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tashahassan's review
2.0
This book boasts that it's the 'finest English novel about the Great War.'
Unfortunately, it's almost entirely full of affairs and people mooning over their loves.
It hardly talks about the war, and it switches POV to random people. It goes forward in time without telling you, which is so confusing.
I gave this an extra star for the scenes with Christopher and Valentine when they were together. They were the only characters who I could follow along in conversation with.
Unfortunately, it's almost entirely full of affairs and people mooning over their loves.
It hardly talks about the war, and it switches POV to random people. It goes forward in time without telling you, which is so confusing.
I gave this an extra star for the scenes with Christopher and Valentine when they were together. They were the only characters who I could follow along in conversation with.
line_so_fine's review against another edition
4.0
This is a book written for my inner old man (there is a part of my reading taste that is 80 years old) so if you have that part of you you will like this, I think. It's set during World War I in England, and there are class divides and political upheavals and some romance too, although it's not romantic. Think of it like Downton Abbey but less soap opera-ish and with lots more long-winded discussions of Tories and the disintegration of moral codes and the like. It's going to be made into an HBO/BBC tv series soon, so if you don't want 7.4 million pages, wait for that.
gh7's review against another edition
2.0
I was expecting a masterpiece; what I got was a neurotic obese windbag of a novel. VS Pritchett, always an astute critic, remarked that confusion was always Ford’s mainspring as a novelist. This novel is so hysterically confused it reads like a diary of someone chronicling his own nervous breakdown. At one point in the novel a character forms the thought that her companion is still droning on with an idea she thought they had got past. I can’t say how many times I thought this same idea while reading this novel.
I had already seen the BBC production of this before reading it and the first thing that needs to be said is what a fabulous job Tom Stoppard did in editing and extracting every last drop of what’s good in this book and weeding out all the prodigious irritating excesses, including the entire last section.
An obvious example of Stoppard’s masterful alchemy is how he hones down exchanges between characters which in the novel usually drag on for pages and pages into a handful of critical lines. Another example is how much more sympathetic he is to the character of Sylvia than Ford was. When Tolstoy began Anna Karenina he disapproved of the adulterous woman and set himself the task of dramatizing this disapproval of his. Had he continued with this irksome puritanical stance he deployed in The Kreutzer Sonata it’s likely Anna Karenina would have been a dud as a novel. However, Tolstoy came to love Anna and it was the empathy he felt with her that contributed massively to the novel being a masterpiece. Ford Maddox Ford begins with a similar premise – except he doesn’t fall in love with his adulterous woman. He, like his hero, remains a puritan throughout the novel. She’s the villain, the harbinger of everything Ford doesn’t like about the new world (dis)order. At times it’s as if Ford is blaming the promiscuity of restless women for the insane mess the world has become. Not even Stoppard could alchemize this facet of the novel which is why the last two episodes of the TV adaptation fell flat for me. In the novel we’re called upon to boo Sylvia every time she enters the stage and cheer the docile schoolgirl male-honouring suffragette who is her rival for Christopher’s affections. The less said about the suffragette the better. Graham Greene refers to Sylvia as “surely the most possessed evil character in the modern novel”. What a load of hogwash that statement is! Sylvia betrays a husband who shows no interest in her, a husband who is emotionally retarded. Ford’s determination to make me dislike Sylvia had the subtlety of a right-wing newspaper maligning the leader of a left-wing political party in every single editorial. Somehow and brilliantly, Stoppard alchemized Sylvia into the most credible and admirable character in the book though I’m not sure Ford would have approved of this outcome.
Ford’s ostensibly grandiose vision of Britain at the time of the first world war contains much that has become rather hackneyed. And a lot of his notions have turned out to be untrue. It wasn’t really the end of the old social order. He pokes lots of fun at the ruling classes. There’s a lot of schoolboy humour in this novel – and maybe how much you enjoy it will depend to some extent on how prone you are to giggling. Like Waugh at the end of Brideshead he seems to romantically and nostalgically lament the decline of the feudal world of the 18th century. But like Waugh he got it wrong. That world wasn’t vanishing into the mists of time. Just take a look at the members of the Tory party who were responsible for the referendum. Same old old boys club.
