THE FAR COUNTRY

Pleasant reading and a new setting for a less important story than Shute has done of late. The background is chiefly Australia, not far from Melbourne, though the plot picks up characters in London, playing back and forth between the two. Evidently the lure of the Australian foothills, the great reaches of country that supplied pasturage for the sheep stations- forests for the lumber camps, have captured his imagination in the two years he has lived out there. He tells his story on the level of the first and second generation Australians, with some of the "new" Australians, D.P.'s working out their passage and their time in today's version of indenture. How Jennifer Morton, product of the new post war London social mores, achieved the opportunity to try her wings in Australia provides the rather tenuous thread of plot, as she comes out to "visit" unknown relatives, plans to find a job and stay on- and meets a refugee Czech, working in a lumber camp not far away, and using his skill as a doctor and surgeon despite the restrictions on his practising. Here is a fresh and new portrait of a country, still unknown territory for most readers. Here a story that follows more or less predictable lines for a warm and heartening tale.