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A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement Paperback – June 15, 1995

by Anthony Powell (Author)

18 customer reviews

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Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art. In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.). The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses.

In the background of this second volume of A Dance to the Music of Time, the rumble of distant events in Germany and Spain presages the storm of World War II. In England, even as the whirl of marriages and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures gathers speed, men and women find themselves on the brink of fateful choices.

Includes these novels:
At Lady Molly's
Casanova's Chinese Restaurant
The Kindly Ones

A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement

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Product Details

Series: Dance to the Music of Time
Paperback: 746 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; First Thus edition (June 15, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226677168
ISBN-13: 978-0226677163
Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 1.7 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #236,754 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #5739 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Classics
- #7831 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary
- #14611 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Literary

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Customer Reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars

5 star		78%
4 star		11%
3 star		6%
2 star		0%
1 star		5%

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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful

One of the best novels written in English

By A Customer on October 30, 1998

Format: Paperback

This volume contains the second three novels of Anthony Powell's masterpiece, A Dance to the Music of Time. Readers coming to this series for the first time should start with the first volume. Powell's work is social comedy in the tradition of Jane Austen and George Meredith. Contemporary writers with whom he is often compared include Marcel Proust and Evelyn Waugh. The 12 short novels of A Dance to the Music of Time give a panoramic picture of English upper-class social life from 1921 to 1971 that is both intensely realistic and amazingly funny. Readers either love Powell's work or can't understand what others see in it. My own opinion is that Dance is the best novel written in the twentieth century. Others share this view: A Dance to the Music of Time is #43 on the recently constructed Random House/Modern Library 100 Best Poll (of twentieth century fiction) and was made into a 4-part miniseries on British television just about a year ago.

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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

More of the greatest 20th Century English novel

By Richard R. Horton on July 14, 2000

Format: Paperback

_A Dance to the Music of Time_ is an extremely absorbing and well-crafted novel (composed of 12 smaller novels). Its subject is the decline of the English upper classes from the First World War to about 1970, a decline seen is inevitable and probably necessary, but somehow also regrettable.
Such a description might make the novel seem stuffy, but it is not. _A Dance to the Music of Time_ is at times very funny indeed, and always interesting. always involving. It features an enormous cast of characters, and Powell has the remarkable ability to make his characters memorable with the briefest of descriptions. In addition, Powell's prose is addictive: very characteristic, idiosyncratic, and elegant.
The long novel follows the life of the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, from his time at Eton just after World War I to retirement in the English countryside in the late '60s. But Jenkins, though the narrator, is in many ways not the most important character. The comic villain Widmerpool, a creature of pure will, and awkward malevolence, is the other fulcrum around which the novel pivots.
This second volume of the University of Chicago's beautiful trade paperback editions features books 4, 5 and 6 of the novel series. _At Lady Molly's_ is centered around the eccentric title character and her parties, as well as such other characters as her eccentric husband, Ted Jeavons, and even Nick Jenkins' wife-to-be, Isobel. _Casanova's Chinese Restaurant_ opens with a bravura prose set-piece of flashback within flashback, and deals with Jenkins' great friend the composer Hugh Moreland, and with the tragically unhappily married critic Maclintick. The subject of the novel is marriage. The last novel in this book is _The Kindly Ones_, which deals with the coming of World War II. It begins with a flashback to 1914, as the First World War breaks out and impinges on Jenkins' childhood, then continues in the late '30s as Europe heads again into war.

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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

Having Fun Fun Fun in the Frantic Gaiety of Pre-War London

By Stephanie De Pue VINE VOICE on March 29, 2008

Format: Paperback

"A Dance to the Music of Time" is one of the great glories of twentieth century English literature, a sharply observed, highly literate, disturbingly entertaining series, originally published in twelve volumes, by British author Anthony Powell. It has since been collected into four mega-volumes, called movements, by its publisher. The second movement consists of three of the original novels: "At Lady Molly's," "Casanova's Chinese Restaurant," and "The Kindly Ones."

"At Lady Molly's" is set in the ferment that was pre World War II London. The war was noticeably casting its shadow forward: people were concerned about happenings in Germany and Spain, and were highly-politicized - never before or since has London seen so many self-proclaimed Communists. But Nick Jenkins, our narrator, is young and handsome, working as a screen writer in the nascent British film industry, and having a good time, as are most of his friends. Their lives are highly sexualized: in the frantic gaiety of the time, they're busy running off with other people's husbands, wives, and sheep, for all I know. Nick will meet the girl of his dreams at Lady Molly's. Widmerpool is continuing his irresistible climb to fame and power. It's one of the funniest of the books, and has some of its author's best-known witticisms, as when one character says to another, "Women may show some discrimination about whom they sleep with, but they'll marry anybody."

