She had suffered during the Second World War when she was forced by extenuating circumstances to lead a group of women and children, trying to survive in Malaya but having to keep marching every day to different villages as no one wanted to take responsibility for their welfare.

Noël learns that Jean had seen a tough life as a young woman and was no Lily of the field. She has a keen mind and asks some intelligent questions that engage Noel’s attention and so begins the relationship of a lifelong mentorship. Jean comes across a sensible and level-headed woman when she calmly accepts the good news but decides to continue working for the interim. Her benefactor uncle apparently had a poor opinion about women managing their money and felt that they end up falling prey to Golddiggers. But most of the money is tied up in a Trust so that she can’t just blow it away and Noël will handle her financial affairs till she is thirty-five years of age. The opening scene in London has an ageing solicitor, Noël Strachan, advising a young Jean Piaget, working as a secretary, about her inheritance that makes her a wealthy woman. The book is entertaining as well as inspiring. Jean Piaget in A Town Like Alice breaks the stereotype and that makes the book so very special and enduring even nearly 65 years after it was first published. It does seem that men may be intimidated to fall for a woman of intelligence and one who knows her mind. The male vision has been even more stereotyped with a rather overt focus on beauty and fairness than over brains and character.

Nevil Shute’s A Town Like Alice Image Courtesy – For well over a century now, young women have tended to have romantic ideas of a life partner who is ‘Tall, Dark and Handsome’ a.k.a the Mills & Boon dream.

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