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A review by readingoverbreathing
A Modern Comedy by John Galsworthy
4.0
"The world was full of wonderful secrets which everybody kept to themselves without captions or close-ups to give them away!"
If I'm being honest, there was very little that I remembered about [b:the first volume|103159|The Forsyte Saga (The Forsyte Chronicles, #1-3)|John Galsworthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388286090l/103159._SY75_.jpg|842726] of The Forsythe Chronicles before diving into this next one. And because of that, I really dragged my feet through the first part or so, trying to reconnect with these characters and recall the events of the previous book.
But while it did take me some time to ease back into this world, once I did, there was really no stopping me. This book is massive, but once I got going, it never felt like that. Galsworthy keeps his chapters short, which really lulls you along into one after the other until suddenly you've reached the end of another part.
I'm usually not huge on books with a lot of different character perspectives, but Galsworthy really makes each and every shift count, allowing you to get each's point of view, but often without truly knowing what everyone is thinking, a difficult-to-strike balance which Galsworthy executes flawlessly.
I loved that each part had its own rise and fall in the narrative structure while still maintaining a sense of continuity across all three. It's not easy to weave so many characters and their lives throughout such a big book, nevertheless the other two volumes, but Galsworthy just does it so well.
The last thing I'll really express here is my love for Soames. He is the one character that really stood out in my mind from Volume One, perhaps because he is Galsworthy's protagonist in a way. But I truly think he is one of the most complex characters I've ever read — grumpy and conservative, certainly opinionated and set in his ways, yet you almost become rather fond of him the more you read of him. I think that's perhaps why
Spoiler
the ending really got to me here, in a way that an ending hasn't for quite some time. The suddenness and the drama of the house fire, combined with his determination to save his paintings, then what seemed like his ultimate safety, followed by a shocking accident where he saves the one thing he loved most in the world — his daughter Fleur.So, all in all, while I found this rather slow and a bit drudgy to begin with, I really did get into it and will absolutely be seeing this series all the way through [b:the third volume|1339223|The Forsyte Saga Volume Three Maid in waiting / Flowering wilderness / Over the river (The Forsyte Chronicles, #7-9)|John Galsworthy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348595598l/1339223._SY75_.jpg|19247230].