Parade`s End

[PhilB]

I`m 70 pages into the book (830 to go) and finding it slow going. The blurb says "The finest English novel about the Great War- Guardian", but seems very verbose. They`re just pursuing the girls on the golf course. Should I persevere?

[paulgranger]

I never got beyond the opening scene on the train. Nor did I see more than the first episode of the recent TV adaption. Don't know if that helps with your decision!

[SteveGreen]

The blurb is misleading. It is indeed verbose by today's literary standards and style. Set in wartime, mostly, it is mainly concerned with the decline of the "Victorian-Edwardian class" as seen through relationships, professional and personal. The war is the backdrop, not the foreground of the book. It is not a war novel in the way Sasson's Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, or Graves Goodbye to All That or the more recent Regeneration trilogy.

There is a very good review (with spoilers) by Julian Barnes

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/aug/24/julian-barnes-parades-end-ford-madox-ford

[Dust Jacket Collector]

I'd always struggled with Ford, he can be painfully drawn out, but after watching the recent TV production I went back to the original & suddenly it all fell into place. Ford's habit of starting a scene half way through can be terribly confusing but it's worth persisting with. You can skip 'Last Post' though, it's got precious little to do with the first 3 books.

[Steven Broomfield]

I tried The Good Soldier, which I think is by the same author.

I gave up.

I'm afraid, philistine that I am, that having reached a reasonable age, time is too short to spend on books I'm not enjoying. I even gave up on Barnaby Rudge for the same reason. Personally, if you're having to ask whether you should persevere, the answer's probably "No".

[David Filsell]

I was once told that learning not to read a book that you feel you really should read to the very end is "The begging of wisdom".

Should've read beginning of course!

[David Ridgus]

I loved it but it is not 'a Great War novel' in the way Regeneration or Strange Meeting is. It is also a very modernist novel with shifting time and narrative perspective. Trust me it gets a whole lot more complicated than the first 70 pages (the last novel in the series is largely narrated by a character pretending to be in a coma). I am now going to commit the ultimate heresy for an English and History teacher and suggest you abandon the book and watch a DVD of the recent adaptation which was excellent. You should never have to 'persevere' with a book

David