This book gave us the term "Shangri-La" and is a mystery, an adventure, and a love story. Hilton's writing is a pleasure to read but may seem old-fashioned to younger readers. I implore them to give it a try. Oh yeah--the movie's good too!

Great premise, disappointing follow-through. I'm very surprised that I didn't like this; other reviews praise it for being engrossing, but I found most of it to be quite dull. Charles Rainier is an English politician and businessman who can't remember a few years of his life due to a WWI head injury. While set at the eve of WWII, most of the book is comprised of flashbacks to Rainier's life, eventually including scenes from his missing years. And, of course, there are women involved -- a cold present-day wife and the promise of an old, fiery romance that Rainier can't quite remember.

Sounds fantastic, right? Unfortunately, the book needs a shocking amount of editing; it is filled with tangents, superfluous characters, and a lot of talk about the state of England during and between the World Wars. Perhaps it's my fault for wanting to concentrate on the personal drama rather than the sociopolitical context, but I found myself frequently impatient, wading through pages about England when I *really* just wanted to concentrate on Rainier and his amnesia. I hear there's a terrific movie version available; perhaps I'll like that better.

After seeing the movie with Ronald Colman and Greer Garson again recently, I decided to read the book. Although the book is very different from the movie in terms of how the story unfolds and who the narrator is (Harrison is not in the movie) other key elements are true to the core of the story. This fact provided great satisfaction for though I knew essentially what might happen, it evolved in a more circuitous and unexpected way. A satisfying read on the whole—a true testament to the patience of love.

This has been on my reading list for a number of years; I had a strong memory of watching, and loving, the film as a kid (though on a recent rewatch it didn't live up to my memories of it).

It's a strange novel; written and published during the Second World War, it largely deals with the trauma of the First—albeit in a somewhat abstract way, as Charles Rainer deals with the type of fairytale amnesia that would seem more at home in a Laurel and Hardy short than in a realistic novel. He loses his memory after being shelled in the trenches—so far, so believable—but when he's hit by a taxi two years later, he regains his original memories but loses everything in between. This 'one bonk on the head for amnesia, a second bonk on the head to cure it' theory of memory loss is the kind of Looney Tunes logic that stretches credulity, though the novel was wildly popular at the time and was put out as an Armed Services Edition, as well as being adapted into the aforementioned movie starring Greer Garson and an inappropriately senescent Ronald Coleman.

Politically, it starts off quite interesting, with Rainier criticising his father's colonialism, as well as the historical exploitation of the working class which allowed for his fortune to be amassed. Later, though, it descends into a bizarre apologia for British Imperialism and an elegy for a supposedly "idyllic" England that is no more. There's a strange chauvinism in its depiction, particularly, of an Austrian couple who are played for cheap laughs. On top of that, there's this prurient fascination with queer characters for no apparent reason. Everybody is standoffishly tolerant of queerness, in a contemptuous sort of way (he even bashes Noel Coward at one point). It's not seen as morally repugnant so much as faintly distasteful and risible, like being a hypochondriac or a laudanum addict, but I still couldn't figure out why it was in there at all.

There are a number of creative choices here that I don't entirely understand, though. The whole episode with Kitty, for example: she Rainier's niece, but not biologically (and I didn't feel like it was ever clear exactly what relation she was to him exactly, though maybe I missed something). She courts him quite aggressively over a number of years, with eventual success, then changes her mind at the last minute only to marry someone we never meet and perfunctorily die of tuberculosis. There's actually quite a lot in Kitty's story that's of interest—her relationships with radicals, artists and one of the queer-coded characters I mentioned all feel as if they ought to go somewhere—but it feels a bit dashed off. It makes sense to me that Hilton would throw in a rival love interest at this point in the story, but what makes less sense to me is why he made Kitty's relationship to Rainier so confusing, and why he disposed of her so casually.

Then there's Blampied, another character who feels as if he ought to be more important than he is. To be fair, I do think Hilton is pretty good at creating characters, and that's one of the great strengths of the novel; if Paula weren't so captivating, and if Rainier himself weren't so oddly sympathetic, it would be difficult to care about such a disjointed and hard-to-believe tale.

If this all comes across as pretty scathing, then it maybe doesn't reflect the full extent of my feelings about the novel, which are very mixed. I can't deny that the romantic melodrama of the central plot did work its magic on me (though the film does perhaps milk this more effectively), and there's definitely something seductive about the depictions of the theatrical company and the picturesque English villages, as well as the image of poor Charles Rainier, chivvied into rescuing his family's business George Bailey-style rather than going back to university as he hoped to.

Ultimately, this is very much a product of its time, and while it may not always be successful, it's impossible to deny that it's fascinating.

Another hard to put down novel by James Hilton, in which the Great War and its consequences are prominent. The main character is a young soldier who find himself in a street in Liverpool two years after the war has ended, and he does not remember how he got there or what has happened during those two years. During all the novel he is trying to remember, while reluctantly becoming a successful businessman and saving the family business that he cares not about, for the sake of his siblings, who do not appreciate it and even resent him.

