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)

Brideshead Regurgitated

Anthony Powell never manages to raise English public school angst to the intensity that Waugh does. Too much rumination, too much action left latent, to little drama. The only thing that recommends this series is that Audible's library of unabridged Evelyn Waugh novels is so inadequate....

As usual, Simon Vance's narration is excellent.

slow to start

I am afraid I have not finished this book, to hard to get in to it is slow and monotonous, 3 hours in and the book is going no where, bought on the recommendation of the narrator in a review. never again.

Does it have a plot?

I got through about the first half of Part I. It introduced a number of interesting characters, but I couldn't discern any real story line.
Did I give up too soon?

who cares?

To be honest, I'm floored by the positive reviews for this book. I have a pretty high tolerance for "slow" and for books without action. But if this book is a crashing bore, it's not because it's slow or without action, although it is. The book is a bore because we never learn enough about any one character--the narrator included--to care about him or her. The writing is good, but unexceptional. I was left in the final analysis to say, "Who cares about any of this?" Especially coming off Galsworthy's riveting Forsyte Saga, this was a big disappointment.

Probably the most boring book I have ever "read."

Wow. What a slog. I almost tossed it (something I very seldom do) after a few hours in, but I was so pissed that I'd spent 12 credits on it that I gutted it out, which was a lot like an exercise in masochism. So many characters, such a fractured story line (if in fact there actually is one.) I kept waiting for something to coalesce, which it never does. The writing is sometimes exceptional, even brilliant, but by the time the sentence ends you've lost the author's original point. Mostly, it's just boring. I must say that Simon Vance is at his best, but that in no way makes up for this effort to turn what could have been a short story into a tome. Save your credits.

Worth time if you have it

Some books I appreciate for the ability to be able to enjoy while I’m listening to them, fall asleep, miss 15 or 20 minutes and then pick up again where I left off. This is one of those. The prose is exquisite and very few readers but Simon Vance could do it justice. Not sure if I will continue with the remaining volumes, but it was all worthwhile.

Panorama

I suspect real editors will blanche as I compare this to the Ladies #1 Detective Agency. However, as in the L#1DA, the plot is secondary to the character development. In fact there is no plot. You simply get a picture of life in England during a particular period. It is indeed slow listening and that is the point. Before listening, download the Exclusive Interview with James Atlas and Charles McGrath on Anthony Powell. It will set the stage. Anyone hooked on the period pieces of the BBC or PBS should enjoy this book.

Please do yourself a favor and skip this book!

What disappointed you about A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement?

There is no plot and by no plot I mean NOTHING. I listened and restarted this book 5 times.
There was nothing to keep my interest, no story line to follow. I tried so hard to find anything. It was literally a young gentleman and who he encounters, a short description of this person and some interaction. Then on to the next person/place. There was no one character that was fully developed. Nothing to relate to. I gave up before I even got to part 2 and I have only done that once before and I've listened audible stories for years.

Would you ever listen to anything by Anthony Powell again?

Never

Would you be willing to try another one of Simon Vance’s performances?

Uncertain

If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement?

I would not have approved it in the first place.

Great Book to Sleep WIth

Listening to “A Dance to the Music of Time” is like hearing someone reminisce about his life – school years, vacations, parties, people he knew, etc. The first-person narrator, Nick Jenkins, talks a lot, but his recollections don’t go anywhere. There’s little plot, no drama, sporadic thoughtful observations, but, overall, no real insight to be gained.

As for the audio book narrator, Simon Vance, I have listened to his works probably a dozen times, and I don’t think this lilting, sonorous performance is his best. He needed to slow down and enunciate. I found that every time I started listening to this book, my mind wandered, and it became background noise. Frankly, for several weeks, I used it to lull myself to sleep at night, without feeling any real need, the next day, to rewind passages to find out what I’d missed.

A Masterpiece on All Counts

A Dance to the Music of Time, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin, was rated by Time magazine as one of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Written by the English novelist Anthony Powell, who took almost 25 years to create the 12-volume set, provides a highly-literate and highly-amusing look into the English upper-middle class between the 1920s and the 1970s. The book covers politics, class-consciousness, society, culture, love, social graces, manners, education, power, money, snobbery, humour, and more.

Although daunting in terms of length, the absolutely brilliant narration by the talented Simon Vance rewards the reader over thousands of pages, hundreds of characters, and twelve installments of gorgeous prose. This is a not-to-be-missed collection of novels for any serious reader of English literature.