The Good Soldier: Historical Romance Novel

By Ford Madox Ford

The Good Soldier is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends. The story is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the story of those dissolutions and the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: e-artnow
• Release date: Jun 19, 2019
• ISBN: 4057664124166

Ford Madox Ford

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939) was an English novelist, poet, and editor. Born in Wimbledon, Ford was the son of Pre-Raphaelite artist Catherine Madox Brown and music critic Francis Hueffer. In 1894, he eloped with his girlfriend Elsie Martindale and eventually settled in Winchelsea, where they lived near Henry James and H. G. Wells. Ford left his wife and two daughters in 1909 for writer Isobel Violet Hunt, with whom he launched The English Review, an influential magazine that published such writers as Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Ezra Pound, and D. H. Lawrence. As Ford Madox Hueffer, he established himself with such novels as The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903), cowritten with Joseph Conrad, and The Fifth Queen (1906-1907), a trilogy of historical novels. During the Great War, however, he began using the penname Ford Madox Ford to avoid anti-German sentiment. The Good Soldier (1915), considered by many to be Ford’s masterpiece, earned him a reputation as a leading novelist of his generation and continues to be named among the greatest novels of the twentieth century. Recognized as a pioneering modernist for his poem “Antwerp” (1915) and his tetralogy Parade’s End (1924-1928), Ford was a friend of James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and Jean Rhys. Despite his reputation and influence as an artist and publisher who promoted the early work of some of the greatest English and American writers of his time, Ford has been largely overshadowed by his contemporaries, some of whom took to disparaging him as their own reputations took flight.

Book preview

PART I

Table of Contents

I

Table of Contents

This is the saddest story I have ever heard. We had known the Ashburnhams for nine seasons of the town of Nauheim with an extreme intimacy — or, rather with an acquaintanceship as loose and easy and yet as close as a good glove’s with your hand. My wife and I knew Captain and Mrs Ashburnham as well as it was possible to know anybody, and yet, in another sense, we knew nothing at all about them. This is, I believe, a state of things only possible with English people of whom, till today, when I sit down to puzzle out what I know of this sad affair, I knew nothing whatever. Six months ago I had never been to England, and, certainly, I had never sounded the depths of an English heart. I had known the shallows.

I don’t mean to say that we were not acquainted with many English people. Living, as we perforce lived, in Europe, and being, as we perforce were, leisured Americans, which is as much as to say that we were unAmerican, we were thrown very much into the society of the nicer English. Paris, you see, was our home. Somewhere between Nice and Bordighera provided yearly winter quarters for us, and Nauheim always received us from July to September. You will gather from this statement that one of us had, as the saying is, a heart, and, from the statement that my wife is dead, that she was the sufferer.

Captain Ashburnham also had a heart. But, whereas a yearly month or so at Nauheim tuned him up to exactly the right pitch for the rest of the twelvemonth, the two months or so were only just enough to keep poor Florence alive from year to year. The reason for his heart was, approximately, polo, or too much hard sportsmanship in his youth. The reason for poor Florence’s broken years was a storm at sea upon our first crossing to Europe, and the immediate reasons for our imprisonment in that continent were doctor’s orders. They said that even the short Channel crossing might well kill the poor thing.

When we all first met, Captain Ashburnham, home on sick leave from an India to which he was never to return, was thirty-three; Mrs Ashburnham Leonora — was thirty-one. I was thirty-six and poor Florence thirty. Thus today Florence would have been thirty-nine and Captain Ashburnham forty-two; whereas I am forty-five and Leonora forty. You will perceive, therefore, that our friendship has been a young-middle-aged affair, since we were all of us of quite quiet dispositions, the Ashburnhams being more particularly what in England it is the custom to call quite good people.

They were descended, as you will probably expect, from the Ashburnham who accompanied Charles I to the scaffold, and, as you must also expect with this class of English people, you would never have noticed it. Mrs Ashburnham was a Powys; Florence was a Hurlbird of Stamford, Connecticut, where, as you know, they are more old-fashioned than even the inhabitants of Cranford, England, could have been. I myself am a Dowell of Philadelphia, Pa., where, it is historically true, there are more old English families than you would find in any six English counties taken together. I carry about with me, indeed — as if it were the only thing that invisibly anchored me to any spot upon the globe — the title deeds of my farm, which once covered several blocks between Chestnut and Walnut Streets. These title deeds are of wampum, the grant of an Indian chief to the first Dowell, who left Farnham in Surrey in company with William Penn. Florence’s people, as is so often the case with the inhabitants of Connecticut, came from the neighbourhood of Fordingbridge, where the Ashburnhams’ place is. From there, at this moment, I am actually writing.

You may well ask why I write. And yet my reasons are quite many. For it is not unusual in human beings who have witnessed the sack of a city or the falling to pieces of a people to desire to set down what they have witnessed for the benefit of unknown heirs or of generations infinitely remote; or, if you please, just to get the sight out of their heads.

Some one has said that the death of a mouse from cancer is the whole sack of Rome by the Goths, and I swear to you that the breaking up of our little four-square coterie was such another unthinkable event. Supposing that you should come upon us sitting together at one of the little tables in front of the club house, let us say, at Homburg, taking tea of an afternoon and watching the miniature golf, you would have said that, as human affairs go, we were an extraordinarily safe castle. We were, if you will, one of those tall ships with the white sails upon a blue sea, one of those things that seem the proudest and the safest of all the beautiful and safe things that God has permitted the mind of men to frame. Where better could one take refuge? Where better?

