Customer Reviews

Mr Weston's Good Wine

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Although not one of the towering books of the twentieth century, this is surely one of the most satisfying. The Mr. Weston of the title is no one less than God Himself, who visits the English village of Folly Down in the guise of a travelling wine vendor. Accompanied by his assistant, the Archangel Michael, he makes his way among the inhabitants of Folly Down, doing justice to the wicked and comforting the afflicted as far as he is able. However, Mr. Weston finds sorting out the problems of human merit and desert as puzzling and difficult as do the rest of us. But in the end good and justice, of a sort, prevail.

While this is definitely a novel about God and His relationship to His creatures, it is far from orthodox. In fact, although Powys takes his subject quite seriously and movingly, he writes with a sly, down to earth humor. Unfortunately, this may work against the book's ever becoming popular--it's too irreverent and racy for the piously stuffy, too thoughtful and honest for the facile unbeliever. However, anyone--believer, agnostic, or atheist--who is curious about how a benevolent God might manage His less than benevolent creation, or how such a God might even become accountable to His creatures, will find this book rewarding. Heck, even this good ole Southern Baptist boy from Cut and Shoot, TX, liked readin it!

Theodore Francis Powys was the son of an Anglican clergyman, one of three writers in the family. Most of his best work is in his short stories; the novels are inclined to be shapeless and uneven. This is the exception.

T.F. Powys made his fiction out of his life-long quarrel with God. He was haunted by the beauty of Jesus and the Gospels; tormented by their irrelation to the Way of the World; unable to accept any known theological "solution" to this disparity. Living almost all his life in a small village in Dorset, he saw plenty of human stupidity, brutishness, violence, exploitativeness, selfishness, cruelty. Like Job he looked up at the massing clouds and asked, "Why?"

In some books he gives human wickedness heart-breaking shapes; but here he paints almost entirely in bright colours, shadowed only by his acceptance that, for some people, and for some problems, darkness and dissolution may be the kindest or the only answer.

This story radiates magic; while you read it the world is suspended like the Courtiers in "Sleeping Beauty". Mr. Weston the wine-merchant arrives in the village of Folly Down. Mr. Weston is... well, it doesn't take much guessing. Luke Bird embodies the Gospel; Tamar is unbound natural goodness, a figure from Blake. Her father the Vicar is sorrow that can never be healed.

Mr. Weston's coming precipitates the solution to all the villagers' intertwined problems; the good end happily, the bad end unhappily, and the author smiles wistfully as he ties up the loose ends. It would have made a wonderful movie back in the 30's or 40's, a kindly, grave, wise comforting fantasy brushed at times by dark shadows like blackbirds' wings.

It is a very good book. It is a pity that is almost impossible to find it, even in english (italian would be better).

Kind regards

I was lent this book by a friend of mine, who said that something I had written had reminded him of it. I know nothing of the author and for the first 30 or 40 pages really didn't like this book: I thought it was poorly written, showed the author's opinions too grubbily, and had all the marks of those early-twentieth century dilletantes - the upper classes, country vicars, blue rinse spinsters and retired soldiers - that believe that because they can write words they can therefore write novels people will want to read (celebrities are the modern equivalent). But then my attitude changed and its true charm overtook me. As a naive, if not too subtle, allegory it works well. The characters that start off seeming shallow, crude and generally unbelievable, grew to become sturdy archetypes straight out of folk tale: yes, Mr Grutter may be stupid, but so is Jack of the beanstalk. The religion it pushes rather too hard is of a peculiar kind, which seems to advocate sex before marriage as long as it is between two loving hearts. It also avoids gawky sentimentality by portraying an evil of a particularly disarming and frank kind: a bitter old woman pimping the young village girls to the squire's sons. I'm sure that the book is no longer available, and I'm certain that the religious theme would grow very tiresome very quickly if used in his other books, but I enjoyed this book and perhaps wish that I'd read it with a different attitude from the very beginning.