Word: sisterly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Sometime in 1944 a half-dead marine in a rubber raft washed ashore on a beautiful South Pacific island inhabited by a beautiful nun. Mr. Allison and Sister Angela spend most of their time alone on the island learning how incompatible their words are, but what a wholesome friendship two brave souls in danger can discover...
...religion, philosophy, and views on life he sums up succinctly: "I'm a Marine." His unshaven stubble, unerring faith in the crops and himself as a Marine, and his heart of gold which sometimes peeps furtively from beneath his unpolished exterior satisfy the role's needs. He must defend Sister Angela, who is all gold, but afraid, and wishing her faith were as solid as Mr. Allison's simple strength...
Robert Mitchum and Deborah Kerr in virtually the only two roles give very competent performances; this is a particular accomplishment for Mitchum. His Mr. Allison is a "big dumb guy," whose blunt confidence in his powers is tempered by unexpected flashes of real insight. Deborah Kerr plays Sister Anglea with naivete and a brouge, but without cruelty. Both could have been unmerciful satires of arch-type young nuns and dirty Marines; but Houston has made them happily sympathetic figures, and not pressed indelicate comparison...
...plot is fanciful, and half-believable, with one glaring exception; Sister Angela laments having to eat raw fish, and then gets sick eating it, but repeatedly prays before lit votary candles, somehow missing the potentiality of the flame before...
...relentlessly robust novel in a little-known genre-the Australian western. Author Ronan's sunburnt bloody stockman is a dwarfish near-albino of repulsive appearance and character, named Tony Yates. His father, an ex-convict, used to beat his gin-sodden mother with his wooden leg; a sister was active in a sort of open-air bordello, and Tony himself was sold to a cattle thief at twelve. At this stage the reader who suspects that the novel is a subversive Australian attempt to prove that its "West" is, if not as wild, at least a great deal woollier...