Trustee From the Toolroom

 

by Nevil Shute (read by Frank Muller)

an annual re-read

 

You don't have to be rich and ambitious to be happy or successful in life

Nevil Shute was the last author that I added to my annual re-read list. I had read Shute many, many years ago and remembered that I had liked what I had read. I can't remember how it was that I got back into reading his books on audio. Maybe it was a sale pile. Maybe it was a day when I was looking for something different to read and Shute's name came to mind. In any case, this was the first Shute on audio that I added to my library -- and it has become my favorite. It was his last book and it was published posthumously.

Keith Stewart is a quiet, unassuming man living a quiet life with his wife in the shabby suburb of Ealing. He writes a column in a hobby magazine, The Miniature Mechanic, giving step by step instructions to hobbyists around the world for how to build miniature mechanical marvels in their home workshops. He is content with life and asks for nothing more. When his sister and her husband die at sea, the Stewarts become guardian of their 10 year old daughter and trustee of her estate. It falls on Stewart's shoulders to go halfway around the world to retrieve the legacy, which was on the yacht when it went down on a coral reef off an uninhabited Pacific island.

Trustee From the Toolroom is mostly about how the less than worldly-wise Keith Stewart, manages to get from London to Tahiti and back and the people he meets along the way.

Five stars. Read this book and have your faith in humanity restored.