I had not read this novel before, but found it extremely engrossing. The characters were well drawn, and I could picture what it was like to live in England between the World Wars. Not many books are set in this time period, especially if they don't have anything to do with the war. This book carried suspense all the way through, with a surprise ending that I didn't see coming. I would highly recommend it for a quiet and deep journey into the lives of some interesting people caught in a highly unusual situation.

Interesting book.

It's an interesting book but reads at times like a run on sentence. Had figured out the end, just a little before it happened.

This is a very good story.... it's completely readable and well constructed. It is a tale of lost identity due to shell shock in the last world war, The main character has become a successful industrialist but has a two year gap in his memory. His personal life has remained detached and almost unnaturally unemotional but he continually seeks clues to those missing years. The reader gets his story in a series of flashbacks as one phase after another is revealed. There is an element of suspense...of mystery...of romance...which when all combined makes for memorable story.

Read a library hardback over the past few evenings. More than merely well worth reading if you have any interest at all in the period between the wars in England. The characters are complex and well written. There's a surprising lot of revelatory dialogue about the British class system and industry/business/politics during the 1920's and 30's. And the seemingly rambling but never boring plot delivers a sharp surprise at the end on the very day Germany invades Poland and the UK declares war.

Partway through this, I stumbled on the Wikipedia page for "middlebrow," a word which applies nicely to this book. Contemporary middlebrow fiction is reserved for the old Oprah picks, and your mom's book club; I myself have a weakness for the middlebrow fiction of the mid-20th century. If it's British middlebrow fiction, all the better.

This is an absolutely preposterous tear-jerker about a wealthy man from a British industrial family who fights in World War I, gets betrayed by his superiors, bombed in a trench, and loses his memory. He comes to in Liverpool several years later, with no memory of what happened in between. He goes back home, takes the reins of the family business (his father dies without knowing his son is alive; the rest of the family are morons) and builds himself into a prosperous, if dull, success. We see him through the eyes of Harrison, a young man who meets him on a train and eventually becomes his personal assistant.

The narrative structure makes this more interesting than it might be if told linearly--we meet him on the train, as Harrison does, then flash back to his years after coming to in Liverpool, then back to his years during his amnesia, and back to the present again. The suspense comes in wondering how and when he'll remember who he was in those lost years, because of course that was when he fell in love and was truly his happy, true self, which he's buried for the sake of family duty.

If you've ever seen the Greer Garson/Ronald Colman movie version (or the Carol Burnett Show parody, which I just paid $1.99 to watch on Amazon, because it isn't on YouTube), you know what's coming, but the book is very different in how it gets there, since the reader doesn't know what the movie is unable to hide (how's that for coy?). It's completely ridiculous, but entertaining, and makes you want to go back and look for clues you missed. I was disappointed that the ending was somewhat abrupt, but otherwise, just a good, cozy read.

Warning, for crazies like me: there are no numbered chapters, but it was easy to make some, as it's divided into five parts, and there are several page breaks. I made it into 32 roughly equal chapters.

n  Oh, Smithyn
James Hilton's books are always a delight to read, not because they are exciting or particularly amusing, but because they explore the human condition and how we as humans act and feel when faced with extraordinary circumstances.

Random Harvest is a case in point, charting the progress of the businessman and politician, Charles Rainier, as he faces up to one of the most fundamental of problems anyone can face - who am I, and what's my backstory?

After being wounded in the First World War, he wakes up in a Liverpool park in December 1919 unable to remember what had happened to him in the intervening years. We follow Charles and learn of his character, his strengths and weaknesses, and his strong sense of duty, as slowly he is able to make sense of just what happened to him.

I must admit, I was a bit confused about where the story was heading until the final, beautiful denouement which on its own is worth the read. It's true what they say, love really does conquer all.

War--what is it good for?
Absolutely nothing.

A novel set in the 1930ies involving repressed memories and delayed PTSD. I’m not in the habit of reading current best-sellers but this book was published before I was born and since he was British the language is often dated and arcane. However in many ways the themes are as current as yesterday’s news.

The English Class system bows to money while holding its nose regarding the means used to earn it.

Part II jumps back to Charlie’s return to England after recovering from his injuries with no memory of his war years. The seven family members live idle lives made possible by dividends from the family’s sprawling business enterprises. Upon Charlie’s Father’s death his older brother Chet takes over the company. In the rapidly expanding market of the post-war era anyone could look good on a rising market but the company flounders on bloated and inefficient administration, bad loans, and ill-conceived speculation. Charlie gives up his studies at Oxford to save the family fortunes. Chet’s management of the family mansion is equally disastrous. When the preferred family stocks cease issuing dividends family members are faced with the stark reality that they might have to actually work for a living.

Part III jumps seamlessly back to take up where we left off at the end of Part I. We are in the period of denial leading up to the outbreak of WW#2.

This book is so contemporaneous it often feels like it was written yesterday.

Part IV follows Charlie’s escape from convalescent hospital to join a traveling vaudeville theatre group and Part V brings us back to his life as member of parliament and man about town. The book ends with the start of WW#2.

The e-book suffers from bad editing.