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Parade's End (Parade's End #1-4)

by Ford Madox Ford, Robie MacAuley (Introduction)

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 · rating details · 1,344 ratings · 144 reviews

In creating his acclaimed masterpiece Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford "wanted the Novelist in fact to appear in his really proud position as historian of his own time . . . The 'subject' was the world as it culminated in the war". Published in four parts between 1924 and 1928, his extraordinary novel centers on Christopher Tietjens, an officer and gentleman-" the last Englis...more

Paperback, 864 pages

Published June 1st 2001 by Penguin Classics (first published 1928)

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Oct 16, 2012 Judy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I decided to start reading this great First World War novel after seeing the start of the BBC adaptation, but then became caught up by the book and fell behind with watching the TV version. It's a hard book to describe, the tale of an upper-class English family falling apart in and around the war. In particular, it is the tale of the 'Last Tory', Christopher Tietjens, the two women in his life, wife Sylvia and true love Valentine, and his struggle to stay true to his stubborn traditions as the w...more

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Oct 07, 2012 Mark rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This is a wonderfully rewarding read, although at times the story seems impenetrable, but stay with it as the book will become a personal favourite, that repays frequent revisits.

The beguiling, irresistible and utterly compelling, Sylvia Tietjens is described, ' immensely tall, slight… reddish, very fair hair in great bandeaux right over her ears. Her very oval, regular face had an expression of virginal lack of interest such as used to be worn by fashionable Paris courtesans a decade before tha...more

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Oct 02, 2012 Ka rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, classics

I can't decide whether to give this book 2 stars or 4. Ultimately it does succeed as a powerful story of the effects of the Great War on English society. Instead of the sweeping narrative of the typical war novel, FMF takes his story completely inside the characters' heads, looking at society and war in the microcosm, an approach that must be respected.

And yet. I did not enjoy reading it. The third book does finally portray a good bit of the misery and danger of the trenches and the front lines...more I can't decide whether to give this book 2 stars or 4. Ultimately it does succeed as a powerful story of the effects of the Great War on English society. Instead of the sweeping narrative of the typical war novel, FMF takes his story completely inside the characters' heads, looking at society and war in the microcosm, an approach that must be respected.

And yet. I did not enjoy reading it. The third book does finally portray a good bit of the misery and danger of the trenches and the front lines. The first two books are really more about a love triangle in England during the time of the first war. At all times, the story is narrated through the inner thoughts, relevant or irrelevant, of the 3 main characters. Often these are overwrought; it is exhausting to read so many sentences ending in exclamation points. It's like a soap opera, in that you can skip forward 30 pages and be confident you'll still be in the same scene. The reader is left to tease out the few narrative points amidst the torrent of banality.

I did not read the fourth book, choosing to side with Conrad and others who called it 'a disaster' and who state that FMF never intended it to be published.

A further disadvantage of the extreme interior view FMF gives, of the war and the times, is that context is never developed or revealed. I am not sure whether, for example, I would have perceived the portrayal of the disintegration of classes, had I not already known that WWI was the catalyst for this. I can't imagine what a reader without prior knowledge of the era and the war specifically would make of it.

Editorial addition after watching the HBO miniseries of Parade's End: It pairs perfectly with the book. How often can that be said?! The book is not terribly visual, while the miniseries is lush with color & period detail, supplying the images the book didn't. The TV series, of course, could not contain the pages and pages of interior reflection that make up 2/3 of the book, so it leaves out the part I found most tiresome. At the same time, there were many times in the miniseries when I thought, 'I sure am glad I read the book and know everything that was meant by that 15-second scene'. And revisiting the scenes & characters from the book was like finding valued old friends. I now think, or maybe I always did, that Christopher Tietjens is one of the great literary characters. Thanks to the symbiosis of book & movie, I'm upgrading yo 4 stars.
A final comment on the version - I bought an inexpensive ($2.99) Kindle version, which was very sloppily converted and suffered far more than the usual 'Kindleisms' of sentences illogically broken and scrambled words. The book would benefit greatly by well done commentary & footnotes, and it would be worth it to pay more for them. (less)

