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I first read Pied Piper a long time ago, possibly as a child, possibly even, as a class reading book at school. Shute’s writing is straightforward, using everyday words and easy to follow sentences and Pied Piper is a Second World War story.  Suitable Second World War stories were popular classroom material back when I was a child. It was considered important that we know.

 

Two things prompted me to revisit this book set in France at the time of the German invasion in May 1940. One was a conversation I had about a recently published book set at the same time. The other was a Face Book group discussing Shute’s work. I discovered he is still much loved by my generation but less well known by my children’s, which is a shame because his evocation of those days in May 1940 is head and shoulders above the modern book, whose name I won’t mention.

 

Pied Piper was published in 1942. The story is purely imaginary and something of a fairy tale (a nice one, not a Brothers Grimm horror story) but the setting is as realistic as imagination applied to the news of the day could possibly make a setting.

 

The narrative is framed by the conversation of two men sitting out a bombing riad in their London club. One of them, a frail elderly gentleman, called John Sidney Howard, has a story to tell.

 

The story never refers to John Sidney Howard again after the opening line. He is always Howard, or Mr. Howard or ‘the old man’. This is Shute’s style. He distances the reader from the adults on the Pied-Piper-like journey that Howard takes right across France from the Jura near the Swiss border to the coast in Brittany. The children that Howard acquires on his journey are always called by their given names. Combined with the simple English Shute uses this creates a contrast between how an adult sees the war and how the children do and points up the immediacy of the scenes.

 

When the Germans invade Norway, then Holland and Belgium, Howard is in the Jura, fishing in mountain streams. He is not paying attention to the news. He is desperately trying to cope with the death of his son, an RAF pilot. But the news catches up with him and he decides he must return to England while he still can. At that point he acquires two children. Their parents are English, the father working for the League of Nations in Switzerland. The adults feel they should stay. Will Howard take the children back to England with him?

 

Now you might question the believability of this plot. What mother would send her children away with a holiday acquaintance rather than go with them herself? There are several ways that feeling is countered. Within the narrative: Howard thinks it odd himself. In terms of the historical setting: war brings out strange responses in people. Given the whole fairy tale ethos of the story: it’s what has to happen. Howard is the modern Pied Piper driven by forces beyond rationality and self-preservation and offering something magical to those who come into contact with him. That magic is never defined but by the end of the book it is clear that it has drained Howard, as if all his strength passed to the children who continue on their fairy-tale way to a promised land far from their parents.

Scenes from Pied Piper stuck with me through all the years since I first read it. I knew exactly what was happening as I read it this time. Only a few events and characters had disappeared from my memory.

 

Here is some of the scene on a French road that led to my conversation about how well Shute creates feeling while also drawing the picture for the reader.

 

The bus they are traveling on has broken down and Howard has taken the children a little way away from it to eat their lunch on the grass. Three planes appear.

 

‘There was no time to do anything, to go anywhere, nor was there anywhere to go. Howard caught Shelia and Ronnie and pulled them close to him, flat upon the ground. He shouted to Rose to lie down, quickly.

   Then the machines were on them, low-winged, single engine monoplanes with curious bent wings, dark green in colour. A burst of fire was poured into the bus from the machines to right and left; a stream of tracer-bullets shot forward up the road from the centre aircraft. A few bullets lickered straight over Howard and his children on the grass and spattered the ground a few yards behind them.

   For a moment Howard saw the gunner in the rear cockpit as he fired at them. He was a young man, not more than twenty, with a keen, tanned face. He wore a yellow students’ corps cap, and he was laughing as he fired.

   Then the two flanking aircraft had passed, and the centre one was very near. Looking up, the old man could see the bombs in their racks beneath the wing; he watched in agony for them to fall. They did not fall. The machine passed them by, not a hundred feet away. He watched it as it went, sick with relief. He saw the bombs leave the machine three hundred yards up the road, and watched dumbly as the debris flew upwards. He saw the wheel of a cart go sailing through the air, to land in the field.

   Then that graceful, weaving dance began again, the machine in rear changing places with the one on the left. They vanished in the distance; presently Howard heard the thunder of another load of bombs on the road.

   He released the children, and sat up upon the grass. Ronnie was flushed and excited. “Weren’t they close!” he said. “I did see them well. Did you see them well, Shelia? Did you hear them firing the guns?”

   He was ecstatically pleased. Shelia was quite unaffected. She said, “May I have some orange?”’

