Customer Reviews

No Highway

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...after all, this is an age of cynicism. It's the story of nerdy scientist Theodore Honey (the British term of that time was "boffin"--it specifically targeted scentists) who discovers a potentially deadly flaw in a new airliner. The problem is that nobody but his boss Dr. Scott (from whose viewpoint this story is told) has any faith in his theory. After all, oddballs don't have very high credibility factors. So Scott sends Honey over to Canada to investigate a recent crash of one of those planes, only to have it turn out that the plane he takes is also one of that model. Which makes for a particularly gripping scene--it's the centerpiece of the James Stewart movie based on this book. Other important characters here are Honey's motherless daughter, an actress he's a fan of who's also on the flight--he reminds her of an old friend she knew before she became famous, the plane's captain who is increasingly unsure that Honey is a crackpot, plus a stewardess who not only shares her captain's point of view--but finds Honey strangely compelling in an even more important way. Nowadays you don't often find this human a story in so short a book. Shute's best known book is "On The Beach".

When Dr. Theodore Honey, a boffin of an aviation scientist, predicts that the wings on a new type of aircraft will begin falling off, he is sent across to Canada to investigate a previous crash. Bad choice--he is so unimpressive that when he learns that the aircraft he is on has already exceeded his estimated time to failure, he can only stop the flight by wrecking it when it stops to refuel at Gander. Almost everyone believes he's crazy except for a few--including the assistant director at his place of work, a stewardess, and a movie actress.

Shute is at his best in his characterizations--such as Monica Teasdale the fading American movie actress, who falls in love with Honey as she once did with a man before she became famous. She soon realizes she can never have Honey and must step aside for the stewardess, who can give him children and maintain him in his work, as well as give him love. The details are amusing--the actress, from Indiana, uses the word "hoosier" to the mystification of the British characters

As in most of Shute's books, there are no villians. The fact that many of the characters are working against each other does not make any of them evil, and when the truth is revealed, they quickly begin to work together.

For the information of readers, the book made a fairly poor movie starring (I kid you not), Jimmy Stewart as Honey. But as so few of Shute's books were made into movies, it is worth watching for that reason.

This 1948 novel was one of the first adult books I read as a boy; remembering it fondly, I wanted to see how it stood up now. The brief answer: very well, although it shows its age. Such a book could never be published today, and in many ways that is a pity.

Nevil Shute Norway was an aircraft engineer by profession, and most of his novels (of which A TOWN LIKE ALICE is the best-known) touch to some degree on flying; in NO HIGHWAY, aircraft engineering is the entire background. The narrator, Dennis Scott, is head of a research department at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough, England. One of his scientists, a rather unworldly widower named Theodore Honey, is convinced that Britain's latest transatlantic passenger aircraft, the Reindeer, is liable to catastrophic metal fatigue in the tail after so many hours' flying time, and convinces Scott that all Reindeers must be grounded before they approach that maximum. Unfortunately, two aircraft have already reached the danger point. One has recently crashed in a remote area of Labrador, and when Honey is sent out to investigate, he discovers he is traveling in the other one.

Shute's strength is that he writes what he knows, straightforwardly and without frills. He assumes that the reader will be interested in the technology, and in the bureaucratic procedures that Scott must go through to convince the appropriate agencies of the danger. It is true that some of Honey's theories sound kooky, to put it mildly, and it is hard to believe that time-to-fracture is as predictable as he makes out. But in 1954, six years after the book was published, Britain's Comet fleet, the world's first commercial passenger jet aircraft, suffered a series of fatal accidents that were ultimately put down to metal fatigue; the episode essentially ended Britain's domination of the transatlantic market. That era was about to change anyhow; one of the pleasures of the book is to go back before the jumbo jet, when transatlantic aircraft has to refuel at places like Gander in Newfoundland, and carried only a few dozen passengers in easy luxury.

