I have been a huge admirer of Anthony Powell’s wonderful novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time. Indeed, for many years I intended to write a series work about it, and may still do so. After all, I have read the whole sequence more than twenty times.

I have, however, been a bit ambivalent about Powell’s other novels. He wrote five novels before the Second World War and I suspect, without the wonderful Dance to the Music of Time sequence. They might well have been largely overlooked nowadays. There are some fine moments, but not enough, in my view, to render them especially memorable.

He wrote a further two novels after completing the sequence: this one, and The Fisher king. As with the first five books, I fear they struggle to match the glory of his greater work. This novel followed the tribulations of a critic who finds that an old novel by a former friend, or at least acquaintance, has been ‘rediscovered’ and may be given a new lease of life. There are some very amusing scenes and lines, but, even though it is a very short book, weighing in at a mere 150 pages of fairly large print, it was rather turgid overall. ( )

I can't restrain myself from repeating the best joke in this book: a very small publisher (handmade paper!) called the Forte et Dure Press.

This was a freebie from the University of Chicago Press. I picked it up because at some point I ought to read A Dance to the Music of Time, and I wanted to see what Powell’s style was like. Well, that has pushed the series down my reading list. I was reminded very much of Aldous Huxley and other literary writers of that era.

Set in the 1960s, Geoffrey Shadbold, a grand old man of letters, is married to a much younger wife (his second) who writes successful detective novels. The novel deals with what happens when he is reminded (mildly unpleasantly) of another writer (who died in the war) whom he was friends with. An old flame who has written her memoirs of that time also returns. Also included is a TV producer of Lit.Crit. programmes who is doing a programme featuring Shadbold, and Shadbold’s wife’s first husband, a redbrick university lecturer of English. The link between all is one Cedric Winterson, author of ‘The Wellsons of Ondurman Terrace’...

It was a tolerable read, but not something I would recommend unless you like that sort of thing.

There's a pretty big difference between this and Powell's 'A Dance to the Music of Time.' DMT is enormous, and this is short; DMT is fantastic, and this is okay. On the other hand, they both deal with the strange break between the early to mid twentieth century and the last decades of it, so it's in some ways not so different. If you liked the last volume of DMT, I would definitely recommend this; and this would be a reasonable place to start, to see if you want to make the investment in the series. As a stand alone book, it's okay; the start is incredibly confusing, but after the first few chapters it settles into nice prose. A quick, funny read. ( )

Despite it's short length this novel manages to say a few nice things about death, particularly it's timing, and contains some nice digs at the progression of the academic study of literature.

Death, and it's companion failure, stalk the novel; and if most characters escape the clutches of the former, then they are all victim to the latter by one shade or another. The novels protagonist - Shadbold - is confronted by rivalries, real and imagined, that he vainly tries to battle against, instead manouvering himself into more and more uncomfortable positions. Other characters seem more successful but all are full of insecurities and all lie on the outskirts of success.

The character of Horace Grigham, a university lecturer, allows Powell to poke fun at literary theory. Many novels like to poke fun at the more fashionable end of studies of literature but few manage to create a character simultaneously so obnoxious and yet totally harmless. That Powell manages it in the space of one or two very short chapters speaks volumes for his skills with language. Particularly astute was Grigham's interest in a long out of print book that he felt would back up his theories on literature. This theory first, text later, aspect of literary theory sadly still lingers twenty five years after Powell's novel was published and shows no signs of weakness.

The novel is far from being as dry as I appear to have made out though. It is quite a light read being short and having some good jokes. The prose is superb.