Pied Piper by Nevil Shute

 

I first read Pied Piper a long time ago, possibly as a child, possibly even, as a class reading book at school. Shute’s writing is straightforward, using everyday words and easy to follow sentences and Pied Piper is a Second World War story.  Suitable Second World War stories were popular classroom material back when I was a child. It was considered important that we know.

 

Two things prompted me to revisit this book set in France at the time of the German invasion in May 1940. One was a conversation I had about a recently published book set at the same time. The other was a Face Book group discussing Shute’s work. I discovered he is still much loved by my generation but less well known by my children’s, which is a shame because his evocation of those days in May 1940 is head and shoulders above the modern book, whose name I won’t mention.

 

Pied Piper was published in 1942. The story is purely imaginary and something of a fairy tale (a nice one, not a Brothers Grimm horror story) but the setting is as realistic as imagination applied to the news of the day could possibly make a setting.

 

The narrative is framed by the conversation of two men sitting out a bombing riad in their London club. One of them, a frail elderly gentleman, called John Sidney Howard, has a story to tell.

 

The story never refers to John Sidney Howard again after the opening line. He is always Howard, or Mr. Howard or ‘the old man’. This is Shute’s style. He distances the reader from the adults on the Pied-Piper-like journey that Howard takes right across France from the Jura near the Swiss border to the coast in Brittany. The children that Howard acquires on his journey are always called by their given names. Combined with the simple English Shute uses this creates a contrast between how an adult sees the war and how the children do and points up the immediacy of the scenes.

 

When the Germans invade Norway, then Holland and Belgium, Howard is in the Jura, fishing in mountain streams. He is not paying attention to the news. He is desperately trying to cope with the death of his son, an RAF pilot. But the news catches up with him and he decides he must return to England while he still can. At that point he acquires two children. Their parents are English, the father working for the League of Nations in Switzerland. The adults feel they should stay. Will Howard take the children back to England with him?

 

Now you might question the believability of this plot. What mother would send her children away with a holiday acquaintance rather than go with them herself? There are several ways that feeling is countered. Within the narrative: Howard thinks it odd himself. In terms of the historical setting: war brings out strange responses in people. Given the whole fairy tale ethos of the story: it’s what has to happen. Howard is the modern Pied Piper driven by forces beyond rationality and self-preservation and offering something magical to those who come into contact with him. That magic is never defined but by the end of the book it is clear that it has drained Howard, as if all his strength passed to the children who continue on their fairy-tale way to a promised land far from their parents.

Scenes from Pied Piper stuck with me through all the years since I first read it. I knew exactly what was happening as I read it this time. Only a few events and characters had disappeared from my memory.

 

Here is some of the scene on a French road that led to my conversation about how well Shute creates feeling while also drawing the picture for the reader.

 

The bus they are traveling on has broken down and Howard has taken the children a little way away from it to eat their lunch on the grass. Three planes appear.

 

‘There was no time to do anything, to go anywhere, nor was there anywhere to go. Howard caught Shelia and Ronnie and pulled them close to him, flat upon the ground. He shouted to Rose to lie down, quickly.

   Then the machines were on them, low-winged, single engine monoplanes with curious bent wings, dark green in colour. A burst of fire was poured into the bus from the machines to right and left; a stream of tracer-bullets shot forward up the road from the centre aircraft. A few bullets lickered straight over Howard and his children on the grass and spattered the ground a few yards behind them.

   For a moment Howard saw the gunner in the rear cockpit as he fired at them. He was a young man, not more than twenty, with a keen, tanned face. He wore a yellow students’ corps cap, and he was laughing as he fired.

   Then the two flanking aircraft had passed, and the centre one was very near. Looking up, the old man could see the bombs in their racks beneath the wing; he watched in agony for them to fall. They did not fall. The machine passed them by, not a hundred feet away. He watched it as it went, sick with relief. He saw the bombs leave the machine three hundred yards up the road, and watched dumbly as the debris flew upwards. He saw the wheel of a cart go sailing through the air, to land in the field.

   Then that graceful, weaving dance began again, the machine in rear changing places with the one on the left. They vanished in the distance; presently Howard heard the thunder of another load of bombs on the road.

   He released the children, and sat up upon the grass. Ronnie was flushed and excited. “Weren’t they close!” he said. “I did see them well. Did you see them well, Shelia? Did you hear them firing the guns?”

   He was ecstatically pleased. Shelia was quite unaffected. She said, “May I have some orange?”’

 

If you want a book you will pick up and read in a day because you have to know what happens next, or you want to revisit a story you know form year past, Pied Piper is for you.