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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
My first Forsyte Book.,
By frumiousb "frumiousb" (Amsterdam, the Netherlands) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER)
This review is from: Man of Property: The Forsyte Saga (Wordsworth Classics) (Paperback)
This book is bound to appeal to readers like myself who are interested in novels of manners, but should also be an interesting read for the more general reader The Forsyte clan will be recognizable to virtually everybody as members of the splendid and self-satisfied middle class and in a sense the story is about what happens when other people notable for something besides their position (beauty or talent) come into contact with them.
One of the things that I like about Galsworthy is that while he spares nothing in his treatment of the Forsytes, he is also not unfair or unkind. The good aspects of the Forsytes (June and Jolyon) are treated as well as the bad and in the end I even felt as sorry for Soames (almost) as much as I did for Irene or Bosinney. The Man of Property is bound together with a short interlude called "Indian Summer of a Forsyte" which takes you through generational change and into (presumably) the next novel. I look forward to reading the entire saga.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
You won't want to stop here,
By
This review is from: Man of Property: The Forsyte Saga (Wordsworth Classics) (Paperback)
Everyone's heard of "The Forsyte Saga," the BBC family epic of the late Victorian Age. Fewer have read the Galsworthy book, and that's a shame, because it's fascinating on so many levels. "The Man of Property" is only the beginning of a fabulous story--you will want to find out what happens to these characters.
On the surface it's the story of Soames Forsyte, the quintessential icon of the growth of the upper middle classes and the decline of the nobility during the Victorian era. Descended from a farmer in Dorset in the not-too-distant past, Soames is a lawyer and a man of property. He buys wisely, sells more wisely, and husbands his wealth and that of the family. He is in control of everything that affects him, except one thing--his wife. Desiring to possess the sensitive, beautiful, genteel but poor Irene, and with the help of a callous mother, Soames pressures Irene into becoming his wife. From this single mistake, the one time Soames let passion rule, his life and the lives of his family and their descendants are changed in unpredictable and frightening ways. Galsworthy's theme is the constant tussle in life between property and art, love and possession, freedom and convention. In the fine tradition of family sagas, these themes play themselves out over and over with each generation. On another level, this is the story of an age, the story of the British Empire at its peak. Galsworthy packs his book with allusions to the great crises of the time, the Boer War and WWI, the rise of Labour, the death of the Queen, the spread of "democracy." The Forsyte homes are meticulously detailed, from the French reproduction furniture to the dusty sofas to the heavy drapes, to the fireplace grate, to the electric lights in the old chandeliers. Soames collects art, and Galsworthy showers us with the opinions of a British gentleman of the great and not so great art of the day. The saga was written over a period of many years, and on yet another level I found the the changes in Galsworthy's style from the rather clipped, detailed recitations of events and commentary typical of the 19th century to the more expressive style of the 20th. Especially in the first volume of the three, family relationships are painstakingly laid out, the rounds of dinners and family gatherings carefully chronicled. By the third volume, To Let, Galsworthy reveals the love of the countryside and the pain of repressed emotions that the family members a generation ago would have hidden. The writing is very beautiful--as in this sentence: "Fleur raised her eyelids--the restless glint of those clear whites remained on Holly's vision as might the flutter of a caged bird's wings." It took me a good six weeks to plow through The Forsyte Saga, but it was worth it.
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good start to a trilogy that gets better book by book,
By E.J. Kaye (Chicago) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Man of Property: The Forsyte Saga (Wordsworth Classics) (Paperback)
This is a fine book, with characters that come alive and prose with which it is easy to engage. The satire can be a bit heavy at times, but the story is nonetheless compelling
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