Peter Leonard is about to embark on his career as an Oxford don, newly married and having completed his studies. His brother Brian is launched into the exciting world of international motor racing as a member of the MG racing team. These two characters form the basis for this book.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Real sense of 30s England,
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This review is from: Comedies (Hardcover)
Bit of a long shot - I like David Lodge, and vaguely recalled that John Wain was also an academic literary critic.
The novel is probably teasingly autobiographical, as it follows the career and home life of an academic just gaining a position after graduating with an honours first in history in 1933. It's very much set in a time and place, overtly following the pre-war and war years, and while Wain isn't shy of political dialogue, he is more concerned with major family events. The career is more a background. You get a real feel for a different time characterised by different values, caught between the modern indifference to morality, and the stark `proper' behaviour prescribed by, say, the still strong Victorian tradition. Thus the protagonist is an atheist who largely without regret pursues an affair while forced away from his wife and child during the war - yet he (and Wain one feels) is quietly but deeply proud of how his country persevered and overcame against Hitler. As one of the opening quotations says: 'It is hard for men to fight when they know only what they are fighting against and not what they are fighting for.' (Arthur Koestler - whoever he may be) A very post-modern sentiment, yet he is still fighting. And don't get the wrong idea: while there is some soul-searching going on, the book is not largely reams of introspection - there is usually some action or dialogue carrying you along. Not, of course, `thriller' action. There's no-one I really love or hate or laugh with here, there's a level of reserve that is frightfully English, which is why the book didn't vitally grip me. That being said, it still always kept my interest, and was full of diverting pictures of a range of people from this other time, and the way their social conditioning saw them interact. The family particularly keep popping in with some unavoidable crisis or another. The Lodge link isn't so far off, although Wain doesn't have quite the same sting or humour. He does, however, give a real sense of time and place: I suspect you could learn more about life in 30s England here than in many a history text. For example, it was fascinating to have as a character an intelligent, empathetic committed socialist in a time where there was none of the stigma of Hitler's National Socialism or Stalin's Socialist Republic - and also seeing her devastation in the face of these: socialism `felt' a lot different for a while there. There is, perhaps, a caveat though: there's something of Robert Cormier's prurient cynicism (I need to find a better term for the practise) in a more subtle way that has everyone seem to have some significant sexual misdemeanour in their past. Characters aren't that complex either: once you get a handle on them, they stay true and will not surprise you.
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