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SPOILERS!! Continue if you wish, but you've been warned!
"The Glimpse" is quite different from other novels written by Arnold Bennett that I have so far read. Moorrice, married to Inez, his one-time great passion, finds that his marriage has gone old and stale; he's no longer certain that he loved Inez nor that she loves him. And after a dinner with his wife, his sister, Mary, and his old friend, Johnnie Hulse, Morrice makes the astonishing discovery that Inez and Johnnie are having an affair. The shock of this knowledge and the terrifically revealing he and Inez have after the other two have left causes Morrice to suffer a heart attack. What follows is the section of the book that grabbed my attention and I was unable to put the novel down until I'd passed through that sequence of chapters.
Bennett dives deeply into Morrice's description of his passage into death; the different stages of his soul, or, if you will, his spirit and surviving mind, are described in great detail; the transition incorporates various ideas that have been proposed over the centuries as to whether the personality of the newly deceased continues after the body has drawn its last breath. Morrice reports in great detail to the reader each level he passes through. However, eventually he is drawn back into the Glimpse" his body by Inez' great grief and remorse.
And what does he discover upon his return? That his wife in her fantastic guilt has taken poison and is slowly dying. There is nothing that can be done for her; within a brief sequence of days she is gone.
I'll leave off with the "spoilers" now - you'll read the book and find out where we go from the point of Inez' death. What I will say is that I came away from "The Glimpse" with a changed opinion of Bennett's skill as a novelist and storyteller. Even his writing style seemed different to me from his usual. And strangely, I immediately began reading another of Bennett's novels, "Denry the Audacious", set in the Five Towns", but am finding it horribly dull. It's back to Bennett's ponderous and overly descriptive style here. I doubt that I'll force myself to finish reading this one.
One caveat: I wonder if Bennett in describing Morrice's visit to the death process is being serious in writing so beautifully about it or if the author is simply satirizing the popularity of the "What happens when we die" philosophizing of the time, what with the Philosophical Society and Arthur Conan Doyle's fascination with spiritualism and life after death. I'll leave that to more knowlegeable people to decide.
"The Glimpse" is quite different from other novels written by Arnold Bennett that I have so far read. Moorrice, married to Inez, his one-time great passion, finds that his marriage has gone old and stale; he's no longer certain that he loved Inez nor that she loves him. And after a dinner with his wife, his sister, Mary, and his old friend, Johnnie Hulse, Morrice makes the astonishing discovery that Inez and Johnnie are having an affair. The shock of this knowledge and the terrifically revealing he and Inez have after the other two have left causes Morrice to suffer a heart attack. What follows is the section of the book that grabbed my attention and I was unable to put the novel down until I'd passed through that sequence of chapters.
Bennett dives deeply into Morrice's description of his passage into death; the different stages of his soul, or, if you will, his spirit and surviving mind, are described in great detail; the transition incorporates various ideas that have been proposed over the centuries as to whether the personality of the newly deceased continues after the body has drawn its last breath. Morrice reports in great detail to the reader each level he passes through. However, eventually he is drawn back into the Glimpse" his body by Inez' great grief and remorse.
And what does he discover upon his return? That his wife in her fantastic guilt has taken poison and is slowly dying. There is nothing that can be done for her; within a brief sequence of days she is gone.
I'll leave off with the "spoilers" now - you'll read the book and find out where we go from the point of Inez' death. What I will say is that I came away from "The Glimpse" with a changed opinion of Bennett's skill as a novelist and storyteller. Even his writing style seemed different to me from his usual. And strangely, I immediately began reading another of Bennett's novels, "Denry the Audacious", set in the Five Towns", but am finding it horribly dull. It's back to Bennett's ponderous and overly descriptive style here. I doubt that I'll force myself to finish reading this one.
One caveat: I wonder if Bennett in describing Morrice's visit to the death process is being serious in writing so beautifully about it or if the author is simply satirizing the popularity of the "What happens when we die" philosophizing of the time, what with the Philosophical Society and Arthur Conan Doyle's fascination with spiritualism and life after death. I'll leave that to more knowlegeable people to decide.