"Casanova's Chinese Restaurant," finds Jenkins mingling with London's artistic and musical crowds, enjoying the life of a young married. People are off to fight in Spain and see firsthand what the Japanese are up to in China.Read more ›

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

Plenty Happens--the stuff of real life--in stories beautifully told.

By Laurence R. Bachmann VINE VOICE on September 20, 2011

Format: Paperback Verified Purchase

The notion that "nothing happens" in A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement, is preposterous. True, there are no car chases, murders or coup d'etat. If that is what you insist upon from fiction, these books are definitely not for you. But plenty else is happening. People you met in the first three novels are growing up. Some are finding spouses, some divorcing them. A few are succeeding terrifically. A number are floundering or worse. The "Slump" (aka The Great Depression) continues unabated and continues to take its toll upon the upper-middle and upper classes. And Poussin's classical painting of the eponymous title and its depiction of unchanging grace and beauty seems increasingly ironic.

Again, a triptych of novels (At Lady Molly's, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant and The Kindly Ones) depicts Powell's late 1930s. Nick Jenkins, hero and narrator, has moved on to screenwriting and from debutante balls to the more mature haunts of the drawing room. He continues (at first to my dismay--now I am simply resigned to the device) to continually and "coincidentally" bump into old acquaintances. ALM literally is a laundry list of these run-ins, and told with perfect comic pitch. Widermerpool resurfaces and is as great a buffoon as ever. The buffoon of youth, who seemed so hopeless before is still appallingly clumsy socially-- but successful otherwise. Love affairs that seemed so passionate and exciting have dissipated, and from the outset we are aware that Nick will get himself a wife before long. Why? Because that's what people do.

Casanova's Chinese Restaurant is less comic. More a meditation on art, relationships and trying to find happiness.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

Good story--sometimes hard to follow

It's a good story but is written in an old fashioned style that some readers may find hard to follow. I enjoyed it but it is not light reading.

Published 8 months ago by Mary G. Walsh

The uncanny story of how to keep finding everyone you know without...

Stories set just before WWII are almost automatically interesting, especially when the story is written some time after the events depicted, thus allowing the author to indulge in... Read more

Published 8 months ago by Michael Battaglia

This four-part Mega-novel is a unique and utterly charming view ...

This four-part Mega-novel is a unique and utterly charming view into life in England in the 20th century. Don't be put off by the cover, this is a light-hearted masterpiece.

Published 12 months ago by Mercedes Lackey

That slice - upper middle class & lower aristocracy - could scarcely...

I'm in the process of revisiting "A Dance...." after some 30 years since first reading, and enjoying it every bit as much as the first time. Read more

Published 15 months ago by Len Lythgoe

Reality television before such a thing existed. Although considered...

Reality television before such a thing existed. Although considered the longest work in the English Language, goes by quickly as you take an observers seat to the life of the... Read more

Published 17 months ago by Alton L. McCormick

Powell's Masterpiece

Of course, you need all four "movements" of this glorious work to appreciate the second, the book under review. Read more

Published on November 21, 2013 by reading man

Very Poor Quality

I'm only commenting on the physical quality of the book. My edition of the first movement in softcover is beautifully printed on nice white permanent paper so I was shocked when... Read more

Published on August 2, 2013 by Jake Hertz

2nd Movement expands upon the first

Like the classical music to which the title alludes, the Second Movement of Anthony Powell's four movement, twelve part "A Dance to the Music of Time" builds upon the themes and... Read more

Published on May 4, 2012 by PuroShaggy

Powell's chronicle of a whole human life among society continues to...

"A Dance to the Music of Time" is Anthony Powell's sequences of twelve novels which follow the narrator Nicholas Jenkins and his social circle from youth in the period following... Read more

Published on December 20, 2010 by Christopher Culver

Love, Marriage, Divorce

The "Second Movement" of Anthony Powell's novel, A Dance to the Music of Time, contains three volumes that continue the story of Nicholas Jenkins and his acquaintances and family. Read more

Published on November 2, 2010 by Gary Severance

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