Dan's review of Except the Lord
Except the Lord by Joyce Cary
This second book of Cary’s Second Trilogy is much less interesting than the first or third books, but it makes a lot of sense in the scope of the trilogy. The narrative is posed as the memoirs written by Chester Nimmo at the end of Prisoner of Grace. It’s essentially a straight-forward coming-of-age novel about a poor English boy with a preacher for a father who believes in the imminent second coming. Their father is so staunch in his principles that the family remains in somewhat dire straights for the entirety of their existence together. Eventually, though, Chester discovers in himself a talent for organization and public speaking and begins his career with labor unions. The sole purpose of this book, I should say, is to establish Chester Nimmo as a fully fleshed-out human. Cary wants to show that the “institution” of Chester the politician created in the first book was a change that occurred in what was once a very normal boy.
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