Scan barcode
A review by oldenglishrose
Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford
4.0
There are no two ways about it, Parade's End is a truly spectacular book. It isn't always easy to read, enjoyable, interesting or even intelligible, but none of these things diminish quite how great an achievement this quartet of novels by Ford Maddox Ford is.
Parade's End is the story of the rapic change in attitudes covering the pre-War period, the First World War and its aftermath from the perspective of the British upper and upper middle classes. It does this not only through the plot, but through the writing itself, and this is what I found so unusual and so brilliant.
The books are written in a style somewhere in between stream of consciousness and regular narrative. There is no time when the reader is not inside someone's head, although the book is always in third person. Characters lose their train of thought and start contemplating something else; they reminisce on events that their thoughts remind them of; they digress for pages and pages before coming back to their initial starting point. It can be tedious, it can be baffling and it can seem pointless, but it is never anything less than a perfect mimesis of how people think expanded into words. Sometimes I find that effects like this can make me feel distant from the book, but I was surprised at how much I cared for some of the characters and how deeply I loathed others.
I started Parade's End back when the new BBC adaptation of it was shown on television last year. Someone at work asked me if I were going to watch it then, when I said I would wait and read the book first, replied with 'Ooh, it's a bit hard though'. Never able to resist a challenge, I went out a bought myself a copy only to discover that she was absolutely right: Parade's End is indeed 'a bit hard' to say the least. I'm also not sure how on earth they made a television drama out of this, because it's a book which focuses on interiority and thoughtfulness rather than action, but I'm looking forward to finding out. It will never be a favourite book of mine, but it was definitely worth the time and effort.
Parade's End is the story of the rapic change in attitudes covering the pre-War period, the First World War and its aftermath from the perspective of the British upper and upper middle classes. It does this not only through the plot, but through the writing itself, and this is what I found so unusual and so brilliant.
The books are written in a style somewhere in between stream of consciousness and regular narrative. There is no time when the reader is not inside someone's head, although the book is always in third person. Characters lose their train of thought and start contemplating something else; they reminisce on events that their thoughts remind them of; they digress for pages and pages before coming back to their initial starting point. It can be tedious, it can be baffling and it can seem pointless, but it is never anything less than a perfect mimesis of how people think expanded into words. Sometimes I find that effects like this can make me feel distant from the book, but I was surprised at how much I cared for some of the characters and how deeply I loathed others.
I started Parade's End back when the new BBC adaptation of it was shown on television last year. Someone at work asked me if I were going to watch it then, when I said I would wait and read the book first, replied with 'Ooh, it's a bit hard though'. Never able to resist a challenge, I went out a bought myself a copy only to discover that she was absolutely right: Parade's End is indeed 'a bit hard' to say the least. I'm also not sure how on earth they made a television drama out of this, because it's a book which focuses on interiority and thoughtfulness rather than action, but I'm looking forward to finding out. It will never be a favourite book of mine, but it was definitely worth the time and effort.