Permanence? Stability? I can’t believe it’s gone. I can’t believe that that long, tranquil life, which was just stepping a minuet, vanished in four crashing days at the end of nine years and six weeks. Upon my word, yes, our intimacy was like a minuet, simply because on every possible occasion and in every possible circumstance we knew where to go, where to sit, which table we unanimously should choose; and we could rise and go, all four together, without a signal from any one of us, always to the music of the Kur orchestra, always in the temperate sunshine, or, if it rained, in discreet shelters. No, indeed, it can’t be gone. You can’t kill a minuet de la cour. You may shut up the music-book, close the harpsichord; in the cupboard and presses the rats may destroy the white satin favours. The mob may sack Versailles; the Trianon may fall, but surely the minuet — the minuet itself is dancing itself away into the furthest stars, even as our minuet of the Hessian bathing places must be stepping itself still. Isn’t there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves? Isn’t there any Nirvana pervaded by the faint thrilling of instruments that have fallen into the dust of wormwood but that yet had frail, tremulous, and everlasting souls?

No, by God, it is false! It wasn’t a minuet that we stepped; it was a prison — a prison full of screaming hysterics, tied down so that they might not outsound the rolling of our carriage wheels as we went along the shaded avenues of the Taunus Wald.

And yet I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. It was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from the mouth of stone dolphins. For, if for me we were four people with the same tastes, with the same desires, acting — or, no, not acting — sitting here and there unanimously, isn’t that the truth? If for nine years I have possessed a goodly apple that is rotten at the core and discover its rottenness only in nine years and six months less four days, isn’t it true to say that for nine years I possessed a goodly apple? So it may well be with Edward Ashburnham, with Leonora his wife and with poor dear Florence. And, if you come to think of it, isn’t it a little odd that the physical rottenness of at least two pillars of our four-square house never presented itself to my mind as a menace to its security? It doesn’t so present itself now though the two of them are actually dead. I don’t know. . .  .

I know nothing — nothing in the world — of the hearts of men. I only know that I am alone — horribly alone. No hearthstone will ever again witness, for me, friendly intercourse. No smoking-room will ever be other than peopled with incalculable simulacra amidst smoke wreaths. Yet, in the name of God, what should I know if I don’t know the life of the hearth and of the smoking-room, since my whole life has been passed in those places? The warm hearthside! — Well, there was Florence: I believe that for the twelve years her life lasted, after the storm that seemed irretrievably to have weakened her heart — I don’t believe that for one minute she was out of my sight, except when she was safely tucked up in bed and I should be downstairs, talking to some good fellow or other in some lounge or smoking-room or taking my final turn with a cigar before going to bed. I don’t, you understand, blame Florence. But how can she have known what she knew? How could she have got to know it? To know it so fully. Heavens! There doesn’t seem to have been the actual time. It must have been when I was taking my baths, and my Swedish exercises, being manicured. Leading the life I did, of the sedulous, strained nurse, I had to do something to keep myself fit. It must have been then! Yet even that can’t have been enough time to get the tremendously long conversations full of worldly wisdom that Leonora has reported to me since their deaths. And is it possible to imagine that during our prescribed walks in Nauheim and the neighbourhood she found time to carry on the protracted negotiations which she did carry on between Edward Ashburnham and his wife? And isn’t it incredible that during all that time Edward and Leonora never spoke a word to each other in private? What is one to think of humanity?

For I swear to you that they were the model couple. He was as devoted as it was possible to be without appearing fatuous. So well set up, with such honest blue eyes, such a touch of stupidity, such a warm goodheartedness! And she — so tall, so splendid in the saddle, so fair! Yes, Leonora was extraordinarily fair and so extraordinarily the real thing that she seemed too good to be true. You don’t, I mean, as a rule, get it all so superlatively together. To be the county family, to look the county family, to be so appropriately and perfectly wealthy; to be so perfect in manner — even just to the saving touch of insolence that seems to be necessary. To have all that and to be all that! No, it was too good to be true. And yet, only this afternoon, talking over the whole matter she said to me: Once I tried to have a lover but I was so sick at the heart, so utterly worn out that I had to send him away. That struck me as the most amazing thing I had ever heard. She said I was actually in a man’s arms. Such a nice chap! Such a dear fellow! And I was saying to myself, fiercely, hissing it between my teeth, as they say in novels — and really clenching them together: I was saying to myself: ‘Now, I’m in for it and I’ll really have a good time for once in my life — for once in my life!’ It was in the dark, in a carriage, coming back from a hunt ball. Eleven miles we had to drive! And then suddenly the bitterness of the endless poverty, of the endless acting — it fell on me like a blight, it spoilt everything. Yes, I had to realize that I had been spoilt even for the good time when it came. And I burst out crying and I cried and I cried for the whole eleven miles. Just imagine me crying! And just imagine me making a fool of the poor dear chap like that. It certainly wasn’t playing the game, was it now?

I don’t know; I don’t know; was that last remark of hers the remark of a harlot, or is it what every decent woman, county family or not county family, thinks at the bottom of her heart? Or thinks all the time for the matter of that? Who knows?

Yet, if one doesn’t know that at this hour and day, at this pitch of civilization to which we have attained, after all the preachings of all the moralists, and all the teachings of all the mothers to all the daughters in saecula saeculorum .  .  . but perhaps that is what all mothers teach all daughters, not with lips but with the eyes, or with heart whispering to heart. And, if one doesn’t know as much as that about the first thing in the world, what does one know and why is one here?

I asked Mrs Ashburnham whether she had told Florence that and what Florence had said and she answered:—Florence didn’t offer any comment at all. What could she say? There wasn’t anything to be said. With the grinding poverty we had to put up with to keep up appearances, and the way the poverty came about — you know what I mean — any woman would have been justified in taking a lover and presents too. Florence once said about a very similar position — she was a little too well-bred, too American, to talk about mine — that it was a case of perfectly open riding and the woman could just act on the spur of the moment. She said it in American of course, but that was the sense of it. I think her actual words were: ‘That it was up to her to take it or leave it. .  .  . ’

I don’t want you to think that I am writing Teddy Ashburnham down a brute. I don’t believe he was. God knows, perhaps all men are like that. For as I’ve said what do I know even of the smoking-room? Fellows come in and tell the most extraordinarily gross stories — so gross that they will positively give you a pain. And yet they’d be offended if you suggested that they weren’t the sort of person you could trust your wife alone with. And very likely they’d be quite properly offended — that is if you can trust anybody alone with anybody. But that sort of fellow obviously takes more delight in listening to or in telling gross stories — more delight than in anything else in the world. They’ll hunt languidly and dress languidly and dine languidly and work without enthusiasm and find it a bore to carry on three minutes’ conversation about anything whatever and yet, when the other sort of conversation begins, they’ll laugh and wake up and throw themselves about in their chairs. Then, if they so delight in the narration, how is it possible that they can be offended — and properly offended — at the suggestion that they might make attempts upon your wife’s honour? Or again: Edward Ashburnham was the cleanest looking sort of chap; — an excellent magistrate, a first rate soldier, one of the best landlords, so they said, in Hampshire, England. To the poor and to hopeless drunkards, as I myself have witnessed, he was like a painstaking guardian. And he never told a story that couldn’t have gone into the columns of the Field more than once or twice in all the nine years of my knowing him. He didn’t even like hearing them; he would fidget and get up and go out to buy a cigar or something of that sort. You would have said that he was just exactly the sort of chap that you could have trusted your wife with. And I trusted mine and it was madness. And yet again you have me. If poor Edward was dangerous because of the chastity of his expressions — and they say that is always the hall-mark of a libertine — what about myself? For I solemnly avow that not only have I never so much as hinted at an impropriety in my conversation in the whole of my days; and more than that, I will vouch for the cleanness of my thoughts and the absolute chastity of my life. At what, then, does it all work out? Is the whole thing a folly and a mockery? Am I no better than a eunuch or is the proper man — the man with the right to existence — a raging stallion forever neighing after his neighbour’s womankind?

I don’t know. And there is nothing to guide us. And if everything is so nebulous about a matter so elementary as the morals of sex, what is there to guide us in the more subtle morality of all other personal contacts, associations, and activities? Or are we meant to act on impulse alone? It is all a darkness.

II

Table of Contents

I don't know how it is best to put this thing down — whether it would be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a story; or whether to tell it from this distance of time, as it reached me from the lips of Leonora or from those of Edward himself.

So I shall just imagine myself for a fortnight or so at one side of the fireplace of a country cottage, with a sympathetic soul opposite me. And I shall go on talking, in a low voice while the sea sounds in the distance and overhead the great black flood of wind polishes the bright stars. From time to time we shall get up and go to the door and look out at the great moon and say: Why, it is nearly as bright as in Provence! And then we shall come back to the fireside, with just the touch of a sigh because we are not in that Provence where even the saddest stories are gay. Consider the lamentable history of Peire Vidal. Two years ago Florence and I motored from Biarritz to Las Tours, which is in the Black Mountains. In the middle of a tortuous valley there rises up an immense pinnacle and on the pinnacle are four castles — Las Tours, the Towers. And the immense mistral blew down that valley which was the way from France into Provence so that the silver grey olive leaves appeared like hair flying in the wind, and the tufts of rosemary crept into the iron rocks that they might not be torn up by the roots.

It was, of course, poor dear Florence who wanted to go to Las Tours. You are to imagine that, however much her bright personality came from Stamford, Connecticut, she was yet a graduate of Poughkeepsie. I never could imagine how she did it — the queer, chattery person that she was. With the far-away look in her eyes — which wasn’t, however, in the least romantic — I mean that she didn’t look as if she were seeing poetic dreams, or looking through you, for she hardly ever did look at you! — holding up one hand as if she wished to silence any objection — or any comment for the matter of that — she would talk. She would talk about William the Silent, about Gustave the Loquacious, about Paris frocks, about how the poor dressed in 1337, about Fantin–Latour, about the Paris–Lyons-Mediterranée train-deluxe, about whether it would be worth while to get off at Tarascon and go across the windswept suspension-bridge, over the Rhone to take another look at Beaucaire.

We never did take another look at Beaucaire, of course — beautiful Beaucaire, with the high, triangular white tower, that looked as thin as a needle and as tall as the Flatiron, between Fifth and Broadway — Beaucaire with the grey walls on the top of the pinnacle surrounding an acre and a half of blue irises, beneath the tallness of the stone pines, What a beautiful thing the stone pine is! . . .

