Customer Reviews

The History of Mr. Polly

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A friend recommended this book to me after I explained how much fun I was having after leaving work in DC, returning to Minnesota, playing with my kids, joining a mountain biking team and genuinely enjoying my unemplyed status for 9 months. She said it was a philosophical book.

I spent the entire book trying to figure out why she thought of this book after I got through telling her how great my life was at the present. Mr. Polly clearly was not living a great life and always seemed to be on the wrong side of circumstance. It wasn't until the very end of the book that I realized the context my friend applied to my happenings.

The book, for it's strange accents and period vocabulary, was as riveting as any Grisham or Baldacci novel. I don't really know why - but it was. And the last few pages makes one think very hard about the meaning of life, which even for an unemployed child-at-heart, is important to do now and again.

I finished reading this novella a few days ago. I must first admit that for the first 25 or so pages, I wasn't particulaly tuned into what the book was about. It is, as Wells mentioned, a history, so I was rather thrown at the beginning. Once I got the gist of it, particularly the gist of Mr. Polly and his eccentricities, I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

The only other Wells book I had read was the Island of Dr. Moreau, which, like his other romantic science-fiction novels he is famous for, was somewhat plot-driven rather than character-driven. This book, is, as the title would lead you to suspect, character-driven.

We begin our read with the bored, frustrated Mr. Polly, what he is feeling and how he deals with his life in general. Then the actual history starts, and Wells's beautiful, if somewhat excessive vocabulary answers the reader's question of who this Mr. Polly is. I found him to a be a very refreshing hero, being rather ordinary, and dealing with the concerns of anyone's life, particularly that of a middle-aged man. He does not "save the day" by perfoming any conventional (or even moral) acts, but this only makes him more real. Mr. Polly's passion for epithet is absolutely delightful, and gave me a great sense of pleasure to watch him go about his transformation.

This was a terriffic, merry little book, with a central character worthy of some of the finest in literature, at least from the limited literature I have read. Don't be fooled by the humorous facade however; there is a deeper message, one which will become relevant at some time in all our lives. It isn't one of Wells's most well known books, but it should be. A superb little gem.

This one came out of nowhere. An absolutely brilliant comic novel. Like all great comic novels, it's never patronizing. Though the narrator places himself at a distance from Mr. Polly, he's never condescends. The tone is warm and witty, genuinely moving rather than sentimental. It's an honest look at the middle class, cased in a Romantic (as in Knights and Quests) narrative. Really, really great. Definitely worth your time.

I've never liked Wells. This is the first of his books I've been able to force myself to finish. I didn't love it but it was FUNNY! My friends, no doubt smarter and more learned than me, told me the book contained social commentary, that Wells was a socialist with an agenda of showing the superiority of that type of system. Poor Mr. Polly seems to wander around with no aim, his past, with a dead mother and an emotionally absent father provides no support and he stumbles into his future with no clear goal in mind. He puts one foot in front of the other. He's also cantankerous, not easy in his relations with others. This causes him no end of troubles but that provides much of the the humor. Through a small inheritance he's able to set up shop and marry but he puts no effort into either shop or wife. He prefers to read all day in his lonely shop and pick fights with first one neighbor and then the next until he's alienated all of them. Is this where socialism comes in? Free trade = bad, leads to discontent and alienation? Then he finally goes too far and creates a catastrophe but for once makes it work for himself. He leaves shop and wife and finds, eventually, a place he feels he belongs, where he can relax and watch sunsets, feel content. But the best part of the book and what made it worthwhile for was the slapstick comedy.

The climactic and hilarious confrontation between Mr. Polly and the low-life ruffian Uncle Jim is so masterful that one might forget all the other comic gems included in this novel. At the same time, the reader will feel the power of Wells' legendary intelligence on every page. The History of Mr. Polly is loaded with thought-provoking observations on the topics of marraige, love, business, education, friendship, insurance fraud and -- most of all -- happiness.

Mr.Polly is one of H.G. Wells' novels of contemporary society, albeit with a comic dimension, detailing the escape of an archtypical "little man" from a life of quiet desperation. It is splendidly read by Clive Swift, an inspired choice, who by his voice inflexions and range of accent conveys brilliantly the ethos of precarious respectability and suffocating normality in which the anti-hero lives. This reading of the novel conveys the very feel of that lost lower-middle class, pre-World War I, world of minute social gradations, of stifling conformity and of emerging awareness of the potential for change through education and science. Hearing it some nine decades on one is very uncomfortably aware that this entire world is about to be scorched away and that the young shop-assistants and tradesmen who populate it have an appointment with destiny in the Pals' Battalions they will flock to when Armageddon looms. Wells' portrayal of the nuances of this world is sharply delineated, reflecting direct personal experience, and the frequent comedy never obscures the accuracy of the observation. Despite the humour - bordering on the farcical in Mr.Polly's confrontation with the dreaded Uncle Jim - there is a hollow centre to the story. Mr. Polly may escape one round of futility, but the liberation he discovers is scarcely more life or spirit-enhancing than that which he left behind. The book ends with Mr.Polly (it is notable that one still cannot drop the Mr., that defining badge of respectability) achieving a degree of animal contentment but still oppressed by a sense of the futility of existence. In this, as in his Science Fiction, Wells' vision is barren and hopeless. He was capable, as almost no other writer before or since, of visualising material progress with uncanny accuracy, but he missed any sense of the potential and grandeur of the human spirit. It is this that makes this story, though superficially enjoyable, finally so unsatisfactory.

