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)

Devoid of life, plotless, pointless....

I'll make this short: After trying repeatedly to "get into" the story and even skipping around in search of even the slightest trace of a plot or "hook" into this this book, I've officially given up. Good for insomnia, but little else.

Always look out for life's Whitmepool

Great stories, smashing first chapter. Although coloured by the line which may be the author's philosophy: life is lived at the surface (i.e superficially).
Please do listen!

Not For Me

I appreciate the scope of this series of books, but I am really tired of stories about privileged white Englishmen. The narration is excellent, but I find it hard to get interested in the story. The writing is also excellent for this sort of thing. So if you like stories like this, go for it.

For fans of Thomas Mann and Proust

Thrilled to find this on Audible - highly recommended for those who enjoy Thomas Mann, Proust.

It is no good being a beauty alone...

***** "For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected; so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we, ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity."
-- Anthony Powell, A Buyer's Market

BOOK ONE (A Question of Upbringing): the first of Powell's monster 12-book 'A Dance to the Music of Time' deals primarily with Nick and his fellow students during their last year in public school and first couple years either "up" at University or "down" in the city working. The four major players in the first book: Nicholas Jenkins (the narrator), Charles Stringham, Peter Templer, and Kenneth Widmerpool. These characters all show up again in Book 2. Along with various other characters (Nick's uncle, Jean Templer, Mark Members, JG Quiggin, Bill Truscott, etc.).

BOOK TWO ('A Buyer's Market'): focuses on Nick and some new characters, and many of the old, as they maneuver through the social dinners, dances and teas that seem designed to both stratify society AND bring together these young people together to get married; to find adequate husbands for daughters and satisfy the social or monetary need of the men who are just starting to 'make something' of their lives.

Events seem to guide the paths of these people in and out of each others lives. Probably the most painful to watch is Widmerpool, who seems always to exist in a socially difficult place and constantly dealing with sugary embarrassments.

I love how art is taking on a larger presence in his novels. Not a surprising fact given that the book itself is named after a painting with the same name by Nicolas Poussin. But, internal to the book, it makes sense given that Edgar Bosworth Deacon (an artist) plays a part and that Nick is now working in a publishing house devoted to art books.

There are parts of this novel that, obviously, bring to mind Marcel Proust, but a lot of the first two novels, at least, seem substantively more related to both Evelyn Waugh and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wonder if the either the character of Members/Quiggin is, in fact, E. Waugh. And if so, who the other writer "is".

***** "Emotional crises always promote the urgent need for executive action, so that the times when we most hope to be free from the practical administration of life are always those when the need to cope with the concrete world is more than ever necessary"
-- Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World

BOOK THREE ('The Acceptance World'): There is something amazing about Powell's attempt to gather the passage of time, the progression of life, the dynamic of relationships over 12 novels. When I read Proust and as I read Powell and even Knausgaard, I am always a bit shocked by the boldness of folding together six (Knausgaard), seven (Proust), or twelve novels into a narrative that actually works.

Reading Powell reminds me of reading an Evelyn Waugh that is stretched out over decades, or reading Proust where instead of the narrator focusing in, the narrator is actually ignoring the inner-life and capturing the world and the people around him. It is kind of dizzying if you step back and think about it. It is like reading Downton Abbey serialized from the 30s into the 60s with more characters, more art, and a bit more London and bit less Abbey.

So, I'm done with A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement and done with Spring. Bring on Summer and I'm guessing World War 2.

I'm an Anglophile, but I was utterly bored.

I majored in English history, lived in England for four years, and loved the other books I've heard narrated by Simon Vance...and I still didn't care for this book. I never got a feel for the narrator - he doesn't seem to have a personality. He could be very descriptive about some of the other characters or settings, which was a tad bit interesting, but didn't amount to a story. I kept waiting for a plot, climax, or narrative arc, but there just isn't one. I listened to the bitter end, sure that the story would get started, but it never did. The only reviews when I bought the book were positive, so I'm hoping that you learn from my mistake and don't waste your money & time on this book! Check out "Cutting for Stone" if you like recent history - that's a brilliant book with a fantastic narrator.

A Wasted Credit - This is Unlistenable!

I don't know what I was thinking when I chose this book, because many reviews are bad and boy are they right, now that I look at them more closely after my bad experience starting this book. I am only 1 hour into this and know that I will never pick it up again. Even Simon Vance can't make this an enjoyable listen. Dull, set in a time and place that is not identified and the author writes in a way that seems meant to obfiscate for no good reason. And did I mention dull? Do yourself a favor and look elsewhere.

A cure for Downton Abbey pangs of withdrawal!

Julian Fellows, please take note. Nick Jenkins and his world need you! The characters are unforgettable and the period touches impeccably precise.

An immersion in English life between the wars

This understated book is the first of a series that grew on me and became enthralling. Written in form of an autobiography, it tells the life of an author from his boyhood after the first world war through his youth in school and at Oxford, his military service during the second world war, and afterward through his old age in perhaps the late 60s. The story is an assemblage of small moments in his relationships, in the military and otherwise mainly with artists, musicians and authors. One character recurs throughout, acting as a sort of archetypal figure of trage-comedy.

Some may find the pace too slow; there is little action, but give the books a chance. I found myself feeling as if I was there, too, seeing, hearing, feeling, even smelling, life as it was in England then. Taken as a whole, it has a mythic force. I found it haunting and well as amusing. Simon Vance achieves a tour de force of portraying widely diverse characters completely convincingly, enabling me to become immersed in the story.

I recommend listening to rather than reading these, at first, because the various accents of the characters are key to the story. Being unfamiliar with British class society, and their various accents, I would have lost a great deal if I had started with the books.

Watching TV version helped flesh this out

Getting hold of the 1997 tv series greatly helped me enjoy this volume, as it showed actual setting (more wealthy than the reading suggested to me) and does cover the main scenes. After I got that big picture context assimilated and factored in, that allowed the mood of the book to take me forward with the time scales and the dancing or whatever much more fluidly. Good style really, and I am going to try volume 2.