No, we never did go back anywhere. Not to Heidelberg, not to Hamelin, not to Verona, not to Mont Majour — not so much as to Carcassonne itself. We talked of it, of course, but I guess Florence got all she wanted out of one look at a place. She had the seeing eye.

I haven’t, unfortunately, so that the world is full of places to which I want to return — towns with the blinding white sun upon them; stone pines against the blue of the sky; corners of gables, all carved and painted with stags and scarlet flowers and crowstepped gables with the little saint at the top; and grey and pink palazzi and walled towns a mile or so back from the sea, on the Mediterranean, between Leghorn and Naples. Not one of them did we see more than once, so that the whole world for me is like spots of colour in an immense canvas. Perhaps if it weren’t so I should have something to catch hold of now.

Is all this digression or isn’t it digression? Again I don’t know. You, the listener, sit opposite me. But you are so silent. You don’t tell me anything. I am, at any rate, trying to get you to see what sort of life it was I led with Florence and what Florence was like. Well, she was bright; and she danced. She seemed to dance over the floors of castles and over seas and over and over and over the salons of modistes and over the plages of the Riviera — like a gay tremulous beam, reflected from water upon a ceiling. And my function in life was to keep that bright thing in existence. And it was almost as difficult as trying to catch with your hand that dancing reflection. And the task lasted for years.

Florence’s aunts used to say that I must be the laziest man in Philadelphia. They had never been to Philadelphia and they had the New England conscience. You see, the first thing they said to me when I called in on Florence in the little ancient, colonial, wooden house beneath the high, thin-leaved elms — the first question they asked me was not how I did but what did I do. And I did nothing. I suppose I ought to have done something, but I didn’t see any call to do it. Why does one do things? I just drifted in and wanted Florence. First I had drifted in on Florence at a Browning tea, or something of the sort in Fourteenth Street, which was then still residential. I don’t know why I had gone to New York; I don’t know why I had gone to the tea. I don’t see why Florence should have gone to that sort of spelling bee. It wasn’t the place at which,

Reviews for The Good Soldier

[alisony-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Written in 1914, with the title The Good Soldier you'd be forgiven for expecting this classic to be a war novel. However, the nearest we come to notions of war in this novel are those of the domestic strife kind concerning two couples who Ford refers to as "good people".Ford Maddox Ford was an interesting character. Rubbing shoulders with the literary greats of the time, he co-wrote several novels with Joseph Conrad (touchy subject - Conrad got all of the credit from the publishers), published works in The English Review (which he founded) by the likes of Thomas Hardy, H.G. Wells, Conrad, Ezra Pound and Yeats, and in Paris published work by Hemingway, Joyce, Jean Rhys and Gertrude Stein in The Transatlantic Review. Despite prolifically writing his own memoirs, poetry, novels and critical essays, Ford was ultimately left disappointed and disillusioned that so many of his writing contemporaries, whose work he had championed as a publisher, left him in their wake with their much greater literary successes.That being said, so much about this book fascinated me, despite at times befuddling me. In the introduction (written post it's original publication), Ford claims it was his best book, and I think it deserves to be remembered alongside the much better known publications of the era from his contemporaries. He insists that the book was in his head for 10 years, but as it was about personal friends he had to wait until they'd passed before being able to tell their story. Knowing as we do his own backstory of extra-marital affairs, one suspects that you might not have too look too far to find where his "friend" inspiration came from.Originally Ford wished the novel to be called The Saddest Story before his publishers put their foot down, given the already sad enough reality of being a country at war. This theme plays out throughout the novel as the narrator reflects on the wasteful tragedy of the spiralling events that take place, and the sadness of a story where none of the characters ultimately find happiness.The Good Soldier has been both criticised and revered for the manner in which it is narrated, a chronological hotch-potch that skips back and forth and round and round rather than being a linear retelling. Although I had to check back every now and then to make sure I hadn't missed something important, I'm definitely in the 'it works' camp. The narration style creates complex layers which definitely make you work as a reader, piecing together disjointed narrative which segues and digresses between what was known at the time and what was discovered later by the narrator to be true. However, in making sense of the story as you read it takes you on what feels like quite a literary journey, and when I reached the end and the last piece of the puzzle slipped into place it felt like I'd just experienced a pretty fine novel.4 stars - I doubt that this will be my favourite novel of the year, but it was a good read nonetheless.

