A Town Like Alice Trivia Quiz

Answer: The Legacy

The other three choices are also titles of novels by Nevil Shute. The book has been filmed twice - the first version starred Peter Finch and Virginia McKenna, and the second starred Brian Brown and Helen Morse. Both screenplays were very faithful to the original novel.

Answer: Jean Paget

Mrs. Frith, Eileen Holland and Ellen Forbes are also characters in the novel. Jean is an English girl who spent her early childhood in Malaya, where her father was a rubber planter. After leaving school in England, she goes back to Malaya to work for the firm that employed her father and brother, and is there when the Japanese invade South East Asia in 1941.

She is taken prisoner, but because there are no internment camps for women and children, she and the other women and children are sent (on foot and under guard) hither and yon, all over Malaya.

Many of the women and children die on this forced march.

Answer: Joe Harman

Pete, Sam and Tommy are three other male characters in 'A Town Like Alice'. Joe is an Australian prisoner-of-war who helps the women by providing such things as soap and Glauber's salts (which appear to be some sort of medicine) when they arrive in Kuantan.

Answer: Malaya

Joe and Jean met in Kuantan, Malaya during World War II. Joe eventually steals some prized chickens to provide the women with something to eat. The chickens belonged to the local Japanese commandant and Joe is punished for the theft.

Answer: Mrs. Boong

Jean has, by necessity, assumed the role of leader and spokeswoman for the women, and Joe assumes that she is married because she is caring for the baby of one of the women who has died. She doesn't tell him her name, so he calls her Mrs. Boong.

Answer: He is crucified

Captain Sugamo has Joe whipped and then nailed to a tree in the centre of Kuantan. He enquires of Joe if he has any dying wishes, and Joe asks for one of his black chickens and a bottle of beer, Sugamo attempts to comply with the request. However, while the chicken is readily available, Sugamo is unable to lay his hands on any beer. Because he cannot fulfill Joe's dying wish, he is honour bound under the code of Bushido not to let Joe die, so he orders him to be taken down from the tree and sent to hospital.

Answer: Gunso

We are never told the sergeant's name, and the women address him as Gunso, which is Japanese for sergeant.

Answer: He dies of fever

Gunso falls ill with a fever, and the women take care of him. When he dies, they bury him in the Moslem cemetery in Kuala Talang and Jean makes arrangements with the village headman, Mat Amin, to stay in the village. The Japanese authorities give their assent to this and the women remain there for the remainder of the war. To earn their keep, the women work in the rice paddies with the village women, much to the amazement of the locals who have never seen white women do manual labour!

Answer: Pack and Levy

Jean has no relatives left living, except for an aunt who lives in Wales. She gets a job in London with Pack and Levy, a firm that makes expensive leather goods - shoes, handbags, luggage and dressing cases.

Answer: She returns to Malaya

As the sole surviving member of her family (her mother had died in England during the war, and her brother had died as a prisoner of war working on the Burma Railway), Jean inherits the money left by her mother's brother. She decides to return to Kuala Talang to help the village women by having a well dug and a wash house built for them.

Answer: Noel Strachan

Noel Strachan is Jean's solicitor and trustee, and also the narrator of the book. Lester Robinson is his partner in the law firm, and Derek Harris is the firm's articling clerk.

Answer: The prisoner she met in Malaya is alive

The well diggers hired by Jean for her project come from Kuantan, and from them she learns that Joe did not die as she had thought, but survived and was repatriated at the end of the war.

Answer: She goes to Australia

Jean goes to Australia in search of Joe, telling herself that she needs to make sure that he is all right and not permanently disabled and unable to work as a stockrider.

Answer: The male protagonist

Joe Harman, having learned that Jean is not a married woman, comes to England to find her.

Answer: Willston

Jean finally tracks Joe down to Willston in the Australian Outback, after a complicated journey. She arrives in Willston from Alice Springs, where she enjoyed a couple of days while waiting for the plane to take her to Willston. She is most impressed with Alice Springs, with its wide paved streets, shops and homes with swimming pools. Willston, on the other, hand, is practically a ghost town, with very few amenities.

In Jean's opinion, Willston is "a dreadful place."

Answer: They get engaged

After some false starts, Joe and Jean admit that they love one another and make plans to marry. They decide that the wedding will take place after he has mustered the cattle to market in the following April.

Answer: It's an Australian term for stealing unbranded calves

Joe's neighbour Don Curtis, whom Joe suspects of making off with unbranded calves from the Midhurst station, breaks his leg, and Jean rides 40 miles into Willston to get help. She has only just started learning to ride, and the long ride in pouring rain exhausts her, physically and emotionally.

Answer: She sets up a business

Jean still thinks Willston is awful, so she decides to change it, to make it more like Alice Springs. Realizing that in order for the town to change and grow, there has to be a reason for young people in the area to stay rather than leaving for the big cities to find work. Jean opens a workshop to make shoes from local crocodile skins, and hires local girls to work for her.

She arranges a sales agreement with her former employers to sell her product in England, and hires one of their forewomen to join her in Willston to run her workshop and teach the girls the shoe-making trade. With opportunity for employment, the young women do not have to leave home to find work, and consequently more young men move into the district to work on the cattle stations (and eventually marry the young women). Jean ends up with a business mini-empire - the workshop, an ice cream parlour, a beauty salon, a dress shop, a swimming pool, a grocery store.

The town grows and the population triples in three years, and becomes a 'town like Alice'.

Answer: They buy the cattle station

Jean and Joe marry and have two sons. When Joe has the opportunity to buy the cattle station from his aging employer, he and Jean invite Noel Strachan to handle the transaction for them. He flies to Australia to carry out the business and reflects that since Jean's inheritance is based on her great-uncle's original gold strike in Australia it is only fitting that the money be re-invested in that country.

Answer: Yes, but not exactly as it's told in the book

Nevil Shute wrote 'A Town Like Alice' after meeting a Dutch woman who had been taken prisoner by the Japanese in Batavia, a Dutch colony in Asia, during World War II. She had been one of a party of women who had been marched the length and breadth of Batavia in much the same way as Shute's heroine had been. Shute dedicated the book to Mrs. Geysel-Donk, whom he referred to as "one of the bravest women I have ever met."