Customer Reviews

Good Companions

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This book is great. I'm not normally into comparisons - just don't expect anything below the high standard of Dickens or Thackeray. I think you may find this an easier read though. The Good Companions are a 3rd rate theatre company represented by an unusual assortment of characters, each of them on their own unique passage through life, intersecting in the forming of the Good Companions. It's a story that's rich in humour, pathos and humanity. Priestly's characters are as real as any you may expect to meet in similar setting, with the exception of one or two intentionally "larger than life" caricatures who provide an enjoyable excess of colour and movement. It is the realistic and detailed portrayal of each individual's journey that gives the story it's robustness. A lot can be learnt from these characters and their particular era of fast-moving social change. A deeper longing for a distant shore resides in the soul of each character and though not expressed in words, it underpins their relationship with one another and drives the reader on to a satisfying conclusion.

I love this story. My parents read this book to my brother and me when we were kids and we have both re-read it as adults. I read The Good Companions and Let the People Sing! to my son when he was 8-9 years old and he loved them. J.B.Priestley has a genius for starting his characters out in cramped, miserable, unhappy, gray lives. You feel their imprisoned state, incarcerated by their personal unappreciative, unfriendly guardians of righteousness of varied sorts. Then, these prisoners of life make a desperate leap into the unknown. This jump off the edge of their known world becomes the center on which new adventures begin to spin, like cotton candy gathering on a stick. The fun becomes brighter in color and there's more of it the farther you go.

The stories do start off slowly and unhappily, providing the counterpoint reference for the hilarity to come. It's a bit like Enchanted April - a release from gray constricted misery into expanded dimensions of life. It's a bit like Peter Sellers' character in The Party, excruciatingly out of place until circumstances change, the pace picks up and broad farce ensues.

Maybe it's best to begin The Good Companions by hearing the story read out loud. Both my parents were terrific at imparting characters as they read - my mom is still the best Eeyore I have ever heard.

If you have the patience to wade through the foundation of unhappiness, you will immensely enjoy the fun and surprises to come.

It took me several grueling months to make it through this book. I am quite fond of Priestley's other writing, so I thought this was a sure bet--the book that made him famous, it says on the cover! Well, reading this book is like being stuck at an old lady's house, being pumped full of camomile tea and flavorless biscuits, and hearing the same dim-witted stories again and again about her travels all around England in her youth back when she was theatrically inclined. This isn't a particularly intelligent lady, mind, and she has a real tin ear for dialog...

Nothing much happens for the first 200 pages or so, other than the main three characters being introduced. Almost none of the information in the first third of the book will be useful to you in the rest of the book. It could have been done in 30 pages, easily, without any loss of steam or impact. Then we meet the rest of the characters. They all have the same tedious, chatty manner of speaking, and the only difference between them is whether they speak some 'orrible phonetically spelled English regional dialect or the straight middle-brow variety.

The middle of the book is sheer tedium. Just when you think something interesting happens, the story dissipates. It sort of makes sense for a road novel, which this essentially is, but let me just tell you it ain't no Odyssey. Reading this part of the story, where the theater company is formed and they start having their "ups and downs", is where I really started to lose hope.

The end is dull and predictable. Nothing happens that you couldn't have anticipated after reading the first half of the book. By the time I realized this, I started reading at a faster clip, skipping much of the redundant, dull dialogues and paying attention only to major events. They are contrived and tedious, and the book at this point seems really dated, without any sort of relevance to the modern reader.

Do I regret reading this book? Yes. Do I wish I had spent my time on something else? Absolutely. Would I wish it on my worst enemy? Probably not. I am not that cruel.