I must confess to being very happy to finish this trilogy. It started out quite promising, book two less so, and book three very disappointing. Delderfield felt it was necessary to revisit every incident from the first two books, stopped for endless history lessons, and seemed at a complete loss as to what to do with all the myriad characters he had created.

I cannot help thinking there was a good germ of an idea for these novels that got buried early on. He invented some interesting characters that he just dropped, presumably because he either did not know what to do with them or could not fit them into his desire to pursue a historical thread Delderfield seemed to be determined to have a personal connection for each historical event of the century, and that required too many characters, for which there was far too little development. You could not care about any one character, because the author was too quickly off to someone else.

For me, there is one cardinal rule in fiction, that being that there must be consistency. You cannot tell me that a character is a certain thing and then have them do something that is contrary to that without offering me an explanation. I caught Delderfield doing this frequently.

Having a reading partner was a great relief. She brought a sense of humor to the journey, and she kept me willing to continue reading. So, thank you, Lori. On to better things!
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1434 Give Us This Day, by R. F. Delderfield (read 24 Feb 1977) This is the third and final volume of the Swann Family Saga.. It ends on the brink of Britain's entry into World War One. Much of it is distasteful--put in to spice up the book, I suppose. Much seems contrived. Not a good book--the first volume, God Is an Englishman, was the best. But, this volume was readable and if there were a fourth volume I'm sure I would have read it. But really, Delderfield can be tiresome: so much repetitive reflection! ( )