Round the Bend

I have read many novels of Nevil Shute.But this novel is very unique.It is touching and makes you feel you are one among the people in this fine story.I feel Connie was a true karma yogi. He found God in his work and exhorted others to find their God through good karma.

I think 'Round the Bend' is early twientieth century Brit for 'Off the Deep End.' This is the Shute book Shute himself said was most likely to still be read 50 years hence. I've enjoyed quite a few Shute books now and especially his biography written by Richard Thorn. This is a good read but 'A Town Like Alice' is still my favorite. And with the exception of it's ending, 'Trustee from the Toolroom' was terrific.

Definitely much-much more interesting and deeper than most of Nobel price winners of the last three decades.

A good read

There's something about Nevil Shute's prose that is quite beguiling. It's not poetic or florid; more it's a quality of the way he scrutinises the emotions of his characters. His narration is cool, but much lies under the surface. The usual mood is reserve, endurance. But under that quiet exterior there is turbulence indeed.The narrator of Round The Bend is Alan Cutter, an aircraft engineer, pilot and entrepreneur who starts an air freight business in Bahrain. The story is the account of his friendship with Connie Shaklin, an engineer who founds a new religion.This is the second novel of Shute's that I've read. The first was the most famous; On The Beach. As with On The Beach, Round the Bend begins slowly and in an unassuming way. But this quality of observation is just acute and intelligent enough to keep you reading. And then something happens that strikes a lightning bolt through the life of the narrator.Shute reminds me of another of my favourite novelists, Andrew Miller. They share the same quality of tenderising you. Their characters' interior landscapes draw you into a place of sensitivity. Shute's characteristic flavour is emotional burdens such as guilt or yearning, and especially missed opportunities. This book's plot is quiet, but you are still gripped by a sense of increasing pressure. Despite its title it is not meandering.One of the triumphs of this book, for me, is the setting. It has great charm. The Bahrain airstrip is a stripped-down place of sand, hangars and engines. The main characters hop between the continents, delivering goods, setting up more export bases, leaving behind personnel who spread Shaklin's infleunce. Shute would never be so clumsy as to make the comparison with angels, these people who spend so much time in the sky in their machines, but you are drawn to entertain yourself with the idea. A charming, haunting story.

Of all of his good to excellent works, this remains my favorite. I reread it every few years for the hope I can glean from it. It is a compass I refer to time to time to help me on my journey. I read it first when I was 18, and still love it 40 years later. I give a copy of this book to everyone I love- it means that much to me.The Post-War Persian Gulf of the 40s makes real the Gulf War geography we have so often heard about, and helps inform our perceptions of the people and events of our own recent past. Evident is not only Shute’s perceptive observations of the motivations of people and his expertise in the field of aviation, but the cognitive dissonance of the protagonist Tom Cutter (and perhaps that of the author himself) as he sheds hid cultural and religious chauvinisms and comes to stop viewing “the other” as people and not wogs (no offense intended as I am a wog myself). If the author displays the zealousness of a recent convert to this idea he can, I hope, be forgiven for a tendency to seem to preach. His journey from what appeared to be a fairly typical set of Victorian prejudices (evident in his early works and some later ones as well) to the ability to accept the validity of non-European views. This is no small enlightenment for a man of his time and upbringing.This story could have been as easily set in the Australian Outback, and Indian reservation in America or most places in the third world with resources to exploit and people with non-first world cultures. It is a literary smorgasbord- aviation, the Middle East, marital issues (Tom’s wife commits suicide sending him off on his new journey), world politics, friendship, the effects of poorly formed public policies, bureaucracy, intercultural relationships, smuggling, finance, religion, philosophy…. I am reminded of the story of Donald Woods and the evolution of his friendship with Stephen Biko. As an Air Force brat I loved the flying. As an American Indian I appreciated the acceptance of views not those of the “dominant society”. As a widower I appreciated ho he tried to recover from the guilt he felt as a result of his wife’s death. As a person who tries to walk a spiritual walk, I could relate to others who have the same struggle. Tom Cutter loves flying, loves his family, loves his friends and loves the sometimes heartbreaking business he is in. I recommend this book highly. It is one of my two very favorites.

