In the rather more romantic days of my youth, I loved the film, not least because "Harvest" is my surname. Over the years, my memory of the film has faded, so when I saw the 1942 edition of the book in a charity shop I bought it. That was a long time ago too, and I have finally got round to reading it - and I did enjoy it very much. I often have problems with books of this period, which are often so full of the values of the past that it makes it hard for me. But this one sidestepped most of those problems (except for side-swipe at feminism) and turned out to be a real page turner. And it was long enough since I've seen the film that I'd even forgotten the denouement. So definitely a good read

A powerful and beautiful book. I can't improve on Courtney's outstanding review from when she read it a few years ago, but I thought the book had a powerful way it shows the profound impacts of both World Wars and the ways in which it was so profoundly surreal to be heading to a second one so shortly after the first, ostensibly unrepeatable one.
This book is exceptionally well-crafted and I really enjoyed it.

I watched the movie once a couple years ago and don't really remember it that well (I need to watch it again now), so I was eager to read the book. Part way through I discovered that there are NO Chapters! What? Yeah, not a one. The book is divided into 5 parts and goes from first person to third person, back to first, and so on. The style was charming, the characters real, the plot fascinating. I really enjoyed seeing how everything came together when you weren't sure how it could. Since it takes place from the end of WWI, travels through the 20s, and into the 30s, ending with the the outbreak of WWII, you really get a feel of what people were thinking and feeling.

My only real complaint is the overabundance of swearing. The Lord's name is used and so is one other word that most would consider swearing. Because of how many times those occurred, I couldn't give this book a higher rating.

I have to admit Random Harvest is one of my favourite books and movies. James Hilton wrote this book in 1941. I've read the book several times after I've seen the movie a dozen times. I chose this narration because Carter Thompson seemed to embody the spirit of Ronald Colman's performance. I felt that the movie followed the book fairly close (some events were out of order), so it wouldn't put you off from reading the book if you've seen the movie. I felt the narrators did a brilliant job reading their parts. The multi-narrator format wasn't confusing nor did it sound like a drama/play. Hilton kept the end hidden, which is refreshing as so many current authors are too predictable. I was invested in the main protagonist, Rainier, and cared about his journey with his memory losses. The book was written in parts (that reflects different parts of Rainier's life) instead of chapters. The story is told in both first and third person POVs, but it's clearly stated when it changes, so you're not lost. The story is recounted by Rainier's secretary, Harrison, with whom Rainier shares his secret that he suffers memory loss due to the 1st World War. The book ends with the start of a 2nd World War looming in the background. I highly recommend reading this gem.

"… he isn't happy now – that I do know – there's always a look in his eyes as if he were searching for something and couldn't find it." (pg. 26)

As the creator of Shangri-La in Lost Horizon, James Hilton should be a more well-known writer; his name, by rights, part of our collective cultural memory even if he's no longer widely read. But, with the exception of that magnificent Lost Horizon and the short, sentimental Goodbye Mr Chips, none of his books are in print. To get Random Harvest, I had to buy a charming, old-fashioned hardback on eBay, a yellowed 1942 reprint with a dust jacket that proclaimed the role of the BBC as the 'voice of freedom' broadcasting to 'the occupied countries of Europe'.

Reading Random Harvest, a bestseller on its release in 1941 and considered the 'best of the rest', you can see why Hilton's reputation rests on just two books. Hilton, who died aged 54, was perhaps too prolific – and too popular – for his own good. However engagingly written – and Random Harvest is very charming – you get a sense of a writer writing middlebrow entertainments when he had the talent to write something more.

Whilst never a pot-boiler, and never gushingly sentimental, it is hard to peg just what Random Harvest is and why it never transcends itself in the way that Lost Horizon and Goodbye Mr Chips could. The book follows a successful but dissatisfied upper-class businessman who served in World War One and is now, as the world gears up for its sequel against Hitler, trying to remember what happened during a two-year period immediately following the war, where he lost his memory and, presumably, led another life.