NO HIGHWAY is also a heart-warming love story. This requires some suspension of contemporary cynicism, for Shute's character painting (especially his women, often referred to as "girls") now seems rather simplistic, in common with many of the popular writers of his generation. They don't write them like that any more -- with one notable exception: I suspect that the popularity of Alexander McCall Smith (author of THE SUNDAY PHILOSOPHY CLUB) is precisely because he too writes in the simple emotional terms of his boyhood reading. If you want Smith's warmth applied to more boyish subjects, you might do worse than look into Shute.

This is one of Neville Shute's best novels (I keep saying that) and a pretty good movie was made of it with Jimmy Stewart, Glynis Johns and Marlene Dietrich. The story is about a shy and rather homely aircraft engineer who was widowed in the war and lives with his eight year old daughter. He is reclusive and not very well liked by his bosses but he is brilliant. He has a theory about metal fatigue and is using a tail plane from the brand new British trans-Atlantic airliner as a test bed. It hasn't occurred to him that the test, if successful, will result in grounding the fleet of planes. Then, he learns that one of the airliners has crashed in Canada and he is asked to go to the crash site to see if the tail is intact. He is an "inside man" and doesn't want to go but he is "volunteered" by his boss. Flying across the Atlantic at night, he is horrified to learn that not only is this one of the "Reindeer" airliners but it has exceeded the safe number of flying hours according to his calculations. Upset, he confides his fears to a famous movie actress who is on the flight and who was a favorite of his late wife. The stewardess tries to discourage him from upsetting the passengers but both women begin to fear he knows what he is talking about. They make it to the fuel stop at Gander but, to prevent the plane taking off again, he pulls the lever on the undercarriage, causing the plane to settle down onto the taxiway. A furious row ensues and the story is an enjoyable scientific adventure story and a romance as both women become very attracted to this shy engineer. I read this book in the 1940s when it came out and, shortly after it was published, the British Comet jet airliners began to crash. The cause was metal fatigue. Shute was an experienced aeronautical engineer who had built up his own company before the war. He knew his subject. The book is excellent. This should be on every list of novels for engineers.

The humor and tension are grounded in both the characters and the situations in which they find themselves. It's a tidy novel with no great action scenes and no auctorial fireworks. Nevil Shute tells the tale simply and with a muted affection for everyone involved.

Dennis Scott works in the post-war British government and is chief of testing programs designed to insure aircraft safety. I may get these organizations mixed up because I'm not familiar with any of them. New to the job, Scott surveys the ongoing programs and finds Theodore Honey, an queer, middle-aged engineer, experimenting with metal fatigue on the tailplane of an expensive new passenger airplane, the Reindeer. Curious about this froggy little troglodyte, Scott surveys the Reindeer tailplane now taking a pounding from hundreds of vibrators in Honey's isolated corner of the universe. The vibrators reproduce the stresses encountered in flight. Scott asks what Honey expects to find out. "I expect the tail to fall off after 1440 hours," replies Honey. Scott gapes because Honey doesn't seem to care about a couple of things that less eccentric people might find important. One is that, if Honey's theory is right, all Reindeers now in service will have to be grounded and it will cause an uproar in a strapped England in which goods are still rationed because of the debt incurred by the war. The second is that, if Honey is right, hundreds of passengers and crew will die as, one by one, the tails fall off the airplanes and they fall out of the sky.

What follows is a fascinating story of solving conundrums in aeronautical engineering, of family dynamics, of character traits, and of romance.

The story is plot driven and moves logically through time and space, never hard to follow, never difficult to read, but it's also sprinkled with ludic tidbits that are sometimes hilarious in an understated way. Honey is clearly an intelligent mathematician and engineer. The guy has a vision. But he's also otherwordly, a fool who doesn't own an ordinary mop or know anything about electric water heaters. The little home he shares with his twelve-year-old daughter is cluttered and filthy. He spends what spare time he has investigating certain obscure features of pyramids and the apocryphal peregrinations of Jesus Christ, including a kind of vacation the savior took at the site of King Arthur's Camelot. Scott backs Honey and his theory up, against the dismissive attacks of establishment figures.

