56Īs it becomes clear to the women that the Japanese had no camp or plans for the women except to march them to death, the women, with Jean as the de facto leader, struggles to survive. “They don’t know what it was like, not being in a camp.” – p. “People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had,” she said quietly, staring into the embers.
When the Japanese realise that the women, which includes children and a baby, cannot stay where they are, they are shepherded to and from different towns, made to walk in the the unforgiving conditions with no end in sight. When the Japanese suddenly invades Malaya (Malaysia) Jean is taken prisoner along with thirty other white women while their husbands are herded off to Singapore or a prison camp. Ironically, Jean is not a typical flighty woman as Strachan discovers when she tells him her experience of WWII.īefore the outbreak of war, Jean worked as a typist for a British company in Kuala Lumpur and decides to stay during the war. In his will, and due to his low regard for a woman’s ability to look after her own finances, the great-uncle stipulated that Jean may not have full access to her fortune until she is thirty-five years old and his lawyer, Noel Strachan, is to act as a trustee. Jean Paget, a British woman working as a typist at a shoe and handbag manufacturer is twenty-seven years old when she inherits a nice little fortune from a long forgotten great-uncle. A Town Like Alice is a tale of an ordinary woman’s extraordinary life in the face of various hardships.
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