[kant1066 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

"The Good Soldier" follows two well-to-do couples, John (the narrator) and Florence Dowell and Edward and Leonora Ashburnham through the course of their relationships, especially Edward's endless philandering with any woman who will submit to his relentless sexual advances. The story, told long after the events have actually transpired, details Dowell's conversion from innocent onlooker in the four-way friendship into a man whose world has been turned upside down by the discovery that his wife has tried to seduce his best friend. Even then, Dowell chalks up Ashburnham's dalliances to mere "sentimentalism," a need to paternalistically place himself in a situation where he is seen as the selfless hero, as the "good soldier." While Dowell is sometimes more than fair with Ashburnham, at times he relentlessly mocks him, commenting on his stupid expressions and his petit bourgeois concern with "keeping up appearances," even in the face of a sham of a marriage. Ford seems to be looking for answers to explain such behavior, but doesn't even seem convinced by his own dubious explanations.Marked by a radical break with the earlier, traditional Victorian novel, "The Good Soldier" is highly evocative of the society novels of Henry James, Edith Wharton, and even some D. H. Lawrence. Adultery is discussed frankly and directly, and instead of the morally certain, honest, objective narration that we see in work before it, Ford's narrator is bereft when he finds his search for meaning and simplicity an empty one, finding in its place an ambiguous and unreliable world. This is a hard pill to swallow for those who have been weaned on Dickens, Thackeray, and Trollope. Its subtlety and sensitive psychological representations mirror the complexities of people, not stock characters.One of the most fascinating aspects of the story is how utterly conflicted Dowell remains throughout the novel. The authority of his narrative voice waxes and wanes (mostly wanes) through the entire story, which might be frustrating for some readers, but was a welcome relief for me. Concomitant with this voice is an overall ambiance of moral turpitude and decadence, and not simply as a result of Florence and Ashburnham's affair. Dowell is never slow to remind the reader that he knows little, that he might be wrong, that this was only the way things seemed to him. It is hardly a surprise that Ford, who considered himself an "impressionist," has very much up to the name and written a novel of fleeting impressions and reminiscences which always fall short of cohering into a unified story whose characters motivations are convincingly delineated.One of the results of Ford's technique is that it breaks with one's usual response after having completed a novel: since Aristotle, we have come to find some sort of intellectual catharsis from tragedy, but this is a story that complicates that expectation, even if we are afforded some sort of edification in human moral psychology. The novel was written in 1915, no doubt a perilous time in European history. At the risk of committing an egregious post hoc ergo propter hoc, it may be that Ford's narrative is indicative of a world on the precipice of the Great War, whose social and cultural orders have shifted from firmly hierarchical to nebulous in less than a generation.Even if you do not care for the novel itself, it would be difficult to deny its important place in a canon of works that need to be carefully and thoughtfully read to have a fuller and more appreciative knowledge of twentieth-century English literature. I cherished it, and its characters seemed like some of the most artfully drawn I've ever read. Weeks after having finished the novel, the various tête-à-têtes and interrelationships continue to dance through my head while I imagine sitting down next to Dowell while he tells me his story.

[wendyrey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Two rich couples travel together in Europe, they have secret affairs, practice marital deception on a grand scale and two end up dead in strange circumstanes.Clever witty and fun.

[kromestomes · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Somewhat dated ... some "old-fashioned" racism that may be actually used to show a negative for a character ... some of that double-reverse English understatement-type stuff ...

[vguy_6 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

2nd attempt to take this on, and got to the end by force of will. Still not sure if I hate it or just bored by it. Broken time-line and few major "events" make it hard to get to grips with. More importantly, the characters are all well-lined upper-class types who do nothing. Money is readily available (millions) but referred to with sublime indifference. Much jealousy and rivalry and breaking of relationships, an occasional reference to 'emerging from the bedroom' but no sensuality, no sex, no passion - in fact very little physical or visual detail. Seems to be about feelings but much of that is about having no feelings. Much about what is 'correct' or 'normal', with a curled lip, raised eyebrow sort of way, and quite a few reference to the differences between Catholic and Protestant views of the relations between the sexes. So, who the heck cares? And how come this is seen as a classic?

[eyejaybee · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ford Madox Ford originally intended to call this beautiful but tragic novella "The Saddest Story", based upon the opening sentence, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard"> His publisher objected, suggesting that such a title would have a disastrous impact upon sales. Ford was not convinced, responding angrily that the publisher should do whatever he thought fit, adding that one might as well just call it "The Good Soldier". "The Saddest Story" might have spelt disaster on the booksellers' shelves but it would certainly have satisfied those who lean towards the "It does what it says on the tin" approach to titles. It is an immensely sad story - the tale of two self-destructive couple touring Europe in the early years of the twentieth century.However, it is also a beautifully written story, to such an extent that one suffers all the pain of the narrator as he recounts his tragic story.Ford was a master of literary criticism and brought all his stylistic knowledge to bear here giving a series of different literary devices (flashback, impressionism, florid conjecture). It is a short book but infinitely rewarding .. yet also heartbreaking.

[jmcdbooks · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rated: A-Ford masterfully weaves a sordid narrative tale of intrigue of passion in the empty lives of the rich. This book was one that kept calling me back to fill in more of the blanks in the sad story. Great handling of the various points of view from the leading characters.

[pauntley · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a tale of infidelity, frustration and disappointment with a famous opening sentence: 'This is the saddest story I have ever heard'. There are many ways to read The Good Soldier. I read it for the first time cold, with very little idea about what I was in for. There are annotated editions with a plot synopsis, cast of characters and summaries of recurring themes or motifs but my electronic version was bare of any explanatory Introduction or annotation. Reading it this way was an exploratory process for the narrator, whose first and second names are only revealed incidentally, well into the novel, is unreliable, ignorant much of the time about what's going on and strangely artless. The chronology is fractured. On first reading the novel resembles a random patchwork quilt or William Burroughs cut up. My Kindle copy of the first version I read is heavily annotated with baffled or occasionally derisory comments. It would have been quite possible, of course, to begin with one of the annotated versions and commence reading with knowledge of what to expect. In retrospect, I'm glad I didn't. The Good Soldier is a book to be read several or more times and something significant in my appreciation of the book would have been lost if I had been better prepared for that first encounter. The narrator may be strangely artless in the way he frames his narrative, but Ford Madox Ford is very far from artless. The Good Soldier is ranked by some critics among the most important 20th century novels, in company with Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, &c. It is certainly possible to disagree with that ranking. One difference is immediately apparent: the prose of The Good Soldier - the surface of the novel - is generally undistinguished. This is a tale told by a blandly imperceptive man whose mind mostly moves in cliches. He is, of course, Ford's creature and the art of the novel lies in the author's deployment of his unreliable narrator, with all his inadequacies of perception and expressiveness, over the shifting terrain of his 'saddest story'.

