Customer Reviews

Ford Madox Ford: Parade's End (Carcanet fiction)

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How I wish I could urge this enormous, engrossing, and satisfying novel on everyone who, for instance, loved Pat Barker's WWI Trilogy, or Ford's own THE GOOD SOLDIER, or Mary Renault's THE CHARIOTEER, or indeed anyone who cares about intricate characterization, a terrific love story, sweep and intricacy in serious fiction. The love story of Christopher Tietjens and Valentine Wannop, and Tietjens monumental battle with his vicious wife Sylvia and all the British ruling class who prop her up, will enthrall you. Let the Ford Madox Ford revival begin!

Firstly, to be clear, this is NOT a book about the Great War. It is a soap opera and a very poorly written one at that. I find it extremely hard to believe that this book is considered a classic of First World War literature. There are elements of "war and peace", "great expectations" and even "peyton place" and none of it works. The point of the book seems to be to showcase the petty lives of the upper class before, during and after the war. The writing technique is erratic and extremely verbose which fails to impart his intent to the reader. The main characters are wooden yet bizarre, to say the least, so that you have no empathy or sympathy for them at all.
Ford manages to take a seminal event in history and make it incredibly confusing and boring (perhaps that was his intent?). There is nothing for the reader to relate to and I suspected the author did not serve in the trenches themselves (he didn't).
The "hero" is an upper-class 'bean-counter' prior to the war and is a 'bean counter' during the war who, through pure chance gets slightly injured by an artillery shell (similar to Hueffer aka Ford's own experience).
The author tries to do much too much and fails miserably to engross the reader in the story or the characters. This book will only appeal to certain tastes. For Great War novels stick with authors such as Remarque or Manning.