Today’s special from the bill of fare: Crow. Market Price. Served with a complimentary slice of stale pumpernickel and a glass of river water.

I really did not think I was going to enjoy this book one bit; I also erroneously believed it was included in the collection of crap known as Time’s ‘100 Best 20th Century Novels’, and the fact it isn’t is probably why it was actually enjoyable. This is, however, included on several other ‘hits lists’, such as the ridiculous 1001 Books to Read Before You D More...

What? You mean this novel isn't about war? Is it possible to hate a book and love it at the same time? This is one of those books where it immediately becomes obvious you aren't going to read this novel for the strict pleasure of it. This book ain't ice cream on the beach folks. I don't think I've run across a more amoral, unsympathetic cast of characters since I visited Kehlsteinhaus. But, Ford Madox Ford is absolutely brilliant at portraying the decay, the depravity and the hypocrisy that exis More...

If you want a good case of cultural whiplash, read The Good Soldier and then the reviews of Michel Houellenbecq's Plateforme (thanks, Hazel). From 20-year-old virgins who don't know where babies come from to sex tourism in less than a hundred years.

Ford's book has been called a perfect novel by some. There are endless (and interesting) debates about the reliability of the narrator. The novel has been described as impressionist literature, and the story is told in kaliadoscopic flashes. One's und More...

This is indeed a sad story, where no one gets what they want.

Based on a true story and revolving around two couples, one English the other American, and narrated by the American husband, this novel is told in an experimental style. When I mean told, there is very little dialogue and most of the incidents come out in dribs and drabs, out of sequence, and from a rather unreliable narrator who constantly contradicts his statements. The narrator goes over old ground frequently, mostly trying to reco More...

Hello everybody, my name is [P] and I am a smoker. Ah, it feels good to make that admission. I’m meant to be an ex-smoker, of course. I have, in truth, been attempting to give up for about three years. Yeah, that’s right, three long years I’ve been torturing myself. I’ve got all kinds of quitting paraphernalia: nicotine lozenges, patches, nicotine gum, an inhaler. I am actively using all these things [simultaneously, no less], and yet I’m no closer to kicking the addiction. Hell, I am more likel More...

Oh! Propriety!

Nowadays there's a word for Edward Ashburnham. And I don't mean some modern vulgarity, unavailable to the Edwardians, something like emotional fuck-up, appropriate as that may be (or not). No, I'm thinking serial monogamist. The term is new, because the concept is new. At the turn of the 20th century there was monogamy. Or there was promiscuity: casual couplings with seamstresses, milliners, laundresses or the convenient and pliable housemaid. A taboo subject, to be spoken of in hu More...

A contemporary and sometime collaborator with Joseph Conrad, Ford Maddox Ford was not a novelist studied in the English Literature classes while I was a college student. Intrigued by the endorsement of a dozen or so well known authors and poets on the cover of a paperback version of The Good Soldier, I decided to give it a go and see for myself if this novelist was as good as advertised. I am an unabashed fan of Joseph Conrad and thought perhaps I’d stumbled upon a lesser known genius-friend of More...

Lots of books (novels and otherwise) attempt to mix the chilling and the blasé for that extra-cold "banality of evil" effect. Among novels, American Psycho comes to mind as a possible least-favorite and The Good Soldier as a certain favorite. It would be too much to call any of these characters "evil" but as you ponder who among the morally vacuous cast is the "worst", you'll discover that your gaze turns inward, which is Ford's real achievement here.

Some questions arise when reading The Good Soldier. Is it an impressionistic masterpiece? Is it a tragedy or a comedy? Published in 1915, from the pen of Ford Madox Ford, it is unique enough to have been described by its critics as all of the preceding and more. Subtitled "A Tale of Passion", it is unique both in my experience and within the author's total work.
The story is narrated by an American, John Dowell, who invites the reader to sit down with him beside the fire of his study to listen t More...