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May 05, 2012 Kristin rated it 5 of 5 stars

Amazing insight into British society and the English mind around WW1. I read this for one of my MA classes (and re-read for an essay and then re-read yet again) and since have read several others books by Ford, a forgotten great hopefully coming back to the forefront with the new BBC/HBO miniseries, though I think this book is too difficult for most casual readers that will come to it from the miniseries. The time shifts are initially confusing, but when one lets yourself go (I think the confusi...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Aliza rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This novel has touches of genius but is at its core deeply flawed, an example of execution failing to match talent or intent. There are parts that come alive - in particular, anything involving Sylvia, who is monstrous but also fascinating and even strangely relatable. But the war sections drag and while I understand and appreciate modernist techniques, perhaps I didn't care enough Christopher Tietjens to put the effort into truly focusing on those chapters. The final book feels like it is entir...more

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Jan 17, 2013 Nigel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A long, dense, sometimes difficult book about a long, dense, difficult man. Har har. Christopher Tiejens is a gentleman and a gentleman is beholden to a myriad unspoken and unwritten laws, many of which appear to be made up by the gentleman to justify rather silly behaviour. Or perhaps that's unfair. Christopher aspires to a kind of Protestant sainthood and will cleave to his ideals even as England decays around him, leaving him the last decent Englishmen, susceptible to all manner of beastlines...more A long, dense, sometimes difficult book about a long, dense, difficult man. Har har. Christopher Tiejens is a gentleman and a gentleman is beholden to a myriad unspoken and unwritten laws, many of which appear to be made up by the gentleman to justify rather silly behaviour. Or perhaps that's unfair. Christopher aspires to a kind of Protestant sainthood and will cleave to his ideals even as England decays around him, leaving him the last decent Englishmen, susceptible to all manner of beastliness as he bulls through with an almost pathological stubbornness and an apparent addiction to manly noble suffering.

Wife Sylvia ensnared him after she thought she ha been made pregnant by another man. Sylvia turns out to be a monster, for all that she might at first eke a certain sneaking admiration for her convention defying ways. It soon becomes apparent that she isn't defying anything, just making them work to her own demented ends. Thus begins poor old Christopher's travails. Cuckolded, bitched, and now the subject of her bottomless malice, he stoically endures the whips and chains of bad fortune. Then he meets Valentine Wannop and falls in love. Then the war comes along to hasten the destruction of all he holds dear. It's pretty much downhill all the way.

Poor Christopher becomes the whipping boy for all his class, as Christ-like in his fundamental goodness as in his ability to endure the scourge. One prays for a happy ending, if only to relieve one's own suffering, but damned if I know whether any chink of happiness was allowed in at the last. Maybe? Book 4 has some amazing writing in it, but it's a bit elliptical in terms of the plot. It's a bit of a let-down after the splendid war-torn scenes of the previous two books. Perhaps that was the point, a comment on the post-war treatment of the soldiers? No, it just feels... unresolved, After Infinite Jest last year, I probably shouldn't complain about wading through 900 pages and not finding resolution, but the ambiguity of the ending felt mean-spirited rather than aesthetic. Maybe it'll grow on me. I can see why the tv series largely left it out.(less)

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Oct 23, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm not sure this is the e-book I read. I read the tetralogy--be sure to read all four books. They're wonderful and inform one another. The BBC is doing a series on this book (which I hope comes to the US), which made me realize I hadn't read it.
The four books recount England before, during, and after World War I. Christopher Tietjens is a brilliant, upperclass, rigid statistician who is a victim of his own point of view. Book One opens with his wife, having run away with another man, writing h...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Helena Fairfax rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is one of the best books I've ever read. So brilliant, in fact, I find it hard to describe why I LOVE it so much! The author evokes the emotions of his characters with unique brilliance, using a stream of conscious style of writing to describe inner dialogue, so that we feel exactly what each character feels, especially at moments of great stress. Not only this, but the characters themselves are infinitely well-drawn and their actions believable, totally sympathetic and consistent throughou...more

