A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement

By: Anthony Powell

Narrated by: Simon Vance

Length: 21 hrs

Publisher's summary

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.).

The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses. Four very different young men on the threshold of manhood dominate this opening volume of A Dance to the Music of Time. The narrator, Jenkinsa budding writer shares a room with Templer, already a passionate womanizer, and Stringham, aristocratic and reckless. Widermerpool, as hopelessly awkward as he is intensely ambitious, lurks on the periphery of their world. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, these four gain their initiations into sex, society, business, and art. Considered a masterpiece of modern fiction, Powell's epic creates a rich panorama of life in England between the wars. Includes these novels: A Question of Upbringing, A Buyer's Market, The Acceptance World.

As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of Anthony Powell's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews Charles McGrath about the life and work of Anthony Powell – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.

This production is part of our Audible Modern Vanguard line, a collection of important works from groundbreaking authors.

©1951 Anthony Powell (P)2010 Audible, inc.

Critic reviews

"Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician." ( Chicago Tribune)

"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's." ( New York Times)

"Vance's narration captivates listeners throughout this outstanding examination of a life in progress." ( AudioFile)

Masterpiece

Powell's Music of Time books are a masterpiece of English literature. Massive in scope but ironically very narrow in its analysis of people, place and time, Powell devoted his life to these novels. His prose are rich, lyrical and incredibly smart. Simon Vance is excellent as always.

Do you like to be cornered by a bore?

Listening to this reminds me of being cornered at a family reunion by an old uncle who tells EVERY incident of his life.

Utterly boring

Would you try another book from Anthony Powell and/or Simon Vance?

NO! This is a book about the vapid lives of the rich need-do-wells. I've listened for 2.5 hours and am bored, bored, bored. And Simon Vance's prissy, arrogant voice makes it even more tiresome.

What could Anthony Powell have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

write a compelling story

What didn’t you like about Simon Vance’s performance?

His oh-so prissy voice

is there a story?

i like historical fiction; i like english novels. BUT this is a book going no where. not sure there is a plot. i've tried and am giving up after several hours.

i like simon vance, but he didn't seem to like the book either!

A Surefire Cure for Insomnia

My eyes are glazing over. If I ever ask an old Englishman how long it took him to get laid, well, just shoot me.

Most enjoyable

I concur with all the glowing reviews of this audio book....the whole series.

Undoubtedly, Simon Vance's, always sterling several other audio books I have, is totally in the zone with this one.

The author's description of the mostly banal, prosaic events and interactions of the multitude of characters over the span of years, decades is quietly yet deeply fascinating.

Though weeks since finishing the final volume, I frequently listen again to various chapters. Powell puts highly descriptive words and phrases to elemental human events that I can so much identify but never the depth nor capacity of nuance to articulate.

A stately masterpiece. Not for the impatient.

If you could sum up A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement in three words, what would they be?

Profound, multi-layered.

What did you like best about this story?

The brilliantly sharp humour, and the ever deepening insights of both protagonist and indeed reader as the narrative unfolds. A marvellous portrait of an era long gone. To be compared with Brideshead Revisited.

What about Simon Vance’s performance did you like?

The different voices and the sense of wistfulness that Powell intended.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No! Certainly not.

Any additional comments?

I don't blame those people who complained they were bored. It is not for everyone. This is a cerebral slow burner of a tale spread over 12 novels and about 40 years. It's not for those who like a rollicking, tumultuous incident-packed plot. It just aint that sort of work.

For those with time, patience, and an interest in English social history, this is a glorious and profound experience.

If you have eyes to see and wisdom to understand

Any additional comments?

Having reached my 60s and listened to Proust and James Joyce and Waugh among many others, I came to Powell not knowing what to expect. Some have said there is no plot, but I find it contains the plot of human existence particularly the relationship between men and women. Whereas Proust writes introspectively of himself. Powell writes as an observer of others. This book may not make much sense to anyone under 40 or 50. Only after you have lived through several decades might one appreciate the genius of this work. The first volume seems slow because it contains the "early" years, but I encourage folks to listen on.
This is great literature.

5 Stars on a Huge Dancefloor to this Roman-Fleuve

I delighted in this fascinating, woefully underappreciated roman-fleuve (a long sequence of novels together making up a single work) particularly when reflecting upon it as a dance to 'the music of time' in which 'partners disappear only to reappear once again, once more giving pattern to the spectacle.'

I'm only covering the work as a whole in this review so I might suggest you stay with it even if you don't particularly love this first volume, which covers the early days of the characters into their mid-20s. It gets much, much better and is well worth reading/listening to in its entirety.

*A Dance to the Music of Time* is composed of four movements of three novels each published between 1951 and 1975. The work covers 1921 through 1975 as the narrator Nicholas Jenkins progresses from his English schoolboy days at Eton all the way through the free-love late 1960s into the early 1970s. Notably, Powell attended Eton at a time when several other talented writers were there, including Eric Blair (a/k/a George Orwell), Cyril Connolly and Henry York (Henry Green).

Jenkins is as much an observer as he is a participant, and rarely the center of attention. Instead, he gives focus to the lives, growth and aging of his closest three classmates and paints on a huge canvas his and their dance with thirty-two other characters who join and leave and rejoin. The sequence captures in a way I've not seen in any other work how time alters the players by introducing them, then bringing them back at a later time, and then takes them away again, ultimately all of them--some with violence and in war and some quietly--and the reader--this one at least--is knelled by the impermanence of life and its permanence (it goes on).

The primary trio includes the boorish and ambitious Kenneth Widmerpool (one of the most memorable, despicable characters drawn in any literature I've read), the blue-blooded and self-destructive Charles Stringham and the self-assured and worldly-wise Peter Templer.

He brilliantly composes each of the thirty-two supporting characters with such prismatic particulars that I can recall most of them now, a year out from reading the cycle. The primary beauty of the four movements is watching these characters waltz in with an ease that can only be imagined by a writer on his game pouring his soul into the works.

I am so glad I threw away my fear of this Dance.

Liked Fall of Giants? You'll Love This

I read this book because I enjoyed Pillars and Fall of Giants so much, and I was looking for something along the same lines. This book absolutely blew both Fall of Giants and me away.

The narrator is compelling, the other characters fascinating, the historic background is there but not overwhelming... the portrait that it paints of both it's historical context and the inner workings of a human mind is just fantastic.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough.