The aftermath throws the young woman, falling under Australia’s spell and with some strong moral convictions, together with a lonely, educated man in his mid thirties. The Dormans wonder whether it’s wise, as Jenny and Carl go investigating a curious coincidence, and get ever closer. And then, some troubling news about Jenny’s mother’s health arrives. You can predict some of the plot developments easily.
While I didn’t share quite a lot of characters’ views and was acutely aware that this was 1940s Australia as written by an Englishman, so the perceptions of the link with England and its Royal Family was probably influenced by that, the idea of what drives people to emigrate and how immigrants are treated is a timely subject. Doctors looking for a better life in more hospitable and wealthy climates, people who have known war escaping repressive regimes and taking any job, not what they were trained for, the hostility of locals towards migrants – with an added dollop of ignoring that they or their forefathers were migrants once…hmm, plus ca change, even if this is in a very particular context.
It's a readable and humane book, though, even if it’s snobby. (And all these years on, all the smoking of cigarettes that goes on seems like a very bad idea.)