It is a mystery book that never seems to care about its mystery; a love story that never commits to the centrality of its romance; a homespun, middlebrow Dickensian sketch that spends a lot of time talking about share dividends and board meetings. It seems to want to both bask in its created warmth – and there's always warmth in a Hilton story – and yet aspire to something more. The businessman's plight works as an overarching metaphor for a "brief unmemoried idyll" (pg. 321) between two wars, but this melancholy acceptance of impending cataclysm was done to much better effect in Lost Horizon and Mr Chips. Neither of the businessman's two lives are especially interesting – indeed, they seem drearily alien to a modern reader. A sentimental, improbable ending doesn't convince – although some readers will like it – and brings Random Harvest back down into the ranks of middle fiction.

None of this is to say the book doesn't work. It does – only it's hard to see the purpose towards which it is actually working. Plot, character, theme, setting and dialogue are all ably done without ever seeming to lift the novel off the ground. This is a writer who has a learned idiosyncrasy that brings texture and idea to his books, yet in Random Harvest it seems to be all things and none. Part of Hilton's appeal is that his characters are often reaching for something they cannot express and cannot grasp; it does not work quite so well when the book itself is doing the same.

Like several of the other reviewers I had already seen the movie when I picked up the book. That took away the surprise reveal at the end of the book, of course, but it was interesting to consider the different structures; the book worked backwards chronologically beginning with a successful, married Charles Rainier, while the movie started in the asylum and moved forward from that point.

While I found the film very moving, I didn't get the same emotional impact from the book - again, probably because the element of surprise was taken away. The book focused more on Charles Rainier / Smithy. I felt the film was more centered around Paula. But enough of the comparisons already...

It was an interesting peek into the society and culture of Britain between the wars. Over in the States we have an easier time distancing ourselves from the two World Wars, I think, possibly because of our distance from the Continent. From the point of view of a former soldier in The War To End All Wars turned reluctant, but successful businessman, it was fascinating to see how his life unfolded and his memory eventually returned. Heartbreaking, though, to consider that it took 20 years.

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I've seen the Greer Garson/Ronald Colman film several times, and love the melodrama of it all! So I decided maybe it was time to read the book. I think because I saw and loved the movie first though, there's no real way for me to seperate the book from the movie.

Just some initial thoughts in the 10 minutes since I finished the book: I enjoyed the book quite a bit, I think it offered a new depth to the character of Charles Rainer that the movie wasn't able to, but in contrast the character of Paula in the book was fairly bare-bones whereas in the movie she's much more developed. Part of that is definitely due to the different narrative framings that the two mediums employed. I think both have value though, and both are well crafted to suit the medium they're presented in. I'm glad I decided to read this!

I first read this book 30 years ago and again last year. It is a story of love and loyalty after the First World War. The conclusion is one of the best I've ever read.

Sometime ago I decided that I wanted to go back and try to read at least a majority of The New York Times best selling books. I have finally taken that first step, although since it started in 1941 and I've been alive since 1949 and an avid reader, I'm sure there are more down the line that I have read and can add to my list but...for now...my first one from March of 1941. I couldn't read the first book ever given the honor because the only copies listed for Oliver Wiswell by Kenneth Roberts (in late January 1941) is listed for a 3 figure price and I was perfectly happy to start with the second book. As it turned out, I loved it. Basically, for those of you who have never read it, it is about a man who fought in WWI. He was injured in battle near the end of the war, taken by the Germans, nursed back to health and in a mental institution with no memories and an invented name. One day he basically just walks out of the institution and heads out on his own. He meets a young woman who helps him out tremendously, they fall in love and marry. Soon after she tells him she's pregnant, he has to take a trip and while gone he slips on wet pavement and hits his head. Now he remembers his previous life but nothing of the time period between when he left the institution and the fall. That's all I'm going to tell you because to go any further would give the rest away. It's just a wonderful read and I enjoyed every moment of it. This book was actually second on the NYT best selling novels list for the year of 1941.