However, Ford does throw something more interesting into the mix – and this is his obsession with frustrated sexual feeling. Every character in this novel is sexually neurotic. It’s like Ford had just read Freud and believed obsessively but without much clarity that he was on to something. Unfortunately to a large extent Ford comes across as a latter-day Oliver Cromwell in this regard. No coincidence Sylvia is a Catholic. I didn’t understand what he was getting at with his sex obsession but at least it was interesting.
Julian Barnes praises the structure of this book and it’s true this is its most interesting element – the surface of gossip, lies and misunderstandings which defines the social order at the expense of truth. But his declaration that “Few novelists have better understood and conveyed the overworkings of the hysterical brain, the underworkings of the damaged brain (after his first spell at the front, Tietjens returns with partial memory loss), the slippings and slidings of the mind at the end of its tether, with all its breakings-in and breakings-off” is sheer hyperbole for me. Ford dramatizes a confused mind by resorting to endless spatterings of ellipses on every page, a crude, almost schoolboyish technique for creating the interruption of mental processes. (It’s worth remembering this was written long after both Mrs Dalloway and The Waves, in neither of which does Woolf resort to cheap ellipses to show a mind in turmoil.)
At the end of the day I’d say there are about a hundred pages of this novel worth reading; that leaves 800…Five stars though for Tom Stoppard who for me has proved himself to be a superior artist to Ford Maddox Ford. And perhaps Greene and Barnes’ elevated evaluation of this novel have helped explain to me why I’ve never been able to get excited by either of them as novelists.
I had already seen the BBC production of this before reading it and the first thing that needs to be said is what a fabulous job Tom Stoppard did in editing and extracting every last drop of what’s good in this book and weeding out all the prodigious irritating excesses, including the entire last section.
An obvious example of Stoppard’s masterful alchemy is how he hones down exchanges between characters which in the novel usually drag on for pages and pages into a handful of critical lines. Another example is how much more sympathetic he is to the character of Sylvia than Ford was. When Tolstoy began Anna Karenina he disapproved of the adulterous woman and set himself the task of dramatizing this disapproval of his. Had he continued with this irksome puritanical stance he deployed in The Kreutzer Sonata it’s likely Anna Karenina would have been a dud as a novel. However, Tolstoy came to love Anna and it was the empathy he felt with her that contributed massively to the novel being a masterpiece. Ford Maddox Ford begins with a similar premise – except he doesn’t fall in love with his adulterous woman. He, like his hero, remains a puritan throughout the novel. She’s the villain, the harbinger of everything Ford doesn’t like about the new world (dis)order. At times it’s as if Ford is blaming the promiscuity of restless women for the insane mess the world has become. Not even Stoppard could alchemize this facet of the novel which is why the last two episodes of the TV adaptation fell flat for me. In the novel we’re called upon to boo Sylvia every time she enters the stage and cheer the docile schoolgirl male-honouring suffragette who is her rival for Christopher’s affections. The less said about the suffragette the better. Graham Greene refers to Sylvia as “surely the most possessed evil character in the modern novel”. What a load of hogwash that statement is! Sylvia betrays a husband who shows no interest in her, a husband who is emotionally retarded. Ford’s determination to make me dislike Sylvia had the subtlety of a right-wing newspaper maligning the leader of a left-wing political party in every single editorial. Somehow and brilliantly, Stoppard alchemized Sylvia into the most credible and admirable character in the book though I’m not sure Ford would have approved of this outcome.
