Trustee from the Toolroom as Comfort Novel

I reread Trustee from the Toolroom by Neville Shute yesterday.

It had been a long time but I was ill and needed a comfort novel to fill a stormy day.

All the unread books on hand were nonfiction and non-compelling. I needed to escape my life, not slug it out. (Much less use my aching brain!)

So, I settled into the recliner with a novel I first read thirty years ago and have loved ever since.

What’s a comfort novel?

I’ve written about comfort novels before, basically books you’ve read over and over again for joy.

Maybe it’s the story, maybe the characters, but something brings you back to these books when you haven’t got anything else to read.

Or, you find yourself missing them.

I have a shelf of them at my house–but I’d read them all recently (it’s been a trying year . . . ).

Neville Shute writes realistic stories with heroic engineers (I have one myself) that always feature a “guy romance” theme.

Perfect for a flood watch day in Northern California!

A focused engineer (or do I repeat myself?) as hero

Trustee from the Toolroom is the story of a logical, reasonable former toolroom engineer who has a quest thrust upon him.

(By a naval officer, no less. How can it be any better than that?)

Our hero Keith Stewart has retired from his job engineering devices for a toolroom and instead makes tiny machines and writes about them for a magazine, Miniature Mechanics.

He’s a thoughtful pudgy man living an orderly life with his gentle wife, a part-time clerk in a linen shop in a low-income part of London circa 1955.

It takes place in the years following WWII when foreign currency restrictions were tight in England.

After being forced to retire early from the Royal Navy, Keith’s brother-in-law asks him to help with a project.

He needs a copper box cemented into the hull of his sail boat– the involuntarily retired Commander and his wife (Keith’s sister) plan to sail to Vancouver Island.

They want to start a new life for themselves and their ten year-old daughter.

Keith helps out, keeps his mouth shut and with his wife takes care of their niece while the retired Navy couple sail away on the ship.

They’ll make arrangements for the daughter to join them in Canada, once they’re settled.

The dilemma

The story’s crisis is, they don’t make it to Canada.

Caught in a hurricane, the sailboat scuttles on an isolated reef in the South Pacific and the couple perish.

When their lawyer calls Keith with the news, he asks what happened to their assets?

The bank reports they cleaned out their accounts before they left.

It’s a felony to take that amount of cash out of the country.

And by the way, does Keith know what happened to the £25,000 in diamonds the Commander purchased a few months before?

The satisfaction

I’m not spoiling this wonderful story for readers who haven’t read it yet!

Only to say that it’s the tale of a humble man who doesn’t realize his perceived weaknesses are his greatest strengths.

How does Keith get to an isolated island in the South Pacific and back to England with his duties performed?

His adventures–from simply getting a passport and methodically thinking (like a good engineer) what to do are fun and surprising.

I know his type of character well.

In the end, it’s a Neville Shute story, reality plays a role but the reader comes away thankful an engineer was made trustee for an orphaned niece–and could be counted on to do the right thing.

Trustee from the Toolroom made a perfect comfort novel–for both an ailing woman and a retired Naval engineer (whose ancient catamaran has never been in the ocean) on a rainy weekend.

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An engineer’s comfort novel by Neville Shute. Click to Tweet

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A fine old novel to read on a rainy day. Click to Tweet