Some reviewers have called the novel "dated," and I suppose it is. The most advanced aircraft are propeller driven. Women yearn for stability and homes. But so what? "Ulysses" is dated too. Nobody rides around in horse-drawn coaches anymore. And, man, is "The Iliad" dated or what?

Personally I found Shute's description of the typical nuclear family rather appealing. Take the stewardess, Marjorie Corder, that Theodore Honey finds himself thrown together with by circumstance. She's twenty-five, she's been a nurse and a stewardess. She's been all over the place and seen much of what she wants to see. And she falls for Honey and wants to spend her life taking care of him, his daughter, and their home. Granted that it all looks a bit retro today, but if women should feel free to pursue careers, why shouldn't they feel free to NOT pursue a career? There's nothing I'd have enjoyed more than coming home after a hard day in the jungle and having a wife give me a massage, bring me my slippers, mix me a drink, light my pipe, and see to it that my wounds were properly treated and bandaged. Of course, there are advantages to living alone too. You can talk to yourself, you can curse rapturously at will, walk about in your underwear, prop your feet on the table, stagger around drinking out of the bottle, smoke poisonous cigars, watch ESPN day and night, burp without discretion, and so forth -- but I'd trade it all for an obedient, beautiful, wealthy, sinuous, undemanding, loving young wife.

Where was I? Oh, yes. I've read the novel twice -- the first time about thirty years ago, then again just recently. It was enjoyable both times. It doesn't carry much of a moral message. It's not "profound." It's an entertaining and involving tale. Try it, you'll like it.

Arrived as expected. It was great to find such an old book in such used condition -- obviously lots and lot of folks have enjoyed this story!

This the sort of book I love to read over and over again every few years. I was exhausted this weekend and enjoyed reading this book lazily. I worked in the garden, made and ate a scone and read No Highway. It is an old fashioned novel slowly tells the tale if a "Boffin" a lonely scientist , his boss who is the narrator and what happens when research collides with life.
IN the early 50's Mr. Honey predicts the tail of a certain type of aircraft will fall off. Unfortunately this same type of aircraft is flying across the Atlantic. Lives are at stake and the pure research of Mr. Honey becomes critical as does the character of Mr. Honey. He has a daughter and not one but two unlikely love love interests. The is a happy ending and all is well. but the charm of this kind of novel is you are drawn into the life of some likable people. I enjoyed the visit.

Nevil Shute writes a good, technically-sound tale of the perils of aircraft design in the immediate post-war era. His material is therefore dated -- yet because it is so obviously dated it has a charm that is difficult to fault.

Memorable characters: you probably know people who are like the protagonists. Memorable plot. Written from the viewpoint of a semi-detached observer, though one with a keen stake in the outcome.

The ending was a little disappointing, with a literal "deus ex machina" providing the solution to a really knotty problem -- perhaps it was feasible in the forties, but certainly wouldn't work today. But don't let this keep you from reading the book: it's a good tale that deserves dusting-off.

I enjoyed re-reading this story but I was very disappointed at the quality of the Kindle edition. There were many contextual typos (eg tack instead of tact -- made no sense in sentence) and I found it very distracting, especially having paid top $$ for the Kindle edition. It needs to get cleaned up.

Also what's with putting the title page and associated publishing information at the END of the book? I know this isn't restricted just to this book but I would prefer 'normal' book format please.

This is one book that is fun to read if you've seen the James Stewart movie about a scientist who believes a new type of airplane has a basic defect and will crash after so many hours in the air.Visualizing the well-cast actors as you read makes the book more interesting. The plot is well laid out and even though you know basically that the hero will be vindicated in his beliefs, it keeps your interest to the end.