‘No porridge?’
‘No porridge, sir.’
General Liddament pondered this assertion for some seconds in resentful silence. He seemed to be considering porridge in all its aspects, bad as well as good. At last he came out with an unequivocal moral judgement.
‘There ought to be porridge,’ he said.

In my review of [b:The Kindly Ones|1376772|The Kindly Ones (A Dance to the Music of Time, #6)|Anthony Powell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1332604760l/1376772._SY75_.jpg|1410050], I said that the carnival of Europe was over after that heartbreaking day in September 1939. Here, however, in the 7th volume of Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, the carousel is still moving. The calliope is starting to wheeze, true. The horses' faces have taken on a slightly macabre appearance in the fading neon lights. But there is still merriment.

The Valley of Bones follows Nicholas Jenkins after he enlists in the army, posted to his Welsh regiment (training primarily in Northern Ireland) during 1940. The war is still an unknown quantity; there is little talk here of being posted overseas or of the grim horrors taking place on the continent. Instead, Powell's knack for deft character sketches, moments of high comedy, and comedies of errors proliferate. Aside from a brief stopover in London - where some old scenes are reframed in a new light - and the ominous final few pages, we see nothing of existing characters from Nick's background. This is a new war, a new world, and we are successfully estranged from his previous world.

It is almost exclusively a comic novel, with a tiny number of pathos-laden passages baked in - especially the death of a supporting character reported from the continent. More tellingly, the final scene is the first time that Powell has left a book without a feeling of independent closure. War does not offer such certainties.

This is wonderful stuff. As always, at least for readers who are (like me) younger and/or not British, I heartily recommend the unabridged recording of the novels by Simon Vance. So much of the dialogue in these books was designed to recall people - either specific individuals or more often well-known types from the era. Three generations and half a globe removed from Powell, I find Vance indispensable in introducing me to the speech patterns of these characters, and through their speech their personality - especially here, where dialect plays such an important role. I will feel more comfortable returning to the Dance - as I know I will several times - now that I have grasped the characters in all their complexity. ( )

I tried to find a picture of a wooden bound old prayer book without avail. Islam book binding sometimes has wooden boards covered in leather. I wonder, if there would be carved or inlaid book covers. The prayer book Kedward ist telling about probably is a Christian one, though.
*
Meeting up with Kipling
Further on in „The Valley of Bones“, volume seven from „The Music of Time“ by Anthony Powell, the army has moved to new quarters, still back in Great Britain. Nicholas Jenkins shares the room with Captain Gwatkin who wakes him in the night because he himself was startled out of sleep by the thought that he might have forgotten to put the new codeword order into the safebox. -- It is only „The Jungle Book“ I ever have read by Kipling so far, and it was back in the late Seventies at the Diavolezza mountain hut above the mighty Morteratsch glacier, the day before our little rope team crossed the three summits of Piz Palü – a much nicer prospect than battling the Huns.
*
The aftermath of the defeat of Dunkirk with victims among his acquaintances makes Nicholas Jenkins ponder:
"The potential biographies of those who die young possess the mystic dignity of a headless statue, the poetry of enigmatic passages in an unfinished or mutilated manuscript, unburdened with contrived or banal ending." ( )

This was one of my favourite books in the series. After running out of puff after the end of the Summer books, I decided to take a break from reading the series and read something else. But the couple of books I picked up were not great and in the end it felt silly to enter a totally new imaginative world and try to keep this one simmering in the background. So after a week or two of no (fiction) reading, I came back to the series. I found this book very funny and poignant once again. I liked a lot of the characterisation and it was nice to see the narrator somewhat humbled. ( )

Some really good things in here, fantastic of course, but still my least favorite of the seven so far. ( )

As with all the books I've read in this series, takes a while to get going then after the new characters are introduced and events take motion it's a joy. Looking forward to the Widmerpool-fest the next book promises to be. ( )