Books
by Ford Madox Ford
|
Parade's End: Some Do Not; No More Parades; A Man Could Stand Up; Last Post |
If it hadn't been for Tom Stoppard's TV adaptation, I doubt I would have read Ford's tetralogy. Not an easy read but seeing it in tandem on TV where events unfolded chronologically and the actors gave flesh to the characters certainly added to my enjoyment. Briefly - there are 901 pages in the Kindle edition - the narrative revolves around a love triangle between the high-principled Christopher Tietjens, his vindictive and manipulative wife Sylvia and Valentine, a young suffragette. At its heart is the blood and darkness of the Great War. The narrative meanders back and forth through time, events are revealed through memory and the sometimes unreliable perceptions of the main characters all of whom are forged and trapped in the mores of their time, Christopher by his out-dated sense of honour and his inability to express his feelings, Sylvia by the restraints of her religion at war with her feelings and desires, and Valentine by her family ties and feminist aspirations. Ford wanted his book to be a history of his time and also serve as an indictment of the powers that be who sent so many young men to their senseless deaths. In both ways he succeeded. Reader, I was hooked. And as an afterword, the Kindle was an added bonus with its built in dictionary and links to Wikipedia and the internet. Whoops, I've over-run my 75 words, but then there are four books!
(Jenny Baker - bwl 66 Autumn 2012) |
|
|
The Good Soldier |
This sad story, told by the definitive unreliable narrator, is about the differences between appearance and reality, and about human willingness to see events in a light that best suits the viewer rather than as they really are. Perhaps the author is also saying that the protagonist is not merely representative of a particular character type or social class, but of Europe itself: decadent, complacent and oblivious to impending catastrophe? I loved it!
(Denise Lewis - bwl 67 Winter 2013) |
|
|
|
