Parade's End - Part 1: Some Do Not ...

By: Ford Madox Ford

Narrated by: John Telfer

The first volume of Parade's End introduces the central characters: Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant, unconventional mathematician; his dazzling but unfaithful wife Sylvia; and the young Suffragette Valentine Wannop. It starts with the cataclysmic meeting of Tietjens and Valentine: a weekend whose violence prefigures the coming war. It ends in 1917 as the two are on the verge of becoming lovers, before Tietjens prepares to return to the Front and probable death.

Some Do Not ...is an unforgettable exploration of the tensions of a society facing catastrophe, as the energies of sexuality and power erupt in madness and violence.

©1924 First published by Duckworth (P)2012 AudioGO Ltd

Addicting.

You will have these voices in your head for the rest of your life. “Good, God!”

Of note, yes; interesting, no

Said to be a landmark in the emergence of the modernist novel, this is the first in a set of four volumes known collectively as Parade's End.

Set before, during and after WW1, it presents a sort of literary impressionism in which its characters make a point of never saying what they think and then often think that they should, perhaps, think differently about what they didn't candidly disclose anyway. You get the picture.

There are some moments but, all too soon, the fog of style descends again for a good long while. It might be noteworthy but, crucially, it is not interesting. I shall spare myself the other three books.