I've seen and enjoyed the classic movie of Random Harvest several times; now I've finally read the book.

The essential plot points are the same as in the movie, but James Hilton's book is structured differently and has a broader scope. The movie is as much as about Paula as Smithy/Charles Ranier, but the book focuses on Ranier almost exclusively until the ending. It also provides a somber, sometimes melancholy, but at times satiric look at England during its troubled post-WWI and pre-WW II periods. Hilton sketches the disillusionment and uncertainty in England after the horrors of the first world war and its temporizing and fears as it tries to avoid another.

Hilton may be among the first 20th century authors (along with Remarque in "All Quiet on the Western Front") to chronicle the tragic costs of trench warfare and the bitterness and emptiness it left on those who survived. Smithy/Ranier learns that he was nearly killed because of the callous machinations of his own Machiavellian commanders. He later ruminates that Kitty's fiance accurately describes him as a man who believes in nothing.

The movie focused almost entirely on the melodrama of the Smithy/Paula story but the book offers more of a variety of tones: a somewhat detached description of England's social and political milieu of the 20s and 30s; a satiric, gently comedic view of Ranier's upper-class family and upbringing; and a searing view of Smithy/Ranier's internal struggles and sense of loss and dislocation as he tries to put the jigsaw of himself back together.

The movie is one of my favorites, but the book also is worthy and arguably deeper and more affecting, particularly as the modern reader knows that England is on the verge of the next tragic cataclysm. There's a sadness and wistfulness that pervades both the book and movie but the book is perhaps sharper in tone and more varied in its approach. The movie mostly is a Hollywood romance (and very satisfying on that level); the book is more ambitious and is a somewhat prescient critique of England on the verge of war as well as an absorbing personal journey.

The world Hilton describes has disappeared, a casualty of WW II among other factors. And his style of fiction, somewhat formal, contrived, and talky, also has largely faded. But I found it a very satisfying read. I understand why Hollywood made the choices it did with the movie. But the book has more to it than the movie ever suggests.

Nice idea but . . .

Too much random banter. Major plot detours: I found myself trying to understand what all the family financial ruin was about and what it had to do with the amnesia mystery. The 16 year-old niece/sugar uncle love story possibility is impossible to warm up to if you have even a milligram of cynicism.

Credibility problems: How is it that this shell shocked and later hit-by-car concussion victim still the financial wizard/brilliant CEO of the world?

Finally, the stuffy British style: "He smiled, appreciating the repartee whilst resolute to make no concessions throughout the rest of the evening."

I picked this up after seeing the Greer Garson-Ronald Colman movie and found that the movie actually did a pretty good job of bringing the story to life. A young man meets a reserved older one on a train on Armistice Day in the 30s, and he finds the older man (a successful businessman and politician) not only served in WWI, but has a blank period in his memory from after the war. He "woke up" one day in Liverpool, not knowing how he went from crouching in a foxhole by dead men, his leg wounded, to lying on a park bench in Liverpool, several years onward. The hole in his memory haunts him, despite his outward success.

The main difference between the movie and the book is that the movie sets everything in nice chronological order--the viewer learns right off what happened during the lost years. In the book, however, leaving the lost years lost for a great portion of the story adds to the mystery and the elegiac tone. Britain is again sliding toward war, and that slide parallels Charles Rainier's acceleration toward his past. Just as Europe could not escape the consequences of that first war, neither can he escape that war's impact on him and how it continues to overshadow his life.

Because the narrator and the central character form a friendship and then a working relationship, RANDOM HARVEST reminded me of THE GREAT GATSBY. Where Gatsby pursued his dream of Daisy and embodies American self-invention, Charles Rainier pursues his lost years, unable to invent or define himself because of the hollowness inside.

Interesting also that RANDOM HARVEST was published in 1941, when the end of WWII was nowhere near a done deal.

Oh--and if you agreed that Kitty in the movie was a "forward minx," you'll find she was no Hollywood invention.