[brenzi_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

”This is the saddest story I have ever heard.”So begins the 1915 novel by Ford Maddox Ford, a book that even he, ten years after its publication, was surprised by the combined intricacies of voice and non-linear construction that make this narrative confusing and just a bit odd. But dang, it seems to have left me considering a reread in the not too distant future.The story itself is fairly straightforward: two wealthy couples, one English (Edward and Leonora Ashburnham), one American (John and Florence Dowell), spend many seemingly happy years together after meeting in a German spa town. At some point, it is revealed that Edward and Florence have carried on a long affair which Lenora knows about but Dowell does not. This affair appears to be the vehicle for a bleak string of deaths, suicides, and one woman’s spiral into mental illness.To say that Dowell is an unreliable narrator would be true but it is not the whole story. He has been duped so he doesn’t really know the whole story but as he pieces it together it goes through several revisions as he tells the story from several different points of view through time, shifting back and forth through many years. This was all very daring and cutting edge in 1915 but also very jumbled and had me scratching my head wondering where the clarity would come from. The clarity does come eventually, and then you think the narrative is finished but wait, Ford throws in the explanation for one last suicide. Dowell’s narration has always been a matter of controversy and for good reason. It’s random, chaotic, sprawling and for the most part, he is looking for sympathy. He actually admires Edward, who carried on with Dowell’s wife for years, right under his nose. ”I can’t conceal from myself the fact that I loved Edward Ashburnham---and that I love him because he was just myself. If I had had the courage and virility and possibly also the physique of Edward Ashburnham I should, I fancy, have done much what he did. He seems to me like a large elder brother who took me out on several excursions and did many dashing things whilst I just watched him robbing the orchards, from a distance.” (Page 257)Huh. That is brilliant. The fact that a reader can be taken in by such a narrator, well, you just have to give a lot of credit to the author. But wait---does he just think I’m incredibly stupid? Whatever the answer is, I am going to have to read this book again in the not too distant future. And that must mean Ford’s a genius.

[diefledermaus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

(Spoilers) I’d read this book before, but reading it again (for a class) reminded me what a well written tragedy it was. Especially good because we read it alongside Goethe's Elective Affinities – there were many parallels between the two. It’s a story of betrayed and lost love – plenty of those – but even the basic plot is complex. To make things more complicated, the book is narrated by the least aware participant in the two love quartets. He moves from generalities to specific memories, spanning different times, with changing opinions, realizing things and judging. Few novels are more subjective. The story follows John Dowell, the nearly nameless narrator, who marries Florence and takes her to Europe. There they meet the Ashburnhams and Edward starts an affair with Florence. His long suffering wife, Leonora – who put up with his multiple mistresses but still loves him – keeps quiet. There was also an Edward in Elective Affinities – another man who is rather narcissistic and falls in love with a younger woman who’s like a daughter to him and his long suffering, practical wife. Nancy is the stand in for Ottilie – everyone falls in love with both of them, both bring about their own slow destruction when they choose to never be with either Edward. Leonora is the rational wife who attempts to smooth things over but eventually fails, as was Charlotte. She doesn’t really have a Captain – possibly the very ordinary Rodney Bayham, who she marries at the end.

[accidentally_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

all i ever hear about this book is that it's a fantastic example of an unreliable narrator (which is true). they don't tell you how this is the most heartbreaking and hilarious novel ever written. and so decadent! a must-read.

[abirdman_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Difficult, wordy, old-fashioned language and moral quandries, but ultimately a very satisfying book. Highly recommended.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is one of those books that everyone seems to describe as an under-appreciated classic. Obviously it isn't -- you can hardly open a book on 20th century literature without seeing its praises sung -- but for whatever reason, I hadn't read it before.It's not quite what I was expecting. It comes as a Penguin Modern Classic with cover art by John Singer Sargent, it's written by an American and set mostly in a German spa-town in the years before World War I, the characters are upper middle-class British and New Englanders -- everything is telling you to expect Henry James. And of course there are Jamesian elements: there is a hint of the old "naïve America meets sophisticated Europe" idea, and there is a huge amount of analysis and very little action. However, this is very definitely not James. The language is light and the syntax flows readily at room temperature; ideas are communicated explicitly and directly; there is even the occasional joke.Fundamentally, this seems to be a book about the process of narrative itself. There are only four main characters: the narrator, his wife Florence, Edward Ashburnham (the "Good Soldier"), and Edward's wife Leonora. The sequence of events described is quite short and straightforward, and the narrator goes through them over and over again, each time getting a different, further insight into what happened and how the events relate to the characters and motivations of the people involved. It is made clear to us that it is the process of telling the story that allows him to do this. In other words, the events are defined and redefined by the process of reporting them. Interestingly, this was ten years before Schrödinger and Heisenberg established that the act of measuring a physical system inevitably changes the system. Probably too fanciful to describe this as quantum-literature!Another thing we are made to realise as the successive layers of meaning are pealed away is that there is no externally-verifiable "right answer". We only have the unreliable evidence of the narrator, and he himself has no way to go back and establish that one or other version of events is somehow privileged. The narrator's conclusion that Edward was a good and lovable man and Leonora a selfish and manipulative woman is plausible, but he presents it as his own subjective view. This is clearly a book that has had a big influence on western literature. For instance, I was reminded very strongly of the narrative technique used by Günter Grass in his memoir Beim Häuten der Zwiebel, which I read a few months ago. Grass uses exactly this idea, of the influence that fictional narrative has on the events it describes, and of the impossibility of getting back to a single, true, version of events.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An impressionistic masterpiece? A tragedy or a comedy? This novel, published in 1915, from the pen of Ford Madox Ford is unique enough to have been described by its critics as all of the preceding and more. Subtitled "A Tale of Passion", it is unique both in my experience and within the author's total work. The story is narrated by an American, John Dowell, who invites the reader to sit down with him beside the fire of his study to listen to the "saddest story" he has ever known. The story, set during the decade preceding the Great War, while sad for some of the participants is truly sad only in the ironic sense of the word. The characters are not particularly likable or sympathetic. Considering that, it is counter intuitive, but the reader is spurred on to read the novel by the precision and the beauty of the prose and the intrigue within the story. The narrative unfolds in a mosaic-like way with a traversal of the narrator's memory back and forth over the nine year period that is covered. When complete, the tale is ended perfectly much as it begins. The result is a beautiful small novel that ranks high in this reader's experience.