I had to read "The History of Mr. Polly" at school when I was in my early teens. I hated it. (At least there are people my own age in "Lord of the Flies" - why do I need to read about this geezer?) Now I am around the same time in my life as Mr. Polly (yes, a geezer). So, when my wife and I (yes, married, too) decided to lay out $80 for a kindle and I saw that everything by H. G. Wells is free, I immediately downloaded this book. This time, I found it a delightful read. Wells is sensitive to his titular character, but at the same time ruthless in putting him in ridiculous situations and having him stumble his way out in a manner that is often far from advantageous. The entire story is very believable and comes to a happy ending for all the characters with whom we sympathize. That said, my wife, an English Literature major, said "no" when I asked her if she would read it. But, she's into contemporary, female, American writers, which I guess rules out poor old Herbert George on three counts.

The kindle? Well, it was worth the $80 to find this out, but neither of us turn out to be e-book people. We'll stick with the mashed-up trees and long as they survive. However, the kindle is great for traveling, particularly on a plane. We'll read free kindle books on the road and buy real paper books to read at home. The quality of free kindle books turns out to be spotty. I didn't find anything wrong with this one, but others have been poor. For example, in "Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There", all the poems are completely missing.

I did not know anything about it when I got it. It presented itself to me as a mild story, very well written, about a lackluster guy living an aimless and lackluster life. More than once I asked myself why I kept reading it, but I did. Only at then end did it come close to having a philosophical note. But it was a mild and enjoyable pastime and I am glad I read it. I think it was the way it was written which held me and gave it what it has.

H.G. Wells wrote on a lot of topics: science fiction, politics, history, religion - mostly very heady and heavy reading. I have read and enjoyed many Wells books in a variety of genres, but this is his first novel I have ever read that is not sci-fi and not overtly political. It's just a good natured story of a man. It is the story of me, at least if I was an Englishman who lived a century ago.

The History of Mr Polly is a darkly funny tale of a man, obviously called Mr Polly. (Although we are told Polly's first name, he doesn't go by it much. This somehow makes him feel more like an Everyman that I can relate to rather than a unique character.) Mr Polly is in his mid 30s and bored with life. He owns a men's clothing shop which is not a fulfilling occupation for him. He is married to a nagging woman whom he never really loved. His business is not going well and he is worried he may have to file bankruptcy and close shop. He is bored, depressed, broke, unfulfilled, and trapped like a prisoner in his own life. The reader gets to see a snapshot of his less-than-perfect domestic life and then is told that Mr Polly will botch up a suicide attempt, burn down his shop, and escape to a new life. Is the reader interested yet? You will have to wait until later to read about the suicide attempt and its aftermath. We must first go back in time...

We see Mr Polly as a school boy and temporarily happy. We see him grow up, fall out with his closest friends, half-mourn the death of his distant father, pressured into buying a store he didn't want, and marrying a woman just because he thought it was what he was supposed to do. I think that in the hands of a lesser writer this would come off as a boring, pitiful story of someone we feel no concern for because he lacks the courage to stand up and take control of his own life rather than just letting things happen to him. But H.G. Wells keeps us entertained and makes us think. Mr Polly is a very dynamic character who uses interesting language, does semi-absurd things, and thinks semi-profound thoughts of the sort that most of us can probably relate to. One alternates between gut-busting laughter and feeling the depression of Mr Polly as related to their own. And then we get to the failed suicide attempt and all the accidental, non-heroic things that allow Mr Polly to start a new life and seem to be happy for a change. I won't spoil it for you.

I highly recommend this book: brilliant, incredibly funny, charming, witty, British, intelligent, thought-provoking, dark, depressing, cathartic, hopeful, and inspiring. This is one of H.G. Wells' masterpieces, and it is a shame that so few people are aware of it.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect in the first page or two, but persevered, and was rewarded with a main character richly drawn, supremely human, and quite funny. The tale of Mr. Polly, wherein things "just happen" to him, has resonance today and is a good tale in the H.G. Wells tradition. I found myself wondering how he was getting on, even after I finished the book.