Trustee From the Toolroom by Nevil Shute...don't judge a book by its title

Nevil Shute was an engineer by background and Trustee From the Toolroom sounded to me like something related to that field - not my cup of tea. But I was wrong and I'm grateful to Eric Schonblom, the author of the Constance Savery Website, who recommended it to me knowing that I'd read and enjoyed some other books by this author.
Well, the main character, Keith Steward, does work in a toolroom, and has a model engineering workshop in his home and writes weekly articles for the "Miniature Mechanic," but the book is really about a very ordinary man who suddenly finds himself endowed with a trust - his ten year old niece -  and in his determination to be faithful to that trust, is plunged into exceptional circumstances.


 ...he wore a greasy old raincoat and an equally greasy old soft hat; he had a shabby muffler round his throat. He was pale with lack of sun and exercise, and running a bit to fat. He looked, as he sat in the trolley bus taking him to Ealing Broadway, like any one of thousands of men to be seen in buses in any industrial district, and he was.


From his ugly house in the west of London which he and his wife were still paying off, with very little money and no knowledge of the world outside of England, he finds his way to the other side of the world in the search of his niece's inheritance. Along the way he encounters people who have relished and benefitted from his engineering articles and discovers that his small acts of kindness and devotion to his work over the years have opened doors in the most unlikely places.


Keith Stewart had never had a shower in the whole of his life. he had seen them in shop windows and had read about them, but one had never come his way.

He would have to have some money in his pocket, and they used dollars here, it seemed. He had never cashed a traveller's cheque before...

Keith sat at the helm, terrified. he had never sailed a ship of any sort before. Now he was in sole control of this rushing, heaving monster which towered above him in a mass of brown sails and rope whose very function was a mystery to him.

Nevil Shute usually manages to insert quite a bit of technical information into his novels, especially about aircraft, and he does so in this book also, but his knack for weaving a compelling story around the technicalities makes them palatable. Even to someone like me who still can't work out how to set our electric alarm clock.



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An Old Captivity by Nevil Shute (1940)

This is the fifth book I've read by Nevil Shute (1899-1960). He is definitely an author I want to keep on reading. An engineer by trade, his great love was aircraft, and details of flying and various types of aircraft are often found in his stories. I'm not very technically inclined but I don't mind the detailed explanations he includes in some of his books.

There is a website devoted to Nevil Shute which includes an address made by his daughter at a Nevil Shute Celebration in 1999 in which she talks about her father and the type of man he was. The main character in An Old Captivity, David Ross, seemed to possess a similar sort of character to the author.

The first couple of pages are narrated in the first person by a psychiatrist who is travelling through France on the same train as Ross. When the train is prevented from continuing on its journey to Rome due to a breakdown of the train ahead of them, the two men decide to have dinner together.

Over dessert, Ross suddenly asks the psychiatrist a question concerning dreams and reality. It is clear that Ross is concerned about his mental stability.

He stared at me across the table; there was a strained look about him, and I knew we were coming to the root of things...

I said gently: "We've got a long evening  before us. Would you like to tell me about it?"

What follows is a third person narrative of the events leading up to the meeting on the train. Donald Ross is employed by Oxford archaeologist, Mr. Lockwood, to pilot a plane to take him to Greenland on a surveying expedition.

Much to Ross's dismay, the don's very attractive but antagonistic daughter, Alix, insists on travelling with them, which seriously complicates their journey.

Nevil Shute usually includes a romantic thread in his stories and this book is no exception.

Upon reaching the old Viking colony at Brattalid, the combination of overwork, exhaustion and the use of medication to help him sleep, brings Ross to a point where he confuses reality.

At this point the chronology of the story fluctuates. The atmosphere of the old colony seeps into Ross's dreams and he becomes Haki, serving under Leif the Lucky with his woman, Hekja. When he awakes it is in a state of confusion. The dreams are so real; backed by evidence and circumstances.

It is an interesting twist to the story but the book ends rather abruptly. Maybe Nevil Shute didn't know how to 'land' this one. Although it was an enjoyable, compelling story, it was a frustrating end for me and I kept thinking of what might have happened. 

During the expedition Ross grew fond of Alix. She began to appreciate his skill and his hard work and was genuinely concerned for his welfare when he was in a delirious state.  Did the budding romance fizzle out on their return to England? Why was Ross on a train to Rome at the beginning of the book and why didn't Shute take us back to the psychiatrist?

I read this in a Vintage Classic, one of the few paperbacks I'm happy to buy.

AusReading Month: The Rainbow and the Rose by Nevil Shute

Pilot Ronnie Clarke learns that Johnnie Pascoe, the man who had taught him to fly many years before, has crashed his plane while attempting to rescue a sick child from her isolated home on the rugged west coast of Tasmania. Pascoe is lying badly injured with only the child's mother to nurse him. The child's condition begins to improves but unless Pacoe receives medical attention for his fractured skull he will die.

Clarke is the narrator of the story and as he reminisces over the past and his association with the injured pilot, he makes the decision to go to the small town in Tasmania where Pascoe is based and endeavour to fly a doctor in to the area.

Clarke persuades the reluctant young local doctor to go with him and later finds out that he has never flown before. The first attempt to assist the injured man allows the doctor to drop a suitcase of medical equipment out of the plane onto the tiny airstrip next to the homestead but the doctor himself is unable to get out of the plane. Clarke returns to town as the weather conditions begin to deteriorate.

He spends the night at Pascoe's home waiting for a chance to try again the next day and learns about the older man's past, his secret history and painful memories.

As with all the books I've read by this author, I found the story simple but compelling. Nevil Shute has an easy style but he develops his characters so well. He has the ability to take a very ordinary sort of person, unwrap them and reveal their value and worth in the midst of their weaknesses and foibles. In doing this he helps the reader to empathise with his characters and I always come away from his books with a sense that he must have been a man who understood human nature but his response to that knowledge was not cynicism but kindness.

Throughout this book, Shute uses an interesting flashback technique which confused me at first and I wondered a few times what was going on. After a while I began to enjoy the way he used the technique even though it felt clunky at times. It was an interesting way to divulge information that the narrator would not have known.

This isn't one of his more well known books. Certainly, A Town Like Alice would be his best known book here in Australia and there was a TV mini-series of the story plus an earlier movie version. This is one version I've seen:

Other Nevil Shute books I've read and would recommend are:

Pied Piper  - set in WW2 in England and France.

On the Beach  - (near bottom of post) a novel dealing with a post nuclear catastrophe; set in Southern  Australian.

Nevil Shute Norway was born in England in 1899. He studied Engineering Science and worked as an aeronautical engineer. During World War 2 he worked on the development of secret weapons and after the war he settled in Australia where he lived until his death in 1960.

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