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Thisis a vry carefully constructed book, with more subltilty of character deliniation than I've seen in a long time

[anniehidalgo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Ford Madox Ford reportedly told someone in a letter that someone else had called this "the finest French novel ever written in English". I could see that - it is a little like Flaubert, or Zola. I think it also has a touch of the gothic about it - madness and suicide feature prominently and everything is told as though no one had acted of their own volition so much as played out their parts, long since set for them by the heavy hand of fate. See, the fact that I want to write sentences like that after I've read it shows you what a touch of the gothic it has.It is also told in parts, from the end-ish, to the beginning, to somewhere in the middle, to the end again, but hopping around between them as the spirit moves - the premise being that the narrator is writing as though he's telling you this late in the evening, as you sit by the fireside. And he's figuring out what happened to him as he goes along, himself. Honestly, while I liked the plot, and it gave me a lot of food for thought, I'm not sure I agreed with the narrator, or thought his objectives were worthy. He thinks it's too bad that he never did marry a pretty girl who loved him, and settled down to a nice, quiet life, yet he persisted in sticking with this crowd of people who obviously didn't love him, and never did try to seek what he would deem real happiness elsewhere. He admitted that silent manipulation, particularly by Florence (his wife) and Leonora (his friend's wife), had doomed many of the other characters, yet allowed himself and the others to be blindly manipulated, though in all fairness, he may not have known he was being manipulated at the time. But by the end of the book, he is STILL being manipulated, and still accepting it as its lot. Then again, one of the book's premises seems to be that he is only a person, and sometimes people do allow that. He had nothing but contempt for his wife, partially because she messed around on him (very understandable), but also because she would've told 'everyone' about it. While of course that is 'gauche', and would've hurt people, particularly him, you could certainly argue that, had she done that, it would've been the more honorable choice, compared to what ensued. Or, to put the plot another way - the protagonist from the Jeeves novels marries Emma Bovary, who falls in love with a fairly nice, if inconstant lord of the manor (generous to his tenants, and all too generous with his affections, mostly because he gets so little affection at home). Their lives are all quietly ruined by his scheming wife, who has the personality of a minor character in a Jane Austen plot (think Charlotte in Pride and Prejudice, who marries the clergyman - only a Charlotte with utter control over the lives of everyone around her).Ford originally wanted to call this book "The Saddest Story". It would've fit.

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Good Soldier is less about what the text says than about what it doesn't.John Dowell is the narrator of this story of two couples (John and Florence Dowell; and Edward and Leonora Ashenburner). He is, allegedly, unaware of the affair between his wife and Edward until after her death, when he relates the story to the reader. How a man could be 1/4 of a close circle of people and remain unaware of their activities stretches credibility; hence, we must come to view John Dowell as an unreliable narrator.The writing is superb and kept me interested in spite of little direct action and almost no dialogue. This is the kind of book that could be read several times, and each time will bring new insights into John's character, and through those insights, to the "truth" of what really happened.

[leslie398 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I waffled a bit between 3.5 and 4 stars for this classic. While there were things about it that didn't appeal to me (some Catholic bashing for example), it made an impression on me & made me think. Two different but equally dysfunctional marriages are laid bare throughout the course of the book. It is written in an unusual style that I am not sure that I liked but worked well here -- the narrator writes as if the reader knew some fact or event that had not been revealed yet and then later explains it. For example, in the beginning of Part II, he is relating his own history talking about how he and Florence became married. He remarks "she might have bolted with the fellow, before or after she married me." What fellow? who is this person never before even alluded to? The reader begins to have suspicions of who it is and then several pages later it is revealed.As the story progresses, it becomes more and more clear that this is a highly unreliable narrator. And his shifting perspective may be not so much of a shift as a revealing of underlying views formerly hidden (from the reader and perhaps from the narrator's own conscious mind).

