I don't think it's a good idea to read and review books know you won't like, unless you're being paid for it, or trying to get decent marks in a course that has them on the syllabus. Even so, I do it occasionally too. For this list, I needed one Ford Madox Ford book. The subject of Parade's End appealed somewhat more - though not a lot - and I avoided watching the TV series partly in expectation of one day reading the book. But I've never been terribly keen on the subjects of Ford's books - and late Victorian to circa 1919 is the period of history I'm least interested in, especially when it comes to the sort of upper-class minutiae often found in classic novels. So it would have been a tall order to expect myself to read a book as long as Parade's End. (These days it is published and apparently thought of as one novel, so I wouldn't have felt like I'd read Ford if I'd only read the first book of it.)

But The Good Soldier? I'd been looking warily at it for years. It looked like my idea of boring. I'm not interested in novels about well-off people having affairs, unless the setting is one I find compelling. But over the last few months, the sheer brevity of The Good Soldier - the default edition on GR is unusual in having over 300 pages; in most it's much shorter - plus something I hadn't quite registered before, its placement on a lot of all-time best books lists, including the 1001, made me decide to read the thing after all.

With a book like this, both short and something I probably wouldn't enjoy, I should really run at it and read it in two days, to get it over and done with (as I did with Updike's Rabbit, Run a couple of months ago) but that didn't happen. It was about 10 days before I'd even finished the introduction. The intro is very thorough in this Penguin Classics edition, and, as I read, my expectations of the novel fluctuated. Oh great, it's an unreliable narrator *as well*. But there are lots of details of social history? Cool, maybe this will be okay after all. The prospect of the interesting details being swamped by an unreliable narrator who was unreliable even with some of his historical factoids, *and* the affair story, *and* the 1900s-early 1910s setting, made me both apprehensive and bored. But it's simply a short novel, it's hardly the worst thing in the world.

And it wasn't really. The conversational narration reminded me of the way a few friends and acquaintances speak and write, especially people who tend towards the eccentrically vintage, so that was rather comfortable of it. (But does that mean the American narrator, John Dowell, sounds too English?) The details, especially about places the characters visited, were, in Part One (of Four) agreeably and distractingly dense, and nearly all well annotated. (Occasionally obscure things were missed, and occasionally there was over-annotation - the overlap is surely negligible between people who'd read a Penguin Classic of The Good Soldier and people who don't know who George Washington was, or why Henry VIII broke with Rome.)

I was amused by Florence and Leonora's polite duel about whose general knowledge of their sightseeing destinations was better - it reminded me of the first few days of university, when about four of us would, in turn, casually bring up increasingly obscure bands in the assumption we would impress or intimidate the others, and, essentially, win. (But it turned out we had all heard of the same stuff - on account of listening to the same radio shows and reading the same publications, there being a narrow range available in the 90s - and those who hadn't, didn't care anyway). It is interesting, and perhaps quite unusual in male-authored classic fiction of this age, that it is the women of the two couples who are more educated and knowledgeable, with the men either somewhat dullards, or with talents in other areas - such as soldiering, if certain things are to be taken at face value, which it seems almost nothing should be in this novel.

Though once it got to Part Two, the details about places visited associated with King Ludwig or Martin Luther (during the two couples' holidays at Nauheim, a German spa) began to peter out, in favour of more interpersonal drama and tales of imperial voyages back and forth between England and India. (In The Good Soldier, unlike in, for example, many Dickens novels, the existence of Empire is explicit* - and to an extent it's even shown how it contributes to the wealth of the British upper class: the Ashburnhams go to India for several years to save money, renting out their Hampshire country house, and do very well out of it.) And I kept thinking about how I just couldn't bring myself to care about these characters. I've already read too many of these affair novels about well-connected people. I started getting bored with them around 2005. (When Zadie Smith's On Beauty was published.) The Good Soldier was a novelty as an English novel in 1915: Ford was inspired by 19th century Continental novels of adultery; and shortly after the time of publication, a friend of his described it as "the best French novel in English" (in Bradshaw's intro). But any such sense of fascinating novelty has long worn off this plotline qua plotline, it having become such a commonplace of English literary fiction in the second half of the 20th century. I only find this sort of story of relationship awfulness engaging if it's a friend who needs listening and support, or during one of those fleeting compulsions to read about some celebrity scandal.

