The Return of the Soldier [Paperback]

Rebecca West (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1996

World War I, in the background of Rebecca West's first novel, was "the first war that women could imagine, " writes Samuel Hynes in his eloquent introduction, "and so it was the first that a woman could write into a novel." Narrated by a woman who, like West, has never experienced war and yet for whom the war was very real, The Return of the Soldier (1918) takes place not on a battlefield, but in an isolated country house. It examines the relationships between three women and a soldier suffering from shell shock. This novel of an enclosed world invaded by public events also embodies in its characters the shifts in England's class structures at the beginning of the twentieth century, as well as the choice between the romantic past and the horrifying present, between love and reality.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

It would be a crime to give away even the barest outline of Rebecca West's apparently simple, always agonizing first novel. We shall say only that The Return of the Soldier concerns the title character and three very different women to whom he is linked in very different ways--by blood, by marriage, and by love. It is also an imaginative study (one drenched in realism) of intimacy and illusion, possession and a terrible, destructive snobbery. On one estate outside London, even as the Great War and familial loss are taking their toll, the inhabitants strive for a measured, outwardly exquisite existence. All must remain as it was while their Chris is at war: each person, each object in its proper place. "You probably know the beauty of that view," the narrator buttonholes us, looking out the nursery window:

For when Chris rebuilt Baldry Court after his marriage, he handed it over to architects who had not so much the wild eye of the artist as the knowing wink of the manicurist, and between them they massaged the dear old place into matter for innumerable photos in the illustrated papers.

But of late this universe unto itself cannot quite keep out an England altered by ambition and industry. Only a few miles away a "red suburban stain," Wealdstone, has somehow cropped up. And one day all is permanently altered--or, rather, revealed--when a Wealdstone resident comes bearing news of Captain Baldry. Mrs. William Gray is clearly not of Chris's wife Kitty and his cousin Jenny's class, as Kitty in particular makes her aware. "Again her gray eyes brimmed," Jenny observes. "People are rude to one, she visibly said, but surely not nice people like this." How is it, then, that this dreary, "dingy" woman knows Chris and knows that something has happened to him? And how is it that Jenny soon comes to see her as someone "whose personality was sounding through her squalor like a beautiful voice singing in a darkened room"?

In the remainder of this brief, perfect novel, a vanished (or repressed) past and its lost prospect of happiness comes to the fore. Rebecca West is best remembered for Black Lamb and Grey Falcon: A Journey Through Yugoslavia (1941), but she displays the same vision--and a similar degree of realism--in her charged 1916 novel. Many readers will passionately regret the book's last twist, even as they know it to be artistically as well as historically true. --Kerry Fried --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

Rebecca West - highly intelligent, highly gifted, vital, original, combative, formidable and kind - was a great woman VICTORIA GLENDINNING --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 187 pages
• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub (August 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786703474
• ISBN-13: 978-0786703470
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,184,141 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A perfect little novel, August 8, 2000

By 

"jcs456" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Return of the Soldier (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

West's best-known and best novel runs barely longer than a longish short story, yet it is so packed with detail, characterization and incident that it has all the depth of a much longer book while keeping its scope limited to the confines of a country home in rural England. The reader finishes the book (probably after one sitting) feeling as if he/she knows the four major characters intimately, a testament to West's deft, succint, perfectly molded prose. There's not a false note, a misplaced line, a hollow emotion to be found here--critical, since this is a novel nearly exploding with suppressed emotion. One feels deeply--and equally--for the wounded, amnesiac soldier; his distraught young wife; his confused but optimistic ex-girlfirend; and his cousin, the narrator, who harbors her own unrequited love for the man. It is exceedingly rare that any work of art achieves perfection, but "Return of the Soldier" does. Despite its spareness and its limited focus, it is profound in its examination of the human heart. A must read.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At Only 90 Pages, A Powerful Bargain of a Novel, August 16, 2001

By 

C. Ebeling "ctlpareader" (PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Return of the Soldier (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

THE RETURN OF THE SOLDIER, published in 1918, may be the most carefully conceived novel I've ever read, and I've read a fair amount of exquisitely executed fiction. Told from the first person perspective of a spinster whose entire life revolves around her cousin, his life and country mansion, it is the story of an English gentleman who goes off to World War I only to be returned not in a body bag or physically injured but with a severe case of amnesia. He does not recognize his pretty, socially correct wife; he has retreated to a hidden youthful romance with a poor woman. The woman, also married now, comes forth in the interest of helping him. The balance of the plot hangs in the implications of recovery. The balance of the full experience of the novel is to watch characters change or not change their class prejudices and worldview in light of their experiences on this country estate. Though only 90 pages long, much is packed into this book, much that is analogous to the English national experience as it moved from the Victorian era into the 20th century.

The critical introduction, which should be read as an afterward so as not to rob you of the surprises in the novel, does a good job of reviewing the analogies between the tightly closed world of the country estate and the national experience. There is much more to be mined from this novel, including a window on the then new science of psychoanalysis and how it was understood. For me, the narration was a particular revelation. At first I thought the voice a bit melodramatic in a 19th century way, but it became clear that the tone was all part of the author's plan, and that it changed as the narrator's vision changed. The specter of spinsterhood hangs thick in the air, itself a comment on the social condition of the era. Here is the perfect selfless, lonely narrator who knows everything about the lives in her tiny circle. The woman who would be ignored becomes the ideal articulator of how England at home received the war.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A masterpiece, May 3, 2000

By 

Roz Levine - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Return of the Soldier (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) (Paperback)

The Return of the Soldier is a very small book, less than 100 pages, set during the first World War, that will stay with you for a long, long time. West writes about the relationship of three very different women, a wife, spinster cousin and old love, to each other and to the soldier sent home from the front with amnesia. This story is beautifully written and explores many themes, including classism, elitism, true love and hate. Each character is fully developed, each setting, vivid and though there is not a spare word in this book, it says so much. A book that should be read and discussed by everyone.