Ford Madox Ford (1873–1939)

Una de las obras maestras de la literatura del siglo XX por primera vez traducida al castellano.

Justo antes de que caiga la era eduardiana, en los albores de la I Guerra Mundial, toma lugar esta historia de traición, romance y el horror de las trincheras. En el centro de la narración está la escandalosa separación de Christopher Tietjens, un clásico caballero inglés, conservador y convencional, e impecable súbdito de la corona inglesa, y su esposa Sylvia, una mujer bella, arrogante, contestataria y símbolo de los nuevos tiempos. Christopher ve cómo su matrimonio se desborona mientras Europa es consumida por la tragedia.… (plus d'informations)

Mr Dowel relates a story of two well off couples. Going backwards and forwards over a nine year period when the couples were enjoying each others company. As a consequence ie a shifting timeline we develop or think we do, of events and characters.
Fords approach is that Dowel is trying to make sense of the story and the relationship between the two couples. The introduction of characters and events are only alluded to but not necessarily developed, they are incomplete. As new information is introduced we have to reajust our previous appraisals.
Fowles initial impression of Edward Ashburton is of an honorable upright man, one you could trust your wife with.
His wife Leonara, whom he has fallen out of love with seems to stand by him thru a series of his affairs. She is actually cold, unsampathic and manituplitive, a singultative, a catholic who takes over both his financial and love affairs.
Dowels wife Florence who seems weak of heart, falls for Edward actually wants to be installed in Edward's manor as his wife but commits suicide. Dowel finally wakes up to her being a flirt and a good actress.
Edward kills himself, Lenore marries another rich man more attuned to her needs and has a baby. Dowell buys the manor and lives with Edward's last victim Nancy who is so disappointed by Edward, she is insane.… (plus d'informations)

Picked this up knowing nothing about the author or the book, without much optimism, as I expected a load of prudish Victorian/Edwardian sentimentality. Absolutely not what I got. Probably deserves fives stars but it's horrible, shocking and mawkish. The rot that came much much later, in the 1960s, is evident here some 45 years earlier. And it's written much better here. The Good Solider is the sign of a society that had already exhausted itself, even before the Great War. Perhaps the Great War was simply the excuse. Wonderfully crafted and like many such novels is somehow greater than the sum of its parts. You suspect that this is partly because there is more of the author in it than the author understood, certainly this was Graham Green's view, because it was his favourite book (Greene and Ford were both fairly hopeless as men, and I think they viewed literature, as written by men, as a kind of coda of personal failure - I did too, once). Personally, my favourite book is probably Heart of Darkness. It so happens that Ford and Conrad were close friends, and Heart of Darkness is referenced in this work. But whereas Heart of Darkness pits civilisation against savagery, and man against nature, in a largely external way, The Good Soldier deals with internalities, with sex and love and God in Hampshire and abroad. A hopeless and confused book but bloody brilliant as a kind of horror story of quiet, "decent" lives masking agonising spiritual confusion and shocking inhumanity. And naturally everybody's got loads of money, so what the hell are they on about, really. Somewhat less but still interesting because of its treatment of "Anglo" Catholicism as something distinct from its continental equivalent, and its implicit suggestion that it represents some sort of noble maladjustment, an intellectual conceit that was popular amongst British intellectuals of the time - Greene himself as a somewhat later example. A horror story with no supernatural elements.… (plus d'informations)

The Good Soldier was an excellent audiobook. I've not read it before because I thought it would be about war, and dull at that. It wasn't even a tiny bit dull. It actually shocked me a couple of times; what a weird and twisted story it is.

To some extent I was right about the book concerning itself with war, but not on a battlefield but in the marriages of two couples. There were characters who fought on both sides of the war, there were spies, there were betrayals worse than ever those fought on muddy fields or in rat-infested trenches.

If you're Catholic and easily offended, this is not the book for you. I'm not Catholic and I was taken aback at the author's anti-Catholic themes that repeated throughout the book.

The thing that surprised me the most about the novel was the complete lack of sexual education some characters had. There is one character, female, who has no idea what sex is or where babies come from. I'm curious to know whether many women of the time (early 20th century) went into marriage as blind as these fictional people.

The Good Soldier goes right into a mental list of "best books". It isn't a favourite, though. It was too unpleasant and upsetting for favoritism, but the craft, story, and style of the novel make it a great one, however unhappy the story.… (plus d'informations)