[I read A Town Like Alice (published in the United States as The Legacy)] with simple, doubtless too simple, pleasure. It is the quintessence, or very nearly, of readableness. Lively, fluent, inventive, spirited, a story-teller with a swift and sympathetic eye for character and the surest instinct for avoiding the heights and depths of story-telling, Mr. Shute deserves, I think, every bit of the popularity which A Town Like Alice will earn. It is the story of a young woman who took charge of a British party of captive women and children in Malaya and then went to look for an Australian sergeant, a "ringer," in the Queensland "outback." The Malayan scenes are wonderfully good in their acutely simple way; the Australian scenes carry just a hint of too idyllic sentiment. But it is all very, very readable. Is it "literature"? Why ever not?

R. D. Charques, in...