“It is a good deal more than unlikely that any writer now living will produce a better historical novel than Henry Esmond, a better tale of children than The Golden Age, a sharper social vignette than Madame Bovary, a more graceful and elegant evocation than The Spoils of Poynton, a wider and richer canvas than War and Peace or The Brothers Karamazov.”
Plenty to get your teeth into over brekker this morning. I started Henry Esmond (Thackeray) but never finished. I have never heard of The Golden Age, if you have I’d like to know who wrote it. I read most of Madame B years ago and had not heard of The Spoils of P (Henry James). The last two Russian epics frankly scare me.
I’m sure we can come up with a better list than Raymond Chandler but let’s digress. I knew quite well Chandler’s mistress’s sister. She once introduced me as her son-in-law. I had to dispute this as she never married my father-in-law and by then I was divorced from his daughter. Funny that two sisters should have been better as mistresses than wives.
Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour trilogy ticks a few boxes for me and the first volume of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Cazalet series is a good tale of children, not a genre that I go for. Maybe Homan Potterton’s forthcoming memoir will be the graceful and elegant evocation but until it is published I’m picking Portrait of Elmbury by John Moore. Over to you.
https://youtu.be/FMqfPdmxRfk
Kenneth Grahame wrote The Golden Age. Mine is A Tale of Two Cities.
I have not read Henry Esmond but rate Vanity Fair the best of Thackeray, though whether it is the one which I would take to the island I am not sure.
‘Sword of Honour’ is very good but for the perfect balance of comedy and tragedy I would always chose ‘A Handful of Dust’. I I think it was Uncle Mathew in ‘Love in a cold climate’ who when asked if he liked reading replied ” I only read one book in my life and it was so dammed good I never bothered to read another”. I rather feel the same way about Waugh’s novel.
There was a letter in the FT about Uncle Matthew’s favourite book.
NOVEMBER 15, 2013
From Mr Christopher Bellew.
Sir, I note with pleasure that Khaled Hosseini (Small Talk, Life & Arts, November 9) thinks that White Fang was one of the first novels he read. Uncle Matthew in Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love enjoyed it so much that he never read anything else. Personally I have a preference for Smoke Bellew, also by Jack London