A review by jenne
No Highway by Nevil Shute
3.0
Oh Nevil Shute, how are you so fascinating?
His books are always about these sort of greyish people who eventually triumph in the end because of their deep-down decency and competence.
There's usually a whole lot of technical details about airplanes.
And just when you're really getting into it, you get slapped in the face by attitudes of half a century ago.
And despite all this, they are addictive as all hell.
In this one, there's a genius engineer named Mr. Honey (not kidding) who is also a crackpot. He discovers a fatal flaw in some airplanes, and no one believes him except his boss who is neither a genius or a crackpot, but he is a decent guy.
So Mr Honey has to go on a crazy air journey halfway across the world, because that's what you do if you're a colorless shy decent genius in a Nevil Shute novel, and then of course some beautiful intelligent women fall in love with him (one of them is a movie star) and decide that the best use they could possibly make of their lives is to keep house for him and his daughter (his wife died tragically in the war) because being a genius apparently means that you have never heard of washing your floors.
Also he is the kindest bravest man who has ever existed but he mainly manifests this by blinking pathetically at ladies who then feel compelled to bring him Ovaltine. Plus he more or less ignores his daughter except when he is using her to experiment with some kind of Ouija Board technology.
Anyway, despite it being completely fucking ridiculous, I couldn't put it down. I don't know.
His books are always about these sort of greyish people who eventually triumph in the end because of their deep-down decency and competence.
There's usually a whole lot of technical details about airplanes.
And just when you're really getting into it, you get slapped in the face by attitudes of half a century ago.
And despite all this, they are addictive as all hell.
In this one, there's a genius engineer named Mr. Honey (not kidding) who is also a crackpot. He discovers a fatal flaw in some airplanes, and no one believes him except his boss who is neither a genius or a crackpot, but he is a decent guy.
So Mr Honey has to go on a crazy air journey halfway across the world, because that's what you do if you're a colorless shy decent genius in a Nevil Shute novel, and then of course some beautiful intelligent women fall in love with him (one of them is a movie star) and decide that the best use they could possibly make of their lives is to keep house for him and his daughter (his wife died tragically in the war) because being a genius apparently means that you have never heard of washing your floors.
Also he is the kindest bravest man who has ever existed but he mainly manifests this by blinking pathetically at ladies who then feel compelled to bring him Ovaltine. Plus he more or less ignores his daughter except when he is using her to experiment with some kind of Ouija Board technology.
Anyway, despite it being completely fucking ridiculous, I couldn't put it down. I don't know.