THE LEGACY

This has the makings of a first rate story, but the indirect approach- as an elderly lawyer tells the story, now as told or written to him, now in direct narrative form, somehow robs it of the basic human values inherent in the story itself. Possibly this is due to the kernel of the plot being based on actual fact-of a group of women war prisoners taken by the Japanese in Sumatra, marching for months back and forth, and finally making their own terms with native villagers, and working in the rice fields for the war's duration. Shute has shifted his setting to Malaya, and made his heroine, Jean Paget, leader of the group, and written around his nucleus tale, a fictional romance between the not-so-young Jean, and an Australian "ringer"- cattleman-fellow prisoner, who was crucified by the Japanese for stealing some chickens, and who miraculously escaped with his life. After years of separation, each assuming the other inaccessible, they are- following a period of abortive attempts to meet again-reunited in Australia, where Jean is working out a pattern of life at a ghost town back station in the Australian hinterland, and where their marriage is an integral part of the rebirth of the town and the community they create. Unique setting, very interesting situations, and a good love story- but as the lawyer, acting as trustee for a legacy left to Jean, tells the story, the reader rarely gets below the surface of the characters. Shute's name- and the elements of the story itself-recommend it as a surely popular novel.