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Sep 19, 2012 Confessionalpoetess rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: early-20th-c-ww-i

The four books that make up Parade's End are a lot to take on, but worth it in the end. Set against the final days of Edwardian England's "last summer" through to World War I and afterwards,it's the tale of the unfortunate Christopher Tietjens. Stuck in a loveless marriage with a woman hell-bent on ruining and humiliating him, Tietjens is "the last Tory," a man trying to live by chivalric yet outdated principles in a tumultous time in history. A brilliant government statistician (and one of the...more The four books that make up Parade's End are a lot to take on, but worth it in the end. Set against the final days of Edwardian England's "last summer" through to World War I and afterwards,it's the tale of the unfortunate Christopher Tietjens. Stuck in a loveless marriage with a woman hell-bent on ruining and humiliating him, Tietjens is "the last Tory," a man trying to live by chivalric yet outdated principles in a tumultous time in history. A brilliant government statistician (and one of the few who can see that modern warfare is inevitable), Tietjens is a gentle but repressed man who appears dull, and even idiotic at times, to those around him. Strangely, everyone who knows him is prepared to believe the worst about him, and believes that he is carrying on an affair with Valentine Wannop, a young suffragette who has taken a liking to him.

The story traces the relationships in the love triangle between Tietjens, his cheating wife Sylvia, and Valentine. Despite his feelings for Valentine, Tietjens feels honor-bound to remain faithful to Sylvia and to live with the situation. But when he is set to return to the Western Front, he begins to rethink his life's path. His internal struggle continues to be the focus of the narrative--along with a gripping account of the horror and absurdity of the First World War, as he serves in the trenches.

It took me the better part of the first book, "Some Do Not..." to find my "groove" with the story. The non-linear narrative replays the same events as seen from one character's perspective to another's, and often jumps back and forth in time. Most of the action in the book is conveyed through stream-of-conciousness or replayed through the reflections of Tietjens and other characters. This work is frustrating at times, and rewarding at times.

Ultimately, Ford has created a beautiful narrative of a young man with an old soul struggling to come to terms with a world that's rapidly moving forwards, when all he really wants is to remain in neutral, and perhaps, find personal peace and happiness.(less)

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Feb 01, 2012 Joselito Honestly and Brilliantly rated it 2 of 5 stars

Reading this (consisting of four books: "Some Do Not...", "No More Parades," "A Man Could Stand Up--," and "The Last Post), for me, was like chewing a single piece of gum for a month. It is not unreadable or incomprehensible. It's in English, originally in English (can't blame any faulty translation), and the characters are even English. But they talk differently. They act differently. Their motivations are hard to grasp. Like they're in a dream, their movements come in hazy sequences. The plot...more Reading this (consisting of four books: "Some Do Not...", "No More Parades," "A Man Could Stand Up--," and "The Last Post), for me, was like chewing a single piece of gum for a month. It is not unreadable or incomprehensible. It's in English, originally in English (can't blame any faulty translation), and the characters are even English. But they talk differently. They act differently. Their motivations are hard to grasp. Like they're in a dream, their movements come in hazy sequences. The plot is gettable but not unforgettable: Christopher Tientjens, maybe conceived by Ford Madox Ford while looking at the mirror, never described as handsome (FMF was ugly) but only big, strong, clumsy and gray, is married to the beautiful Sylvia, a flirt who ran away with another man, they have a son but it is not certain if Christopher is really the father, fed up with her paramour Sylvia writes Christopher a note saying she wants to go back to him and he accepts her, no questions asked, then there's Valentine (described as having big feet somewhere) she's in love with Christopher who agrees when he asks her to be his mistress but didn't even kiss her and instead just goes to the trenches to fight world war one, hoping at one point to die, he's rich but renounces wealth, intelligent but does stupid things, Sylvia, finding him too perfect, wants to destroy him, ah what the heck! I found no thrill with the story. The characters did not come alive (for me). I started to worry that maybe something is now wrong with my brain after reading too much and playing chess too much, so I checked some of the reviews and see several praising the novel without even reading all four books, like they tasted one dish in a food buffet and announced all the rest as outstanding (really? Then why not finish the rest?). One said he started reading it one day, but never said he finished reading it another day. So if he's alive, in front of me, I may be yelling right now to him, asking him to answer the question if he had actually finished reading all four books and not if the novel is great as I am not asking him that question. Another hinted that he actually read all four books but then added that Parade's End is "A fabulous look into the personal experience of WW1" when it is not actually about WW1 (Christopher Tietjen's foray into the trenches is just a very small part of the entire narrative--he never even got to fire a gun, nor kill a German), but more about marital/siblings conflicts, love, hate, honor and family concerns.(less)

