Parade's End [Paperback]

The plot is thin. The book is too long. Not much happens. Parts are obscure and little is easy reading. And yet.........Nothing would have stopped me finishing this fine and largely forgotten novel. The hero became my hero. I wanted him to be happy.
I wanted him to be rich (though with his propensity for giving money away, there was fat chance of that). I wanted him to get his woman. Most of all I fell for his High Toryism - his sense of obligation to his fellow man, to his country and most of all to his class. His wife was so evil I could not accept her but his 'friend' was oh so true to life. On war at the Front it is wonderful particularly in its focus on noise. Noise troubled Ford more than anything else when he served in France by the was. The minor characters are tremendous; his fellow officers, his father, Macmaster and his horrible wife all stay in the mind. Beware, if 'stream of consciousness' is anathema to you, you will not stay the course. Beware too that the last of the tetrology that this book is was written reluctantly. It drags and would have been better added in a shortened version to the third book.
The novel is very autobiographical and a biography of the author to accompany it would not come amiss. There are two or three good ones available from Amazon.

I must admit that I have now read Parade's End twice this month, once on my kindle, and now this treebook edition. I also watched the BBC adaptation, which I quite enjoyed. There are a couple of things to be aware of though if you are reading this for the first time, this isn't really a book that you can easily read whilst commuting (I will come to why in a moment), and if you enjoyed Parade's End [DVD] it is no indicator whatsoever that you will enjoy the book.

Ford Madox Ford was a modernist and he loved to play with the chronological order of events, as can be seen right at the beginning of this book. Christopher Tietjens starts off on a train with a friend going to play golf, then the story back tracks into the events that led up to why. This happens throughout the book, indeed at one stage you read about the First World War ending, and then you are taken back to the War and the events that happened to Tietjens. This some people may find off putting, but Ford's reasons for this is that we don't think in a particular chronological order, which is after all correct. We may start talking about something that happened and then realise that we have mentioned an event that didn't happen until later in the main event. Also Ford was a great admirer of James Joyce's 'Ulysses', and thus this book or rather the four books that make up this story all contain stream of consciousness. As you can see to read all of this whilst on your daily commute is perhaps too tall an order, as you have to keep a lot in mind until you next pick the book up.

The basic storyline in itself is simple, a man marries a woman who is unfaithful, then himself falls in love with another woman. What Ford does with that story though transcends into something much more complex and powerful. Starting before and finishing after the First World War there is tragedy here, as well as quite a bit of comedy, whether that is the dark comedy of war, or the satire of the landed classes. In stories of war we are used to reading of the horrors and traumas that one faces, but here Ford also gives us the darkly comic side of all the absurdities and red tape that has to be got through just to get something as simple for instance as a blanket, or even a fire extinguisher. On top of this poor old Tietjens has to contend with his wife, her manipulations, and the rumours that she has caused to be started about him. And of course people sponging off him.

Some can argue that this book is of its time, of an era that no longer exists, and yes they can make a valid point. We know that after the horrors of the First World War and before that even the system of great houses and servants was in decline, with the war arguably sounding the ultimate death knell. This book is more than that, it shows the horror and trauma of war and what can happen to people when you start spreading lies about them. People change, their characters alter, for the better, or worse. This book shows that clearly, along with other such things. The biggest draw though with this is Christopher Tietjens. You start off seeing him as a man with ideals from the 18th Century that arguably only ever existed on the pages of a novel. As the years and events take their toll though he does alter, but even at the end of this you still find his character a bit of an enigma, and that draws you back to him and the whole story again. Never boring, completely compelling, this is a story that often gets overlooked, but will give you hours of satisfaction and enjoyment. Just remember, this isn't a quick read, it takes time, and provided you don't forget where you are, not that complex to take in.

"Parade's End" is a series of four novels, three of which hang together closely and all of which deal mainly with the same three characters. It is certainly not a family saga with the story progressing through time. There are though a few events that are latched onto and recur in (mainly Christpher Tietjens') ongoing musings. In a way it is a sad version of the eternal triangle, a hero married to an unloving wife who glimpses the elusive love of his life, but his antagonistic wife delights in making his life difficult.
It was written in the times of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf when the new fashion was for much musing and complex Freudian reaction. For us today it makes for a difficult read but one that is ultimately rewarding and its memory is lingering. The war sections are distinctively real and show the exhaustion of the senior officers close to the front in a way not found in other war novels. The fourth book is much less about Tietjens. The nearest we get to an "ending" is at the end of the third novel but the story (nightmare) goes on - as life tends to. It lingers in the mind afterwards....