In this 1946 novel, Chloe Marr is young, beautiful and so irresistible that countless men fall in love with her. Her story is told through the eyes of her numerous suitors and her women friends who are drawn to her because of her charm and warmth. But nobody really knows anything about her background, and in London society such mystique carries both allure and suspicion. Her life is a whirlwind of dinners, holidays, romantic trysts and parties told with Milne's signature humour and lightness of touch. A. A. Milne's ability to portray artistic London society is second to none but his novel has a more serious message which is emphasised by Chloe's untimely exodus from the people around her - nobody really knows the truth about anybody else.
Here you will find quiet charm, the civilized wit, and the indefinable lightness which are the distinguishing marks of a consummate master of English comedy. Here, in short, is a book which will delight A.A. Milne's admirers and will captivate those who are discovering him for the first time.
Alan Alexander Milne (pronounced /ˈmɪln/) was an English author, best known for his books about the teddy bear Winnie-the-Pooh and for various children's poems.
A. A. Milne was born in Kilburn, London, to parents Vince Milne and Sarah Marie Milne (née Heginbotham) and grew up at Henley House School, 6/7 Mortimer Road (now Crescent), Kilburn, a small public school run by his father. One of his teachers was H. G. Wells who taught there in 1889–90. Milne attended Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied on a mathematics scholarship. While there, he edited and wrote for Granta, a student magazine. He collaborated with his brother Kenneth and their articles appeared over the initials AKM. Milne's work came to the attention of the leading British humour magazine Punch, where Milne was to become a contributor and later an assistant editor.
Milne joined the British Army in World War I and served as an officer in the Royal Warwickshire Regiment and later, after a debilitating illness, the Royal Corps of Signals. He was discharged on February 14, 1919.
After the war, he wrote a denunciation of war titled Peace with Honour (1934), which he retracted somewhat with 1940's War with Honour. During World War II, Milne was one of the most prominent critics of English writer P. G. Wodehouse, who was captured at his country home in France by the Nazis and imprisoned for a year. Wodehouse made radio broadcasts about his internment, which were broadcast from Berlin. Although the light-hearted broadcasts made fun of the Germans, Milne accused Wodehouse of committing an act of near treason by cooperating with his country's enemy. Wodehouse got some revenge on his former friend by creating fatuous parodies of the Christopher Robin poems in some of his later stories, and claiming that Milne "was probably jealous of all other writers.... But I loved his stuff."
He married Dorothy "Daphne" de Sélincourt in 1913, and their only son, Christopher Robin Milne, was born in 1920. In 1925, A. A. Milne bought a country home, Cotchford Farm, in Hartfield, East Sussex. During World War II, A. A. Milne was Captain of the Home Guard in Hartfield & Forest Row, insisting on being plain 'Mr. Milne' to the members of his platoon. He retired to the farm after a stroke and brain surgery in 1952 left him an invalid and by August 1953 "he seemed very old and disenchanted".
Published in 1946 but without reference to WWII, this book is set around 1928 and follows high society people lolling about London with a private income. Everyone is darling and ducky. The ending is quite horrid. This is a poor imitation of the wit and wisdom of Evelyn Waugh with a moral code that was out of date when Trolloppe was writing about it 80 years earlier. I had two other Milne novels to read which I shall not bother with now. All very disappointing.
Книгу читала вночі під час нападів безсоння. Може тому вона мені спочатку не сподобалась. Багато персонажів, забагато деталей і не ясно, чого очікувати від історії. А ще багато незрозумілих сучасному читачеві деталей - про ресторани, газети і особливості побуту середини ХХ ст. Але посупово я втягнулася і навіть почала отримувати задоволення. Надмір деталей більше не непокоїв, а навпаки допомагав відчути себе поряд з героями. Були смішні моменти, були бісячі (як на дівчина з ХХІ ст.), а були трагічні. Загалом за сучасними мірками це дівчача повість - з коханням, паруванням, роздумами. Причому роздумами не тільки про кохання, а й про релігію, трохи політику і багато про життя взагалі. Не мій жанр. Але книга неочікувано сподобалась, а розв'язка стала для мене неоцікуваною, проте цілком логічно, якщо добре подумати.
Of course we all know that A.A. Milne wrote Winnie the Pooh. He also wrote several Plays and was editor of Granta. Chloe Marr is a book of its age published in 1946 but sounding vaguely pre-war where a woman about town plays off several "lovers" off against each other, seemingly full of gaiety but hiding a deep seated loss that means an inability to reconcile a settled life with her own happiness. Her influence over others that come within her circle and how they see her are described in prose that makes you want to write yourself.
When you absoulty adore an author and some of their books, it seems natural that you'd look into other things they've written. Chloe Marr starts off as a book I don't think id normally read, with more than enough "darlings" to go around. Eventually, the book and the characters flow so well, and I found it quite interesting, and at times rather witty or clever, though a tad confusing in a few places, requring a 2nd look to verify a name or detail or some connection between characters that seemed very important, yet never explained further. Despite the middle being very nice (and worth a reread), it didn't seem there'd be enough pages left in the book to finish what had been evolving, and rather abruptly, it seemed the book wanted to be about something else, something though aluded to, not quite ready to be taken out of the oven.
I think it'd be helpful to know what milns motivations where, or what someone else understood from it, but in someways I guess, we can never be on the inside of anyone elses story but our own... and maybe that's part of the point.
Сама книга понравилась - всю дорогу по ходу чтения вспоминалась английская классика, особенно почему-то Диккенс, хотя всё ещё не уверена, что было бы корректно сравнивать этих авторов. И всё же. И те персонажи, которые изначально казались статистами, в процессе обрели свои отличительные черты и развились в полноценных героев, оказавшись вполне себе симпатичными. И юмор присутствует. Не могу сказать, что мне было смешно, но время от времени был повод хотя бы улыбнуться. А вот та, чьим именем названа книга, так и не эволюционировала и осталась каким-то наброском, о котором мы как в начале почти ничего не знаем, так и в конце не узнаём. Вроде она и центр повествования, а на деле оказывается, что книга вообще не про неё, а про тех, кто её окружал. И эмоций они в итоге вызывали куда больше. И как же меня бесила Хлоя, вся из себя очаровательная, которая френдзонила всех подряд мужиков, а они и рады были (ну, может, и не рады, конечно, но послать её по наиболее логичному в данном случае адресу, тем не менее, никто не спешил). Хотя, может, читателям мужского пола такие персонажи и кажутся милыми, но я её не поняла и не прониклась. Ну и конец, возможно, кого-то и расстроил бы, но мне показался логичным и единственно правильным.