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Nov 12, 2011 Jade rated it 3 of 5 stars

I can't say I liked or disliked Ford's novel (composed of 4 separate books). There were aspects I loved and others I didn't. You have to be completely focused to be able to follow the train of thought--the novel jumps around from subject to subject, so if you're not paying close attention you'll find yourself lost pretty quickly; especially as one reads the last novels because more military jargon is used and if you're not versed in the military you won't know what's going on.

I can't decide if...more

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Mar 21, 2011 Tony rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

Ford, Ford Madox. PARADE’S END. (1920s). ****. Ford’s novel of this title is actually composed of four novels – a tetrology: “Some Do Not...” (1924), “No More Parades” (1925), “A Man Could Stand Up –“ (1926, and “The Last Post” (1928). This is a massive novel (over 900 pages in the Everyman’s Library edition) and I onlly managed to read the first novel before I had to get it back to the library. It is epic novel of WW I, widely helo to be the best of all the novels written about that great event...more

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Jul 14, 2010 Mark Hinton rated it 5 of 5 stars

“…there are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them.” ~W.H. Auden

When I was in college, I had to make a choice one semester between taking Romantic Literature or Victorian Literature. Knowing just enough about everything to get myself into trouble, I chose to take Victorian Literature. Romantic poetry did not sound like something a Montana kid grown up on Hemingway would want to read. Only much later, years and states away, would I discover how wrong...more “…there are not many English novels which deserve to be called great: Parade’s End is one of them.” ~W.H. Auden

When I was in college, I had to make a choice one semester between taking Romantic Literature or Victorian Literature. Knowing just enough about everything to get myself into trouble, I chose to take Victorian Literature. Romantic poetry did not sound like something a Montana kid grown up on Hemingway would want to read. Only much later, years and states away, would I discover how wrong I was….

The Victorian sensibility that pervades Arnold and Browning – the interest in the ordinary and common day, the moral purposefulness, the unmooring clash with science, the search for the Victorian ideal – seemed cloyingly myopic and dark. I admired much but was never able to get my sea legs.

Years later on a whim, walking through a bookstore in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I picked up a copy of Parade’s End by Ford Madox Ford. The big paperback caught my eye because of the size and the price, $1.00.

By then, I knew a little about Ford: his relationship with Conrad, his literary influence, his reputation for untruth (though hardly a vice in a writer), his bad relationship with Hemingway. I knew of, but had not read, The Good Soldier, his most celebrated and read work. I think, but cannot be sure, that I may have read by that time some of his literary reminiscences, which (whether “embellished” or not) remain in my mind some of the best of that genre ever written.

