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An Old Captivity Nevil Shute Books

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An Old Captivity Nevil Shute Books

I don't want to give away the plot. Do we love the same person over and over? Can some of us remember more than others? See what you think as you read this wonderful work of fiction that is based on archaeological research.


Tags : Amazon.com: An Old Captivity (9781842322758): Nevil Shute: Books,Nevil Shute,An Old Captivity,House of Stratus Ltd,1842322753,1002-WS0501-A03010-1842322753,Action & Adventure,Adventure thriller,Fiction,Fiction - Historical,Fiction Action & Adventure,Historical - General,Modern fiction

An Old Captivity Nevil Shute Books Reviews

Nevil Shute is an excellent storyteller. I read several of his books back in the late 1960s and I read this one again now to see whether my good opinion of it would still hold. It did. I read Pied Piper for the first time last year and enjoyed that too. .The language is plain and strightforward and the characters are convincing.
We take our machines and technology for granted, but the amount of work, the attention to detail and the luck that was needed in the early days of flying never ceases to amaze me. Also, Nevil Shute had this way of weaving a story which I find rare, at least nowadays. A great read.
Shute writes wonderful, engaging and noble stories full of honorable characters and vivid descriptions. Highly recommended. Relax and enjoy the trip.
Great book. I really enjoyed the background info on what it was like to mount and Arctic expedition in those days.
An Old Captivity is an overlapping tale of what Shute began in Vinland the Good. Shute's stories can be considered quaint, or old fashioned, by some, but in today's rushed society his characters are refreshingly dedicated to their trade/duties, and well thought out in their actions. This story is about an air adventure to seek archaeological data in a remote area of Greenland with just the right amount of reality to make the reader feel like they could be there.
Shute always does an excellent job in making the reader "feel the struggle" on a personal level. In today's novels, the inner struggle, or process of dealing with moral dilemmas, is too many times minimized or completely missing. Shute does a service to those who acknowledge the greater aspects of ones choices. He acknowledges in great detail the struggles within which we all face, yet rarely talk about or teach to the next generation. While Shute's novels are fiction, his characters are more real than the ones we will find from most any other author. A great adventure, a great read!
For those wishing to know more about Nevl Shute, an internet search for the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation will put them in touch with much information as well as other Shute enthusiasts.
Nevil Shute was an extraordinary and imaginative story-teller, and I have enjoyed many of his novels, as well as his memoir "Slide Rule". He was an aeronautical engineer first, and several of his novels involved flying. But "An Old Captivity" is my favorite I first read it in the 1940s, and have gone back to read it many times since. What "captivated" me is the combination of very factual and informative details about the challenges of flying a small plane from England to Greenland in the mid 1930s, and the fantastical story element in which the chief character is led, throughg a dream, to recapture a prior life as a Scottish slave of the Viking explorer Leif Eriksson. A mild romance lends the story more charm.
Most people today think nothing of getting on airplane, and a few hours later, arriving at their destination half the world away with no more to complain about than poor service by the stewardess. It wasn't always this way, and even today going to some remote locations has at least some difficulties associated with it. This book details the adventures of three very disparate people, an Oxford don, his class conscious daughter, and an independent-minded pilot as they embark on a trip from England to Greenland during the mid-thirties in an attempt by the professor to prove that the Celts came along with the Norsemen during their exploration and colonization period of about AD1000.

Greenland is not a very hospitable place, with few inhabitants, almost no ports, unpredictable and typically highly inclement weather, and ice-locked most of the year. The preparations needed to go there at the time of this novel were extensive, approaching the level of effort of the Scott and Amundsen polar expeditions, though on a much smaller scale. Almost all of this effort falls on the shoulders of the pilot, from purchasing, assembling and testing an appropriate sea-plane to ordering supplies, obtaining the required documents, setting up logistical support bases, and finding and hiring an appropriately skilled photographer, all while working under a time deadline dictated by Greenland's very short summer.

Nevil's description of all of this work and the thought processes of his pilot are vivid, detailed, and highly believable. While progressing in the story line, his characters are richly developed. There is a natural antipathy between the working-man pilot and the daughter, who has led a very sheltered upper-class life, who naturally can't believe the cost and preparation required for the trip, so naturally believes that the pilot is merely out to pad his own pocket. But once they embark on the trip itself, the pilot's unstinting devotion to his work slowly wins her over, and a very predictable attraction starts to form between the two.

This is very typical of Nevil's work, as he was excellent at characterization and defining romantic attractions in a very believable and satisfying manner. Also typical is the fact that there are no bad guys or any high dramatic tension here. Instead his stories revolve around his characters, often very ordinary people dealing with the very mundane realities of life. This is a somewhat slow-moving book, typical of English novels written prior to WWII, but once adjusted to this novel's pace, I had no trouble remaining engrossed in the story.

There are some items here, though, that are not so good. Shute was an avionics engineer, and his knowledge of airplanes is very much on display here, probably a little too much so, with too many details about the plane gone over multiple times. There is a section near the end that digresses violently from the main story, almost a separate story in itself, that I did not think Shute did a proper job of preparing the reader for. The final ending that ties the main story and this other one together reeks of mysticism and was, I felt, unnecessary to completing his character's story arc.

Still, a very likeable read, probably not at the incredibly high level of things like his On the Beach or A Town Like Alice, but worthwhile reading.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
I don't want to give away the plot. Do we love the same person over and over? Can some of us remember more than others? See what you think as you read this wonderful work of fiction that is based on archaeological research.