I was really glad of the attention in David Bradshaw's introduction to discrepancies and minutiae of the narrative - it made for much less work during the actual reading process, as it seemed that more points than not had already been mentioned there. If you want a detailed analysis of the issues with John Dowell's exhaustingly contradictory narrative, and debates about whether or not and why they were intentional on the part of the author, just look there. (The only instance that interested me which wasn't analysed there was that Dowell, an American Quaker, knew Catholic liturgy very well well - there was no mention of his attending church regularly with the Catholic characters, the only way he might have picked it up - and quoted the King James Bible.) Bradshaw's suggestion that Dowell has a secret crush on Edward Ashburnham also went a long way to make the novel more entertaining.

Dawdling through the book, though frequently bored, I did find a few things interesting.

There aren't many novels in which multiple characters mostly in their twenties and thirties have chronic health issues (weak hearts, without the specificities of late 20th-early 21st century diagnoses). They are rich - not just reasonably well-off, but rich - which obviously makes things somewhat easier for them, as not only can they easily afford not to work, but it's the norm for their class anyway. Though in the 1900s-1910s there was a very limited amount that could be done to help, or to check what was wrong, however much money you had. It's interesting (and in literary terms perhaps ahead of its time) for showing that such people want to try to live quite normal lives, and have interests and meanings in life other than their health, without making a big thing of this. It gets away from the angelic invalid trope of American novels such as Little Women and Pollyanna, by showing a variety of moral inclinations among the characters, and that women with these illnesses also have sex drives. There is insight about the problematic dynamics of caring relationships crossing over with romantic/marital relationships, and how different temperaments act. (It's something understood as very important in relevant sectors of work, such as disability and carer services, and psychology, but which seems practically invisible elsewhere.) Edward Ashburnham is one of these people who wants/needs a poor thing to take care of, and tends to be attracted on that basis - but, as is not uncommon, he has problems of his own; it was interesting and unusual to see this intertwined with aristocratic noblesse oblige. Meanwhile, Dowell seems to have ended up unwittingly in the role he calls "nurse-attendant", as he knew very little about Florence before they married (and latterly is unsure if she had the heart problem she thought/said she had inherited, because her uncle turned out, after death, not to have it himself). Yet despite having found the role burdensome, he seemingly can't help but repeat it towards the end of the novel. Perhaps because Ford was writing before theories such as codependence became popular, he shows more nuance and complication to these characters, and therefore a greater sense of realism, than might later authors who had case-study templates available.

The litany of ways in which Edward Ashburnham was considered an exemplary man in the pre-First World War era - including not only military heroism, but compassion as a magistrate, and supporting his tenants in difficult times - indicate how, as some recent commentary shows (example), how Anglo-American popular culture's ideas of masculinity have narrowed in recent decades to be increasingly concentrated on aggression, achievement and physicality. Alongside Dowell, who describes himself several times as a 'nurse-attendant', on one occasion says Ashburnham used him as a listening ear "like a woman or a solicitor", and several times suggests he is not as much of a man (e.g. fainter) than some - there is a degree of gender-role reversal in the novel. Leonora's money management, arguably, can be related to other stereotypes of wives as killjoys, and it was already quite typical for working-class women to control the family purse-strings in some areas of Britain, but for an upper-class Edwardian woman to be the best manager of the estate and finances in a serious (not comic) novel, is perhaps unusual. (I daresay there were proportionally more in real life than in novels.) And as mentioned above, both Leonora and Florence are the more intellectual in their marriages; nowadays, more girls than boys are going to university, so not unusual in contemporary context- but around 1900-1910 it wasn't a cultural norm for upper-class women to be more educated and cultured than upper-class men. (Edward Ashburnham subscribes to that false dichtomy that one can't be both sporty/martial and intellectual, though he is a fan of "sentimental novels".)