I put the book on a shelf and carried it for a few moves. Through years of reading the once neglected Romantics, through expanding my familiarity with Irish poetry beyond Yeats. [In those days, before kids and domestic distractions, I created, as I continue to do, my own courses of study, but, of course, had much more time to concentrate and ruminate.:] Finally, one day dark winter day in my little studio on Cathedral Hill in St. Paul I picked up the big book and began to read.

Parades End has been called the last Victorian novel. And I suppose it is. So much that is Victorian is in this book, and yet… there is something of the lost generation in here also. It is in my mind a transitional novel, the last hurrah of the Victorian and a first tentative peek at the modern. Or more properly perhaps, the first description of the Modern by a Victorian: “No more hope, no more glory, not for the nation, not for the world I dare say, no more parades.”

Ford, always an admirer of Henry James, lived by the credo: why say it in 4 words when 24 will do better. His is the anti-Hemingway style. His sentences and paragraphs go on for pages… and yet, I found myself enthralled in the same way that James enthralls me. So exotic does their language usage seem that I feel I am reading another tongue altogether. A language at once more ornate and expressive and beautiful than I could even dare to imagine – the term baroque comes to mind (although unlike baroque music, James and Ford are always satisfying).

The four separate novels that make up Parade’s End (Some Do Not, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up, and The Last Post) tell the story of Christopher Tietjens, a man struggling to survive personally and publicly. His wife is unfaithful to him, he is betrayed by friends and colleagues, and the modern, post-war world is changing everything he once thought he knew.

Those who have read The Good Soldier will recognize some familiar themes, but in Parade’ End will enjoy Ford at his most expansive. Why Ford has fallen so out of favor, and this novel in particular has been all but forgotten, is one of those peculiarities of taste and time.

Ford himself once said, “Only two classes of books are of universal appeal; the very best and the very worst.” It is certain that Parade’s End belongs in the former class. Certainly it will again be “rediscovered” by some generation of writers. It’s quality and execution demand it.(less)

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May 18, 2010 Dwight added it

http://bookcents.blogspot.com/2010/05...

Tthe plotline is easily summarized but it will not convey the power from Ford's design in telling it. What actually happens in the books is revealed almost incidentally as the consciousness of the characters mull over the history and context of what is happening in order to bring meaning to the action. Ford’s process makes the nature of understanding and perception a central focus of the books.

In looking at Christopher Tietjens, we see an austere brand of...more http://bookcents.blogspot.com/2010/05...

Tthe plotline is easily summarized but it will not convey the power from Ford's design in telling it. What actually happens in the books is revealed almost incidentally as the consciousness of the characters mull over the history and context of what is happening in order to bring meaning to the action. Ford’s process makes the nature of understanding and perception a central focus of the books.

In looking at Christopher Tietjens, we see an austere brand of ancient Englishness, passive but dignified. Despite holding him up for ridicule, Ford has him succeed in impossible, changing times. Tietjens succeeds because he embraces the English countryside whose features are “pleasant and green and comely. It would breed true.” The land, having threatened to engulf him and his regiment during the war, remains the one true force that has survived and will continue to do so. Throughout the books, Ford criticizes both pre- and post-war conditions in England, some of which is personified in the Tietjens irony. Christopher seeks a foundation in the past while overlooking the full effect of it, such as the confiscation of the Groby estate from a Catholic family. The pastoral vision at the end stands at odds with the reliance on the industrialized Americans supporting it (and not to mention the coal fields owned around Groby).