Ford’s ostensibly grandiose vision of Britain at the time of the first world war contains much that has become rather hackneyed. And a lot of his notions have turned out to be untrue. It wasn’t really the end of the old social order. He pokes lots of fun at the ruling classes. There’s a lot of schoolboy humour in this novel – and maybe how much you enjoy it will depend to some extent on how prone you are to giggling. Like Waugh at the end of Brideshead he seems to romantically and nostalgically lament the decline of the feudal world of the 18th century. But like Waugh he got it wrong. That world wasn’t vanishing into the mists of time. Just take a look at the members of the Tory party who were responsible for the referendum. Same old old boys club.
However, Ford does throw something more interesting into the mix – and this is his obsession with frustrated sexual feeling. Every character in this novel is sexually neurotic. It’s like Ford had just read Freud and believed obsessively but without much clarity that he was on to something. Unfortunately to a large extent Ford comes across as a latter-day Oliver Cromwell in this regard. No coincidence Sylvia is a Catholic. I didn’t understand what he was getting at with his sex obsession but at least it was interesting.
Julian Barnes praises the structure of this book and it’s true this is its most interesting element – the surface of gossip, lies and misunderstandings which defines the social order at the expense of truth. But his declaration that “Few novelists have better understood and conveyed the overworkings of the hysterical brain, the underworkings of the damaged brain (after his first spell at the front, Tietjens returns with partial memory loss), the slippings and slidings of the mind at the end of its tether, with all its breakings-in and breakings-off” is sheer hyperbole for me. Ford dramatizes a confused mind by resorting to endless spatterings of ellipses on every page, a crude, almost schoolboyish technique for creating the interruption of mental processes. (It’s worth remembering this was written long after both Mrs Dalloway and The Waves, in neither of which does Woolf resort to cheap ellipses to show a mind in turmoil.)
At the end of the day I’d say there are about a hundred pages of this novel worth reading; that leaves 800…Five stars though for Tom Stoppard who for me has proved himself to be a superior artist to Ford Maddox Ford. And perhaps Greene and Barnes’ elevated evaluation of this novel have helped explain to me why I’ve never been able to get excited by either of them as novelists.
chemicalinsomnia's review against another edition
4.0
En realidad le daría un 3,5. Empecé a leer este libro (en realidad cuatro libros en uno) porque después de ver la serie leí que la novela tenía buenas críticas y,como había comprobado, la historia era bastante interesante. De paso podía rellenar algunos huecos que la miniserie pudiera tener. Pero no, resulta que los fallos de la serie son los mismos que en el libro. No voy a negar que me he enganchado,leer mil páginas en una semana no es algo muy común en mi, aunque haya habido momentos del libro aburridos que se me hacían cuesta arriba (sobre todo partes del segundo y tercer libro relacionadas con la guerra).
Este libro sigue el método de corriente de pensamiento (no muy de mi gusto)que en ocasiones hace que la lectura se haga algo pesada. Debido a esta forma de escribir a veces me llevaban a sucesos del pasado o futuro que me dejaban algo desorientada. Empieza bien pero va decayendo poco a poco, excepto en algunos momentos cumbre de la trama, por así decirlo. El cuarto podría haber sido un epílogo y no se habría perdido nada demasiado importante al no relacionarse prácticamente con la tónica del resto.
Además, se nota que está escrito sobre todo para británicos porque (al menos en mi caso) aparecen muchas siglas militares británicas y la base de esta historia se basa, sobre todo, en la cultura y costumbres de la época en Inglaterra. Eso ha hecho que no entienda algunas formas de actuar o se me haya hecho lioso en ocasiones al no conocer prácticamente nada de la sociedad británica de principios del siglo XX.
Este libro sigue el método de corriente de pensamiento (no muy de mi gusto)que en ocasiones hace que la lectura se haga algo pesada. Debido a esta forma de escribir a veces me llevaban a sucesos del pasado o futuro que me dejaban algo desorientada. Empieza bien pero va decayendo poco a poco, excepto en algunos momentos cumbre de la trama, por así decirlo. El cuarto podría haber sido un epílogo y no se habría perdido nada demasiado importante al no relacionarse prácticamente con la tónica del resto.
