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Title: The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Oxford World's Classics) by Ford Madox Ford, Thomas C. Moser ISBN: 0-19-283620-X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: May, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.28 (43 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: It truly is one of the saddest stories ever told
Comment: I was in a bookstore and picked a copy of this novel up, and from the second I read what I later learned was a famous first sentence (and justifiably so)--"This is the saddest story I have ever heard"--I knew I had to read it. What is truly sad about the book is that the narrator has no conception of where the tragedy in the book lies. While he is articulate and seemingly insightful in his analysis of others, he remains blissfully unaware of his own enormously failings, both in morals and in character. It is indeed a very sad story, but the narrator leaves out the fact that he is quite possibly one of the most pathetic characters in all fiction.
If one prefers one's narrators and ostensible heroes to be truly heroic and sympathetic, then this novel will not please. If one, however, can imagine enjoying a novel written with J. Alfred Prufrock as the narrator and central character, then one is in a position to appreciate THE GOOD SOLDIER.
The novel is not a page-turner. If you read this novel quickly, you have read it wrongly. The beauty of the book is the exquisite prose, and should be read slowly, savoring each sentence and each sentiment. There is a dreamlike (one could say nightmarish) quality to the book, and one will most enjoy it by allowing oneself to become entranced by the atmospheres summoned up.
If you are willing to take the novel on its own terms, with its unheroic and unadmirable characters, with its pathetic elements and situations, and its subtle psychological observations, then there will be few reading experiences that will match THE GOOD SOLDIER. One of the most remarkable novels of the past century. But if you only like novels where there is a definite hero and admirable characters, you probably wouldn't enjoy this very much.
Rating: 5
Summary: Breaking with his times
Comment: This is a great novel, and I'm sad that I had not read it sooner. Ford shows his strange position in the history of literature: this novel has traces of Henry James and Joe Conrad (both who tutored Ford) but also has an innovative narration that makes it seem very modern and readable. It also has a tragic, haunting story powering the interesting style. It's a good read, and makes us wish Ford was known for more than inspiring and helping later writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Many reviewers find fault with the narrator, but I can't see how anyone can but help but feel sorry for this poor man. His tale is indeed worth hearing.
Rating: 5
Summary: achingly beautiful
Comment: The Good Soldier is woefully underread, and it fully deserves its somewhat belatedly-restored status as a true classic of 20th c. English literature. Ford Madox Ford, a friend and collaborator of Joseph Conrad, lays out a deceptively simple, almost trite, plot, one which we first think we've heard a dozen times before. But the beauty of this book is in the telling. Ford's narrator is piecing together the events of the past decade as he tells the story, and as such he jumps back and forth over the course of the last ten years, offering glimpses of events yet to come, going back and re-telling accounts of events he's already shared (though always with a new twist and revelation). In essence, the narrator is "learning" the story along with the reader, and he never (if ever) truly "understands" what's happened till the very end. Ford shatters forever the old 19th c. English novel where good and evil are absolute polar opposites, where characters unfailingly embrace either one or the other pole, where decency and "good" almost always prevail in the end, and where characters are immediately transparent (take Dickens, for example: a paragraph or two and you know all you need to know about each and every character he introduces; whether they're "good" or "bad," etc.) Ford uses the genre of the novel to create a work of literature where art mirrors real life. His characters are never what they seem at first meeting, events are fraught with deep hidden meanings that bubble beneath the surface, and there are three sides to every story. Beautifully written with moments of sparkling wit and levity, it is also an emotionally draining work that tackles love (versus what simply goes by the name) and propriety (versus what society says is proper). You'll want to flip back to the first chapter and re-read it from page one, knowing then what you know by book's end. A true masterpiece which I cannot recommend highly enough. This particular edition from Everymans Library is particularly handsome and well-bound, with insightful introductory essays by thoughtful critics (which, needless to say, should be read after the novel itself).
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Title: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy ISBN: 0060569662 Publisher: HarperCollins Pub. Date: 18 March, 2003 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann ISBN: 0679772871 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov ISBN: 0679723161 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 March, 1989 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Niagara Falls All Over Again by Elizabeth McCracken ISBN: 0385336489 Publisher: Delta Pub. Date: 26 November, 2002 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: A Passage to India by E. M. Forster ISBN: 0156711427 Publisher: Harvest Books Pub. Date: December, 1984 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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