Despite the defeats meted out to Tietjens, he survives the social and political breakdowns by turning his back on the established order and embracing a pastoral life (albeit a dark one, as alluded to in the inherent contradictions above). Ford seems deeply ambivalent about the lost society as well as the new order. Tietjens, a throwback to an era that didn’t exist as remembered, upholds many of the virtues that were supposed to provide society’s foundation. In one sense, Ford tiptoes around the problem of wishing for traditional values that proved unable to deal with modern problems by pointing out that the underpinning virtues were only observed in their breach. By assigning a false nostalgia he lightens the contradictions a little. Ford proves to be extremely adroit when presenting contradictions so which makes it difficult to ascribe exactly what he is doing. Multiple readings, or at least varied interpretations, are possible. It’s also possible he didn’t even know what he was ultimately trying to say, which may be the most satisfying answer of all for me.(less)

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Jul 04, 2012 Olivia rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Read this out of curiosity after hearing about the upcoming BBC production. Most other 'classic' novels I've read were ones that I had already seen as films, so I was already familiar with the plot. I set this book as a challenge to see if I could manage it without any idea what it was about. I am so happy I decided to read this before watching the new series. Beautiful story, beautiful characters, heartbreaking but also uplifting. I confess, I found some of the narrative (about the war in parti...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Colette rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book is really a collection of four shorter novellas. I am giving the five star rating based on the first two books, Some Do Not and No More Parades, though the quality drops off somewhat for the other two. The quality of Madox Ford's writing is superb and the stream of consciousness strolls through the main character's thoughts are intriguing. Christopher Tietjens is a turn of the 20th century English gentlemen, with all the infuriating mindset that position implies. Despite being frustrat...more

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Sep 08, 2012 Susan Millard) rated it 4 of 5 stars

I first encountered Ford Madox Ford's writing in the form of one of his early children's stories, The Brown Owl, which my grandmother lent to me. His sentence structure is a little less involved there... what I could read of it... Mrs Mouse had nibbled the middle out of the pages.

I have strong admiration for Tom Stoppard's dramatisation of this curious tetralogy. It departs from Ford's peculiar time scheme and makes the story much easier to follow without losing the social commentary. (In fact t...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Veronica rated it 4 of 5 stars

Recommended to Veronica by: Modern Library's 100 Best Novels

Parade’s End consists of four novels; Some Do Not (1924), No More Parades (1925), A Man Could Stand Up (1926) and Last Post (1928).

Perhaps I am losing some literary steam, but I have only read one from the tetralogy and so will only be reviewing Some Do Not here.

This read corroborates for me the fine storytelling abilities of Mr. Ford. What seems to be a repeating theme of Ford’s is the personal misunderstandings that develop between people and his fine skill in portraying the various perspectiv...more

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May 12, 2013 Leon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Originally Published: 1924-28

With his acclaimed masterpiece Parade's End, Ford Madox Ford set himself a work of immense scale and ambition: "I wanted the Novelist in fact to appear in his really proud position as historian of his own time... The 'subject' was the world as it culminated in the war." Published in four parts between 1924 and 1928, his extraordinary novel centers on Christopher Tietjens, an officer and a gentleman -- "the last English Tory"--and follows him from the secure, orde

...more

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Aug 27, 2012 Chris Skidmore rated it 4 of 5 stars

Seeing the first episode of the television serial, I have just reread Parades End over the past couple of days. It is a tour de force with its interweavings of narrators, places and times. I had forgotten how closely the war is interwoven with the plot - with vital events occuring on both 8 August 1914 and 11 November 1918. And how ambivalent many of the characters are, seeming admirable and loathsome by turns.
I still thank that Some do not.. is the best novel of the three but the picture of lif...more

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Apr 23, 2012 Steven Monrad rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

Four novels, fits into several categories - mainly World War One diillusionment, and sociological, autobiographical, psychological, experimental (for it's time) styles, veddy British commentary.
Very well written and a page turner of a plot if you can handle the obscure and lengthy British-only allusions, complex sub-plots and the various styles, including time-shifts and a dozen interior landscapes. New to this author, who co-wrote with Conrad, discovered Pound, D.H. Lawrence, and more through...more

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Nov 14, 2011 Sarah Peters rated it 4 of 5 stars