Además, se nota que está escrito sobre todo para británicos porque (al menos en mi caso) aparecen muchas siglas militares británicas y la base de esta historia se basa, sobre todo, en la cultura y costumbres de la época en Inglaterra. Eso ha hecho que no entienda algunas formas de actuar o se me haya hecho lioso en ocasiones al no conocer prácticamente nada de la sociedad británica de principios del siglo XX.
manwithanagenda's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Five months...a little misleading since with the exception of the 'No More Parades', which took me ages to get into, and then afterwards took a big fat pause for three to four months (all of that waiting, waiting waiting), 'Parade's End' was a smooth read for such a dense novel.
Through the pompously upright Christopher Tietjens, his, uh, complicated wife Sylvia, suffragette Valentine Wannop and many other characters, 'Parade's End' covers the Great War. The causes, the battles and the rest of what one would expect from a war novel take a backseat to the preoccupations of the characters. It's not unusual to find Tietjens debating whether or not to send a letter to a woman he almost asked to sleep with while bombs whistle in.
Madox's prose is a marvel. Full of dry humor and cringey scenes on top of the drama of Society Crumbling. He also illustrates how people got on, which is harder to do. Sure, I haven't read any since senior English in high school, but I can't remember even Joyce getting stream-of-conciousness so exact. Especially with Sylvia. You find yourself counting the minutes with her in a hotel parlor. The problem is that I found myself picking apart the writing to see how he pulled off an effect rather than enjoying it. A second go-around might fix that problem, but for now its a glad-I-read-it, nothing else.
The BBC series is an unexpected bonus which I'll have to catch when it re-airs.
A quip on the individual novels:
'Some Do Not....'
'No More Parades'
'A Man Could Stand Up'
'The Last Post'
Through the pompously upright Christopher Tietjens, his, uh, complicated wife Sylvia, suffragette Valentine Wannop and many other characters, 'Parade's End' covers the Great War. The causes, the battles and the rest of what one would expect from a war novel take a backseat to the preoccupations of the characters. It's not unusual to find Tietjens debating whether or not to send a letter to a woman he almost asked to sleep with while bombs whistle in.
Madox's prose is a marvel. Full of dry humor and cringey scenes on top of the drama of Society Crumbling. He also illustrates how people got on, which is harder to do. Sure, I haven't read any since senior English in high school, but I can't remember even Joyce getting stream-of-conciousness so exact. Especially with Sylvia. You find yourself counting the minutes with her in a hotel parlor. The problem is that I found myself picking apart the writing to see how he pulled off an effect rather than enjoying it. A second go-around might fix that problem, but for now its a glad-I-read-it, nothing else.
The BBC series is an unexpected bonus which I'll have to catch when it re-airs.
A quip on the individual novels:
'Some Do Not....'
'No More Parades'
'A Man Could Stand Up'
'The Last Post'
kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review against another edition
5.0
Hard to get into but worth the effect. Absolutely moving and impressive. Wonderful. Makes you laugh, cry, draw back in horror.
leo_bean's review against another edition
I dnf'ed it. It didn't speak to me and I couldn't deal with the writing style. Perhaps I'll pick it up again some time.
dukhtar's review against another edition
5.0
thank you to bill nighy for his narration that helped me through this mammoth four-parter. i would have never finished this on my own
adjak's review against another edition
5.0
This is an absolutely wonderful set of books. Starting out, I was sure that this would be a slog due to how dense the language was, but I could not have been more wrong. After a bit, I got the hang of the language and it was a joy to read. All of the characters were infinitely interesting and I was always curious as to what could possibly happen next. There were a couple of side characters that felt a bit two dimensional, but there was a good number of characters and not all of them had enough time to be fully fleshed out so I'm more than happy to give that a pass. I thought the structure was interesting too. It's told in chronological order, but with a lot of internal monologues thinking back to previous events. And it really works for the plot. It's interesting knowing at the beginning of a chapter or section how things turn out and then figuring how it all happened later on. I'll definitely enjoy rereading these books in the future.