Book Review by George S: Locke is a difficult writer to classify. In 1919, J.C. Squire wrote: The position of Mr W.J.Locke has always been a little odd. no serious critic of literature can take him seriously as being in the category of great novelists. And yet no critic can withhold his unwilling admiration for … Continue reading
Tagged with First World War …
Richard Chatterton V.C. (1915) by Ruby M. Ayres
Book review by George Simmers: The Great War came as something of a boon to romantic novelists. It offered dramatic new ways of refreshing all their favourite tropes: separation, misunderstanding, yearning,suffering. Ruby M. Ayres was a successful magazine writer before the war began, but Richard Chatterton V.C. made her reputation. It began as a serial … Continue reading
The Pretty Lady (1918) by Arnold Bennett
Book review by George Simmers: The Pretty Lady (1918) was Arnold Bennett’s novel of wartime London. It centres on the relationship between Christine, a French prostitute who had fled from the invading Germans at Ostend, and G.J. Hoape, her privileged client. Prostitution was a subject that Bennett had previously kept away from; in 1910, he … Continue reading
Giant’s Bread by Mary Westmacott (1930)
Book review by George S: This is the first of the novels that Agatha Christie published under the name of Mary Westmacott. It is an odd book, though an interesting one. (Warning: The review contains spoilers.) It begins with a prologue, the opening night of a new opera, The Giant, by an unknown Russian composer. … Continue reading
Living Alone (1919) by Stella Benson
Book review by Sophie H: Stella Benson’s 1919 novel Living Alone opens with an eccentric young woman (who is later revealed to have magical powers) bursting into a meeting of the ‘Committee for War Savings’, after being chased for stealing a bun. The witch, who through a misunderstanding eventually becomes known as Angela although she … Continue reading
We That Were Young (1932) by Irene Rathbone.
Book Review by Sylvia D: Members of our Reading Group will remember that what seems like a hundred years ago now when we still lived real lives, we were reading anti-war and pacifist novels from our period. I read Neville Shute’s On the Beach (1957), the ultimate anti-war novel, which those of you who have … Continue reading
The Fortune (1917) by Douglas Goldring
Book review by George S: This month the reading group looked at books featuring war resisters and the war-sceptical. I read The Fortune by Douglas Goldring, a novel which could not find a publisher in England in 1917, but was published in Ireland by the firm of Maunsell and Co. It is reckoned that only … Continue reading
The Bulpington of Blup (1932) by H.G. Wells
Book Review by George S: 1932 is a long time after H.G. Wells’s brilliant scientific fables of the 1890s, and over the intervening period he had developed into a pretty bad novelist. But of The Bulpington of Blup, one can say that, while it is indeed not a good novel, it is not as dreary … Continue reading
Man and Maid (1922) by Elinor Glyn
Book Review by George S: This is a thoroughly unpleasant book. It takes the form of the journal of Sir Nicholas Thormonde, who has been wounded in the Great War: I am sick of my life—The war has robbed it of all that a young man can find of joy.I look at my mutilated face … Continue reading
Across the Black Waters (1939) by Mulk Raj Anand
Book Review by George S: Across the Black Waters is the second volume in a trilogy by Mulk Raj Anand. The other volumes are: The Village, which describes the early life of Lalu, and ends with him joining the Indian Army; and The Sword and the Sickle, which follows his life in the years after … Continue reading
Reading 1900-1950 