Ford Madox Ford’s tetralogy Parade’s End, although intimidating in size, is a truly spectacular novel, chronicling the rapidly changing English society in the wake of World War I. The four novels that make up Parade’s End, Some Do Not…, No More Parades, A Man Could Stand Up-, and Last Post, following Christopher Tietjens, the “last Tory,” a brilliant country gentleman, employed as a statistician with the British government. The novel follows Tietjens, his wife Sylvia, and his love interest Valen...more

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Jan 15, 2013 Angela Mcpherson rated it 5 of 5 stars

A powerful and moving account of one man's struggle to come to terms with the social conventions of his day set alongside the war that engulfed and challenged many of the social norms of English society just before and during WW1. The central character, Christopher Tietjens, is at war within himself as to how to deal with his life and the people in it, struggling with his loyalty to what he regards as correct and proper behaviour, yet constantly being betrayed by those who wish to prey on him an...more

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May 11, 2013 Paula rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013-book-challenge

I'd really like to give this book 3 1/2 stars, because I more than just liked it; on the other hand, I did think it was a difficult novel to get through, and I would hesitate to recommend it. I'm really glad I'd seen the Masterpiece Theater version of the novel first, otherwise I think I would have gotten lost and given up. I actually was kind of surprised there was no companion paperback released in conjunction with the production, until I started reading it. It is not an easy read - at least n...more

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Sep 26, 2012 David Marshall rated it 4 of 5 stars

Inspired to read this by the brilliant BBC serial. I can see why I gave it a miss in the past ascChristopher Tietjens is not a hero it is easy to warm to. An English Tory in the style of the 18th century, he is so paternalistic and moral that he is even hilariously mistaken as a socialist. The novel is excellent on the bureaucratic futility, yet moral necessity, of war. Sylvia Tietjens is extraordinarily powerful and her marriage is itself a war zone. The writing is often extremely funny. It's m...more

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Apr 01, 2013 Jenna Burns rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: world-war-one, romance, 20th-century, britain, historical-fiction

I read Parade's End after watching the BBC's amazing television adaption of it. Only after reading the book can you really appreciate the time period it spans- the programme also conveys this well, condensing much of the text but never cutting the significant things.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Overall, I find the most powerful parts of Parade's End to be from Christopher Tietjens' point of view- specifically, when he is in the trenches along with reactions to O Nine Morgan's death and Aranjuez's horrific inj...more

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Nov 26, 2012 Anne rated it 5 of 5 stars

I don't even know where to start. I think this book is a masterpiece, and I think next time I read it (and halfway through The Last Post I started thinking, I'm going to have to re-read this one), I'm going to need to read my own copy and arm myself with a pen and post-its and stuff, because as I read there were so many moments and words and phrases that I wanted to remember, but didn't have the stomach to do more than lightly dogear the bottom corner of the pages in my library copy. Like the wo...more I don't even know where to start. I think this book is a masterpiece, and I think next time I read it (and halfway through The Last Post I started thinking, I'm going to have to re-read this one), I'm going to need to read my own copy and arm myself with a pen and post-its and stuff, because as I read there were so many moments and words and phrases that I wanted to remember, but didn't have the stomach to do more than lightly dogear the bottom corner of the pages in my library copy. Like the word "smirchiness." And that bit about how the reason the English don't dress for dinner on Sundays is out of politeness to God, because they MIGHT go to evening church services and you don't wear evening dress to church.

I think what thrilled me so much about this book was the sheer quality of the writing. 900 pages later, and I never stopped being surprised and enchanted by Ford's use of language and his descriptive abilities. Not only do I know what these characters look like, I know how other characters see them and how they see themselves. Because of the length of the novel(s), we get major insight into each of the characters' psyches--well, at the very least Christopher, Sylvia, Valentine Wannop, Mark Tietjens and Marie Léonie, his mistress and eventual wife--to the point that, even while disliking some of them, I can understand them and empathize. Oddly enough, I think my favorite point of view from a narrative standpoint was Mark. Not my favorite character, but even the first time we met him and read from his point of view, Ford kept him very closed off in comparison to the other characters, and it wasn't until the very end, completely paralyzed and unable to speak, that we got to understand him. Mark Tietjens, I think, even more than Christopher, is the character who stands for Europe before and after the war. It's telling that after thirty years of leading the exact same unchanged life, Mark winds up immobilized and eventually dead, while Christopher is changed by the war in a way that allows him to move on from what he was before. I found Sylvia endlessly fascinating, Valentine Wannop surprisingly deep (given her treatment in the miniseries), and Christopher frequently funny and just a marvelous character all around. He can write a sonnet in two-and-a-half minutes! What a guy!