Wow, was this well done. I almost wrote 'fantastic', but that didn't seem appropriate to the mood of the piece. It is also throughly soul-crushing, of course, but that shouldn't affect your reading plans in favor of it. It really is a must-read, I think.

The book is a thorough condemnation of the principles of Edwardian society and the Victorian society that came before it, made all the more effective by the fact that it comes from the most unlikely source, a timid, quiet American man who has ha More...

Embarrassed to say that I somehow missed this one. I know it is highly acclaimed and my fellow readers here seem to love it, but i must be missing something. The narrator is frustratingly stupid and naive and the good soldier is simply a bastard. Social constructs doomed the characters but their adherence to society's rules borders on foolishness, particularly when they clearly dont really care for these rules.

The point of view aspect is intersting and I wonder if I didnt miss something there. More...

Ma ci sarà allora un qualche paradiso terrestre in cui, fra il bisbiglio delle foglie degli ulivi, la gente possa stare con chi vuole e avere quello che vuole e stare in pace all'ombra, nella frescura? Oppure la vita di tutti gli uomini è come la vita di noi gente per bene – come la vita degli Ashburnham, dei Dowell, dei Rufford – vite spezzate, tumultuose, tormentare, vite prosaiche, periodi punteggiati da urla, da stupidità, da morti, da tormenti? Chi diavolo lo sa.”

Scrivere le impressioni, l More...

Admittedly, I took way too long to read this book - and then a couple more months to write the review - but I didn't like this book, it was all over the place.

I'm always troubled by the mantra "the world's so much worse today then it was... well you know... whenever... way back then or whenever..." Really? There are more affairs in this book than a Brazilian soap opera. (Sem ofensa...)

This isn't really the type of book that I would worry about being spoiled, but just in case: (view spoiler)[Seriously, Florence (hide spoiler)] More...

The Good Soldier is an amazing feat of plot construction. This is the best example of how an unreliable narrator (John Dowell) and fragmentary plot can be used to reveal intricacies of character that could never be as effectively expressed through simple description. Not only is this brilliantly done, but I was amazed to realise how early a piece of modernist work The Good Soldier is- published in 1915. It must have created quite a stir when it was published as its main interest is the destructi More...

Sometimes the prose is delightful, but the sexism so unbearable that it's impossible to enjoy a book. It just comes off as at once boorish and insipid, which is something of a trick. But I hear Parade's End is great, so I'll give it a try before I give up on him as a writer who does not survive his era.

I liked it. I have been pondering this book a bit since I finished it and - admittedly I struggled with the complex plot, the writing, the endless description of a series of affairs and their upsetting consequences on the lives of nearly every character throughout the novel - I now realize that there isn't a perfect linear understanding of the reality within this story. Truth is illusive, truth is slippery and kaleidoscopic. It changes and tries to stay just a half step away from our sensory org More...

Ridiculously melodramatic. Melodramatic isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just a warning for anyone who is expecting a spare narrative in the Hemingway vein. I am too impatient to write a detailed summary. This novel is not about war, as its title might suggest. That is, it's not about War, although I guess one can argue that the characters are at war with each other. It's about some very fucked up people who do very fucked up things to each other, it's about these said fucked up people who do More...

I loved the complexity of this novel - the complexity of the relationships between the chief characters, and the hidden intrigues and passions behind the respectable facade of wealthy, ruling-class Edwardians. The narration is intriguingly haphazard with important elements of the plot exposed when you least expect them. There are lots of comic moments in what is, in effect, a tragic love story. The writing is of the highest quality - one of those books you know you will read and re-read for the More...

I must have not seen the subtitle before reading this book, because I thought it was going to be about war or something. Actually, it's about love affairs, and honestly one of the most interestingly written books about love affairs I have ever read. It's a lot like someone you know was telling you about the love lives of your friends--taking great care to introduce characters they think are important, but sort of absent-mindedly referring to other people they haven't introduced or mentioned in p More...

