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Victorian literature might often hint at extramarital affairs and hijinx, but always under the guise of pursuing or seeking true love. Ford Madox Ford bravely struck a new chord in this 1915 novel with his statement that sometimes - if not often - it's just a fling, based on loneliness or the sexual desire. This stripping away of the curtains around the issue didn't land him in censorship waters like James Joyce a few years later, but his novel was branded as "unpleasant" and "dangerous". This for addressing an everyday occurrence in plainer language so that it might be explored on the page.

This novel is also an early example of literary impressionism, a style that we take for granted today. Ford takes a roundabout path to telling his story, providing us with an after-the-fact narrator John Dowell who tends to ramble and gets things out of order. Immediately we know who dies, so that's the hook to exploring why. John contradicts himself on occasion, or says something offhand that startles but then he doesn't address it immediately, and some of his adjectives take on a fresh meeting later. Rather than frustrating, however, it creates a layer of mystery and need-to-know that keeps the pages turning.

John is a significant example of an unreliable narrator, his judgements and feelings about what transpired shifting in several directions. Only the concluding pages provide confirmation where his true sympathy lies, when his actions speak louder than his words. Ford is suggesting through John that sometimes our passions are too much for the artificial constructs of society to contain - our religious moralities, our marriage contracts, our collective sense of decency. That someone who is destroyed when they run counter to these may be too well understood to be considered a villain, given the base desires most of us share; except that this characterization too must to be done, so the rest of us can go on with our orderliness and stability to win whatever happiness remains. ( )

This was one of the best novels I have ever read. The prose was crystal clear and images as fresh as the day Ford wrote them. Its picture of marriage and infidelity so painful that I wonder if our great contemporary psycho-therapist Esther Perel had not coached Ford in the details. The picture of landed gentry in England is both accurate and piteously satiric. I sit this book next to Elena Ferrante and Evan Connell’s “Mrs. Bridge.” ( )

I'd never heard of this book until I read a review last year. Apparently it's a classic written in 1915 set in a pre-WWI German spa town (for the most part). English author ... about an English gentleman who has affairs left and right and how these events affect the lives of the people around him. I had high expectations after reading the reviews which might account for some of why I was disappointed in the book. I didn't care much for this book although I did have enough interest to keep reading to see how it ended. ( )

The characters were interesting, but not even Frank Muller's beautiful audio performance could hold my interest with the meandering monologue that apparently makes up the entirety of this story. I gave up trying about 50 minutes in. ( )