J'aime Nevil SHUTE. C'est un auteur sympathique, son style est plaisant, ses histoires originales et ses héros attachants. ROUND THE BEND n'est pas un bon roman ou un excellent roman : c'est une pure merveille !A peine étais-je arrivée au mot FIN que j'ai recommencé la lecture depuis le début....ce qui ne m’était pas arrivé depuis CENT ANS DE SOLITUDE et LE VIEUX QUI LISAIT LES ROMANS D'AMOUR.Que quelqu'un me dise s'il a été traduit en français : si c'est le cas, j'en achèterai des piles et distribuerai à mes amis cette épopée à lire impérativement.

Every time, almost, I read another Neville Shute novel, I come to the conclusion that it is the best of them all. That can't be true every time, of course, but this time it might be. I may be getting sentimental as I get older; I know that Mr Shute did so. was his last novel and was published after his death. It is probably the most sentimental of his books but this one, in a rather different way, is next. The story is of Tom Cutter, a young man who loves aviation from his first contact with it as a boy. He was working as a garage mechanic when a flying circus came to his home town of Southhampton, England. He spends two days helping them with washing the airplanes and, as they are leaving, he asks for a permanent job. They have no spot for him but he travels on his own to their next stop and helps with odd jobs until the owner finally offers him a job for the season as a sort of clown, driving around with another young man in an old Ford while the stunt fliers do mock bombing and strafing. The other young man, a bit older, is named Connie Shaklin and most of the book is about Tom and Connie in their later lives in the airline business in the Near East.Tom serves in the war, learns to fly but is mostly a ground mechanic. After the war, he gets the idea to buy an old surplus airplane and take it to the Persian Gulf area to haul cargo around for oil companies. He flies to Bahrain and sets up shop in an inactive RAF station. He hires, unusual for an Englishman, all native workers, many of them veterans of the recent war who had served in the British Army. They are content with lower salaries and he can keep his rates low. He profits from his business and soon needs another airplane. In two years, he needs yet a third. In the meantime he has a workforce of Arabs and Sikhs and his business keeps growing. He finally gets a charter to fly oil equipment to Indonesia and there, quite unexpectedly, he encounters his friend from the air circus, Connie Shaklin.The rest of the story is about their lives in the air cargo business in the very early days of long distance aviation. Connie is an excellent engineer and, little by little, Tom comes to realize that Connie is attracting a lot of attention from other aircraft mechanics and workers because of his unique approach to religion. There is quite a bit of discussion of this philosophy in the book and it is very interesting. Basically, Connie is teaching the other young men that, when they do their jobs well, they are praying. He spends time with Imams although he is not Muslim. He teaches that every time a mechanic tightens a nut properly and wires it carefully so it cannot loosen, he is praying. The imams have become discouraged that the young are entranced by the new mechanical world and are losing interest in religion. Connie, who is Eurasian with a Russian mother and a Chinese father, begins to use the Chinese version of his name and goes by Shak Lin. He teaches them that prayer consists of doing a job well. Mechanics he has trained are more reliable than others and other airlines begin to notice that Shak Lin's teachings are spreading and are having a good effect on their own reliability. Of course, there are ignorant civil authorities who become annoyed at this religious revival.The story is one that kept me riveted to the book until I finished it. There are some similarities to , which is also a story that has a religious theme that transcends doctrine or denomination. In Round the Bend, Tom finds that Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus all respond to Connie's teaching and soon his fame spreads among the airline industry all over Asia. It's a very entertaining and sentimental story and has this interesting twist about a religion of doing your work well. St Benedict in the 10th century said "To Labor is to Pray." That is something like the theme of this novel. This is one of Shute's best.

Nevil Shute is possibly my favorite writer, and this is definitely my favorite of his books. It quietly gets inside you and gradually begins to inform your thoughts and actions. Unassuming, simply told, and marvelous, on one level it's just an entertaining story that's difficult to put down. On other levels, it resonates deeply into matters of the heart and spirit. The characters are people I love, and the story is one that I return to again and again.I love Shute's technical competence and honesty. Every word about aircraft, business, sailing, war, or other technical subjects, in any of his books, you just know is exactly true. That quiet unassuming truth pervades the characters and stories as well. They are so real, so ordinary, and so great. All his books have a delightful substance about them. After this one, please read Trustee from the Toolroom, The Pied Piper, The Legacy, and No Highway.