End of the Chapter - Book I - Maid in Waiting

By Galsworthy, John

The Forsyte Saga is Galsworthy’s trilogy about the eponymous family and connected lives. These books, as with many of his other works, deal with social class, upper-middle class lives in particular. Although sympathetic to his characters, he highlights their insular, snobbish, and acquisitive attitudes and their suffocating moral codes. He is viewed as one of the first writers of the Edwardian era who challenged some of the ideals of society depicted in the preceding literature of Victorian England. The depiction of a woman in an unhappy marriage furnishes another recurring theme in his work.
John Galsworthy was an English novelist and playwright. This is Volume one of his most notable work The Forsyte Saga. He went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1932.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Appleby Press
• Release date: Apr 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9781473393479

Reviews for End of the Chapter - Book I - Maid in Waiting

[vivienner_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In this, the first book of the trilogy End of the Chapter, the main characters are members of Fleur's husband, Michael Mont’s’s family. Initially I found the writing style less polished than the books that went before, and thought it might have been an early piece reworked. However, when I started to read Simonson's The Summer Before the War alongside, it proved that less than perfect writing by Galsworthy is still a cut above. So, although the beginning was less engaging than some of the previous books in the Forsyte Chronicles, its merit held up when compared to the contemporary work. There are repercussions following an expedition when Hubert Cherrell, Mont’s cousin, killed a Bolivian muleteer in a violent altercation. His sister Dinny tries to solve his predicament through negotiations and receives a couple of marriage proposals along the way. The other storyline was about the mental health issues of the husband of a family friend. Galsworthy’s characters are vivid, he is insightful about his era and brings it to life. While not up to the high drama of the Forsytes, this is well worth reading.