The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Penguin Classics)
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Product Description
Sara Haslam, Open University
"It is excellent to see a Broadview edition of this seminal modernist work."
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
With an Introduction by Sara Haslam. The Good Soldier is a masterpiece of twentieth-century fiction, an inspiration for many later, distinguished writers, including Graham Greene. Set before the First World War, it tells the tale of two wealthy and sophisticated couples, one English, one American, as they travel, socialise, and take the waters in the spa towns of Europe. They are playing the game in style. That game has begun to unravel, however, and with compelling attention to the comic, as well as the tragic, results the American narrator reveals his growing awareness of the sexual intrigues and emotional betrayals that lie behind its façade.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clever-clever plotting, smooth writing, emotional wrench - a compulsive read.,
This review is from: The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)
This is a real page-turner with great storytelling and wonderful writing. It's an apparently simple story of a cuckolded husband but Maddox Ford tells and retells the same events from the point of view of each participant so that the reader's understandings and sympathies are constantly shifting as he begins to comprehend the complexities and motivations of those involved. Characters we thought we liked at the start become obnoxious and those we loathed are redeemed. It's clever not only because the ground constantly shifts under the reader's feet but also by the way the story is told - getting one of the characters to explain all the others. This has two effects, first, by avoiding the God narrator it legitimizes the fact that the reader doesn't understand everything at once, and secondly it makes the whole affair much more intimate and personal because these events are happening to the narrator who is our friend.The story concerns two upper middle class couples who meet at a German spa at the turn of the 19th century and become good friends over many years. As the story unfolds it becomes clear that beneath their simple outings and picnics, sexual and emotional plate tectonics are at work. More and more is slowly revealed of what has been going on and the final pages are tragic and grim. Much is made in literary circles of the fact that the narrator is unreliable and frequently contradicts himself or is plain wrong. This is a very neat device that covers up the fact that somehow the narrator has gotten to understand what everyone else in the story was thinking or feeling. His unreliability is really chaff to cover up this unlikely situation. Nonetheless it is well done and makes the tone and structure of the book enjoyable and unusual. In particular the narrator constantly time shifts the story backwards and forwards and fails to tell the reader some facts about events until later so that they appear mysterious and only later can be pieced together. If you enjoy detective fiction you should enjoy this. At heart this is a desperate story of a group of people who set off in life and make a mess of it. Some are naïve, some manipulative, some loving, some hard-nosed, some living a full life and some just passing through. Which is which and who is whom the reader cannot understand until the end and the slow reveal is delightful, sad and horrific.
30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Simple greatness,
By Lovborg (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion (Penguin Modern Classics) (Paperback)
This deceptively simple, heart-breaking story will change the way you think about novels, writing and the canon of English literature. It is a masterpiece of the first order: simply told by a narrator who frequently doubts his ability to tell his own story it is a study of sadness and loss that is as near to "The Great Gatsby" as anything written in this country. It should not be missed under any circumstances: the reward of reading it is enormous.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read it at least once a year,
By b00le (Roma, Italy) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Good Soldier (Wordsworth Classics) (Paperback)
This is one of the best novels of the last century, one of those small but immaculate masterpieces to stand beside "Heart of Darkness" and "The Great Gatsby". Ford wrote too much, certainly - I'm a big fan but I haven't been able to finish everything I've managed to find. When you've read this - for the first time - go to some of his (very unreliable) memoirs: "It Was The Nightingale", "Provence" etc. to get the flavour of the man. Then it will be time for the WWI tetralogy "Parade's End". Then you'll be ready to read "The Good Soldier" again...
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