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

December's bookclub selection - a story about two couples and the disaster that arises when one one of the men has an affair with the other man's wife. What made this book such a great read was that it was told by the cuckholded husband as a flashback - the perfect unreliable narrator. His moods and emotions change over the course of the story and my emotions followed. It was an interesting book to discuss - different people felt that different characters were at fault and everyone was pretty flawed. I read this at the same time as listening to Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence. Both books are set in that same time period - turn of the century. Interesting to see how society's rules (divorce was scandalous - affairs were ok) dictacted people's lives.

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very deep well written novel. A book that sentences have to be read a couple of times to get the full meaning.

[julie1lou · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is a book about ambiguity. Is it a tragedy or a comedy, or even a tragicomedy? Can we trust the narrator - the eponymous, personality-less John Dowell? Does he believe in what he's telling us, or is he trying to convince himself as much as us? Reflecting on his marriage to Florence Dowell and their friendship with the Ashburnhams, Dowell claims to be unaware of his wife's affair with Edward Ashburnham. As he attempts to peel back the layers of truth and fiction which make up his life, there is much which remains unsatisfactory and unresolved. If he is unaware of his wife's affair, he is beyond gullible. If he felt no pain upon enlightenment, he is either completely unfeeling or unwilling to admit it. His persistent reference to 'poor dear' Florence and his determination to justify the 'good' Edward would seem to suggest he has adopted self-delusion and denial as bulwarks against truth and 'reality'. In 'The Good Soldier' silence tells us more than words, and the relationship between truth and fiction is laid bare. In narrating his life, Dowell attempts to control it; imposing his own version of 'truth' over that which has been decided for him. The novel is structured as an imagined a conversation between Dowell and the 'silent listener'; in other words, the narrative leaps around like a frog on hot coals, telling us more about Dowell's state of mind than about the tangled plot which enveloped him. Ultimately, Ford lets us draw our own conclusions, leaving us with a sense that we have only a glimpse of a much, much larger picture.

[jimmaclachlan · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Thinking this was another book ruined for me by being required reading in school, I had another go at it as an adult. Yuck. Boring.

[flourishing_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've heard this book touted as a 'perfect' novel, and I have to say, I think that's true. It's taut, gripping, and endlessly fascinating - despite the fact that it relies on sexist underpinnings, it still seems to ring true. I loathe every character in it, and yet I feel enormous sympathy for them, because - aren't we all loathsome?In any case, heartily recommended.

[booktruffler · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Good Soldier has one of the most famous opening sentences, and the rest of the book lives up to it."This is the saddest story I have ever heard." A tale of passion, miscommunication, good intentions, desperation. Two couples' lives become inextricably entwined in the late 1890s. The writing is restrained, narrated as it is by the deceived husband. He has an utterly believable voice as he drifts back and forth in time, trying to make sense of what has happened. Highly recommended if you're a fan of British literature.

[sandydog1_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Chronic, angst, chronic cardiopulmonary disease, chronic longings, chronic nastiness. Give me Dostoyevsky any day. . Crazy (poor) people are much more interesting than eccentric (rich) people.

[datrappert · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In the beginning this book impresses you with its prose as it lulls you into "the saddest story I have ever heard." The prose at the end of the book is equally good. But what comes in between, well...it speaks of a time and place and perhaps way of life that doesn't exist any more, at least not for those of us who don't immerse ourselves in novels set in the same milieu. Ford's tale of infidelity, jealousy, control, heart disease, insanity, etc. etc. is told out of sequence by its unlikable, untrustworthy narrator, who is know to contradict himself. About 2/3 of the way through, it occurred to me that this was really a very black comedy about a bunch of people who pretty much deserve what they get, and after finishing the book, I'll stick to that point of view. Apparently it is at least somewhat valid based on the Introduction in this Everyman edition. This is a book that will stick with me in some ways, and reading it was mostly a pleasure. But it isn't a great novel.

[oskar_matzerath-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Let the author and you trust each other, each to his job. Don't worry if at the start you ask, "Who is speaking here?" By the end, after all hope is gone and your heart is broken, you'll know.

[stillatim · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kind of like watching acid eat into a nice painting- slow, sometimes pleasurably excruciating (look! it's spreading to her eyes!), sometimes just dull. I admit I read this because I felt that I ought to, which isn't usually the best basis for reading a book. Sometimes it works out well, of course, but not so much with this. The third quarter was amazing, and made it worth while, but the first third in particular was a bit of a drag. Like Conrad writing a James novel, except instead of slightly unreliable, anachronistic narrative, it's completely unreliable and there's zero 'progression' of any kind. It reminded me a bit of Catch 22 in that way, except not funny. I suspect this would be great fun to study, too... but for night-time edification I'll stick to Conrad writing Conrad novels and James writing James.

[iambookish-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm so conflicted on what I really think of this book. It was a struggle to get through and at times I wanted to throw it against the wall, but in the end I powered through and felt satisfied with its conclusion. This to me balances out to "average"!

[madepercy-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading classic literature is always full of surprises. I did not know that Ford Madox Ford was considered an impressionist. He seems to have moved beyond the more formal yet (then) modern prose of Henry James to capture the nature of English manners while obviously displaying Edwardian characteristics. Yet his prose was exactly like a conversation - I found the so-called illogical flow of the plot to be exactly like listening to someone tell their story as one would over a cup of tea or coffee. This novel is not too taxing and is definitely worth reflecting upon.