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frasersimons 's review for:
The Good Soldier
by Ford Madox Ford
I found this book difficult to rate because it’s one of those novels that I’m not sure you’d enjoy. It being well written and the structure unique, it’s satisfying in some ways. But the characters, including the narrator of the story, are so unlikeable and occupy a world without consequence, that it becomes infuriating. It’s almost like hate reading something. Almost.
The story is about the sordid affairs of two intensely rich couples who’s casual relationship vacationing together become entangled in a web of intrigue that sets them on a path of madness, sex, and death. The narrator tells the story in a meandering way as though he’s putting the pieces together himself even as it becomes clear he’s a participant.
The structure of the book signals this often. He begins telling you of the people and then mentions a detail that seems innocuous but as he circles back to the actual event later on, paints it in a different light. The near constant obfuscation, I think, points to the narrator being a sociopath and a narcissist. It’s important to him that the reader get “the right idea” about himself and Edward when they are both toxic partners and wouldn’t know intimacy as it was occurring.
What was brilliant about it was the way in which it truly sets the rich and the aristocracy apart as a desperate, vile separate species. Their world is not enticing in the least because they do not possess humanity. Ironically, the whole text in of itself is the narrator attempting to convince the reader of his own and others humanity while washing his hands clean of any wrong doing in the tale.
It is highly effective in endearing the reader to the tale with its contempt for the rich and the unreliable nature of the tale makes the reader hunt and peck for truth between details that cross cross as the narrator returns to events multiple times. That particular part of the structure makes it quite annoying sometimes and won’t be for everybody. Especially when it becomes clear he could not have known all of these things. So what is actually true and what is not?
The story is about the sordid affairs of two intensely rich couples who’s casual relationship vacationing together become entangled in a web of intrigue that sets them on a path of madness, sex, and death. The narrator tells the story in a meandering way as though he’s putting the pieces together himself even as it becomes clear he’s a participant.
The structure of the book signals this often. He begins telling you of the people and then mentions a detail that seems innocuous but as he circles back to the actual event later on, paints it in a different light. The near constant obfuscation, I think, points to the narrator being a sociopath and a narcissist. It’s important to him that the reader get “the right idea” about himself and Edward when they are both toxic partners and wouldn’t know intimacy as it was occurring.
What was brilliant about it was the way in which it truly sets the rich and the aristocracy apart as a desperate, vile separate species. Their world is not enticing in the least because they do not possess humanity. Ironically, the whole text in of itself is the narrator attempting to convince the reader of his own and others humanity while washing his hands clean of any wrong doing in the tale.
It is highly effective in endearing the reader to the tale with its contempt for the rich and the unreliable nature of the tale makes the reader hunt and peck for truth between details that cross cross as the narrator returns to events multiple times. That particular part of the structure makes it quite annoying sometimes and won’t be for everybody. Especially when it becomes clear he could not have known all of these things. So what is actually true and what is not?