This book was so tied to the period about which it was written that - while I loved it - I'm still not too sure how I feel about the actual story. Beautifully written, and told just as it would be if you were sitting in a room with the person telling you the story, it goes back and forth in time as the narrator remembers and/or adds to certain details. If you like a linear, modern story, this is not the book for you. If you like spending time with a book and burying yourself in a different time More...

Ford Madox Ford saw this novel as his masterpiece, and it is no surprise that everyone else sees it this way also - including me. My experience of this is the same as I felt when I first encountered the diaries of Harry Kessler: how have I missed this until now?

The story, which is set in pre-1914 Germany and England, appears to be a straightforward tale of marital deception, but it is told by an unstable narrator and the truth is far from clear. The basic plot is this: two couples -- one America More...

There are many stories where people make themselves miserable and we are supposed to feel sorry for them; I don't like those. The brilliance of this novel is to lay bare the foolish insanity of the characters, and their social system. The unconventional organization worked well in this case because the book isn't about the drama, it's about trying to understand the drama. So little bit by little bit, we get behind the facade of perfect happiness and propriety and learn of the sordid reality. The More...

So, it's the 1910's, and two married couples become inseparable friends when they meet in a sanatorium in Germany. Florence and John Dowell are from the States and they're stuck in Europe because "poor Florence" has a heart disease and as little as a sail across the Calais could kill her. Leonor and Edward Ashburnham are British, recently back from India where Edward ended his military career for health reasons. Now, Flo's hypersensitivity to, um, commotions is also the reason why her bedroom do More...

Ford has been said to have more fans than readers. Well, I struggled with this novel over the Christmas period and, as a result, may now be said to have closed that gap by one.

This is an ambiguous tale of failed relationships set at the intersection of Edwardian high society with its international cosmopolitan equivalent, and to me at least, appeared to lack even one sympathetic character. I suppose I might have warmed just a bit to Edward, the eponymous good soldier, but the way the novel has More...

Think of the digressive, mini-infodumps that double-stitch "traditional," story-driven fiction. Flashbacks that flesh out a relationship, nuggets of raw exposition that bring us up to speed with the in media res. What Ford attempts in The Good Soldier (quite courageously) is to construct a novel almost entirely out of these asides, 280 pages of tangents within tangents.

The much-maligned "plotless novel" is a craft-intense venture, entrancing the reader (if it does) through sheer luminosity of mi More...

One of our book group's selections, of a book that one always feels one should have read. Although it evokes a pre-WWI world, it is definitely not a fussy Victorian book. My initial sense, with the opening among sanitarium patients, was that we were going to see some echoes of The Magic Mountain. And there is a bit of a parallel in that the narrator Dowell, who is not a patient, is the one who is the most passive, seeming to observe the action without being a participant, while the medical condi More...

Originally published on my blog here in April 2000.

This unusual novel is told using all the artistry at the author's disposal to make it appear to the reader that it is written without any artistry, as though it is a transcription of a reminiscence told rather discursively to an old friend. In subject, it is like a Henry James story, told in a less artificial manner.

Ford's story is about two couples, the narrator (unnamed) and Florence, Edward and Leonora, who meet annually at a German spa town. More...

I hate to start reviews on a pessimistic note, but I'm very relieved to have finished this book. Not Midnight's Children relieved, not even The Count Of Monte Cristo relieved; this book was not as challenging linguistically or plot wise as these two respectively. In fact, the language and plot were both easily understood. No, I was relieved to finish for a far more sinister reason; to put it bluntly, it bored me.

Told from the perspective of American John Dowell, The Good Soldier tells the tale o More...

The Good Soldier written by Ford Madox Ford is a fairly descent book. Even though it can be hard to follow from time to time because, it doesn't go in order but it is still interesting. In this book the narrator is John Dowell. Dowell talks about his wife Florence and another couple Edward and Loenara. Other than Dowell the three has one similarity, that they have heart problem and try to protest to get others to help them after they were invalids. Soon Leonara had a feeling that Florence and E More...