Benedict Cumberbatch, in an interview about the miniseries, said that this is a book for anybody who has ever had a stream of consciousness. It really is a book about people's thoughts, and quite often those veer off into the most extraordinary non-sequiturs. It's a book about extraordinary people in extraordinary circumstances who think extraordinary thoughts, but they think them in an ordinary way, which I think is how we can relate to them. I have nothing in common with Christopher Tietjens, but when I read his thought processes, jumping from topic to topic, pivoting on a single word, I understand how he operates.

I may have to sit on this one a little longer and see if I have anything else to add. For now, I'll just say, "Oh, chuck it, Edith Ethel!"(less)

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Apr 22, 2013 Jasmine rated it 4 of 5 stars

I came to this book because of the BBC TV series, which I haven't seen yet. I always want to read the book first, and this time I am not disappointed at all. The size of the book is a bit intimidating at first look (there are actually four of them), but the story is surprisingly engaging. The vicissitudes of the WWI England are brought out through the characters' streams of thought. Even the battle front scenes are conducted through the live, noncontinuous, subconscious reflections of the charac...more

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Apr 17, 2010 carl theaker rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-library-100

This episode takes place mostly at the front in France. Captain Tietjens looks least like an
officer, but is the most competent particularly in organization skills. An odd
insight is that civilians can visit almost to the front lines, the war not being too
far of a travel from England. Sylvia arrives to torture Tiejtens more. She has come to
learn she loves to hate him or maybe more, hates to love him.

Tiejtens always striving to be perfect, gets in trouble with the brass as he refuses
to do what's po...more

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Mar 06, 2013 Velvetink marked it as to-read · review of another edition

have ebook version - Parade's End was published in four parts between 1924 and 1928. This extraordinary tetralogy centers on Christopher Tietjens, an officer and a gentleman—“the last English Tory”—and follows him from the secure, orderly world of Edwardian England into the chaotic madness of the First World War. Against the backdrop of a world at war, Ford recounts the complex sexual warfare between Tietjens and his faithless wife, Sylvia.

The books:
Some Do Not
No More Parades
A Man Could Stand Up...more

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About Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford was the author of over 60 works: novels, poems, criticism, travel essays, and reminiscences. His work includes The Good Soldier, Parade's End, The Rash Act, and Ladies Whose Bright Eyes. He worked as the editor of the English Review and the Transatlantic Review and collaborated with Joseph Conrad on The Inheritors, Romance, and other works. Ford lived in both France and the United...more

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Books by Ford Madox Ford

Some Do Not ... & No More Parades (Parade's End #1 & #2)

Parade's End: Some Do Not ... A Novel Pt. 1 (Parades End 1)

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Quotes from Parade's End

“Higher than the beasts, lower than the angels, stuck in our idiot Eden.” — 25 people liked it

“You seduced a young woman in order to be able to finish your talks with her. You could not do that without living with her. You could not live with her without seducing her; but that was the by-product. The point is that you can't otherwise talk. You can't finish talks at street corners; in museums; even in drawing-rooms. You mayn't be in the mood when she is in the mood - for the intimate conversation that means the final communion of your souls. You have to wait together - for a week, for a year, for a lifetime, before the final intimate conversation may be attained...and exhausted. So that...That in effect was love.” — 23 people liked it

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Parade's End (Parade's End #1-4)

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