Towards the end of the book, what perhaps held my interest the most, and most nerdily, was to put all the mentioned sums of money through historical inflation calculators. These characters are, or are verging on, international super-rich. (The Dowells as a couple qualify as ultra-high net worth under the contemporary definition of $30m, although the Ashburnhams don't.) Florence is worth on her own $20m, her uncle left $38m, and Edward Ashburnham was worth about £11m. The largest amounts as they are written in the novel ($1.5m and $800 000) sound, to a UK reader in 2019, merely like the price of a nice big house in the South of England - still out of many people's reach, but not a stately home - and therefore it's easy not to notice how rich the characters actually were. Did it require an American narrator to talk about such large sums of money so frequently, because it would have been too vulgar for a Brit? To convert the amounts to current monetary value emphasised both how far removed from normal life the characters must have been, and that the novel is set at the tail end of the Gilded Age.

All of the five main characters had feelings or behaviours that I could connect with at times, or which reminded me of people I knew - often very well described. Occasionally, there were some great metaphors for relatively mundane things - "so this is why it's a classic" moments. A couple of favourites:
-"a tune in which major notes with their cheerful insistence wavered and melted into minor sounds, as, beneath a bridge, the high-lights on dark waters melt and waver and disappear into black depths."
-"I would grumble like a stockbroker whose conversations over the telephone are incommoded by the ringing of bells from a city church".
(Especially by beeing in the first person, this reminded me of being unable to concentrate on reading because of the loud calling of cuckoos, a declining species.)
It wasn't immediately obvious why The Good Soldier is a modernist novel, as it's a type of narrative that's common today - unreliable narrator, conversational style. But compared with many classic 19th century British novels, it is a radical departure: Dowell's admissions of confusion, the probably-intentional errors of fact (which shakiness could be seen as heralding the beginning of the end of Empire and of the cultural impact of WWI); the doubling back in conversation to things forgotten, an un-English, very non-U degree of romantic melodrama. (Though the last two also resemble 18th century epistolary bestseller Pamela.) Melodrama is easily dismissed by those with comfortable, predictable lives, which is why it has been out of favour with the critical establishment in the West for decades - but here are people with materially comfortable lives doing melodrama. There is a lot going on that's interesting in The Good Soldier, yet it wasn't enough to grant me enthusiasm for the characters and their world, and, although I had the time and energy to finish this short book considerably more quickly, it ended up taking me over two weeks because I just wasn't interested enough to read about them for long stretches of time.


* A tangent from this quotation from Gayatri Spivak: "It should not be possible to read 19th-century British literature without remembering that imperialism, understood as England’s social mission, was a crucial part of the cultural representation of England to the English” - and a recent Twitter thread by US literature prof Manu Samriti Chander.

The painting on the cover of this edition is a detail from La Visite by Félix Valloton (1899).

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford begins with John Dowell, the novel's narrator, suggesting to the reader that this is "the saddest story I have ever heard." This is the prologue to a 200 page journey into the nature of truth, the comprehension of reality, first impressions gone astray, faulty recollections and above all irony because nothing or almost nothing is as it appears in this classic work of fiction, consistently labelled a "modernist" tale. There are in fact times when the characters appear like caricatures rather than real figures meant to convey the spirit of Edwardian England.



Initially, the novel seems more like an extensive monologue full of oblique references dealing with characters who appear petulant, self-absorbed, ambivalent, supercilious & all-in-all, quite tiresome. However, gradually the tale builds the narration into something rather memorable, chiefly in support of 2 couples, with the American, Mr. Dowell, as narrator describing himself as "natty, precise, well-brushed, conscious of being rather small", almost like T.S. Eliot's Mr. Prufrock, then introducing us to Edward Ashburnham. In so doing, Dowell makes a considerable effort to portray Ashburnham as a quintessential English gentleman and beyond that "a model of goodness". With Dowell as our guide, we gain details of their wives shortly thereafter.

Dowell is in an apparently celibate marriage to an American woman named Florence who is said to be suffering from a heart condition but who seems neurasthenic, while Mr. Ashburnham is in an arranged marriage with Leonora, an Irish woman who is Roman-Catholic to his Anglicanism & is one of 7 sisters who are a drain on their father's finances. Leonora has gone almost directly from a convent existence to life with Ashburnham, a revered army officer with time in India, some achievements in South Africa during the Boer War & who has extensive land holdings in England but with whom she has absolutely nothing in common.

None of the principal characters, who first encounter each other at a fashionable spa in Germany, seem to have even a remote idea of how to endure an evolving marriage or even how to conduct an enduring relationship of any kind. It is said that "Leonora loved Edward with a passion that was yet like an agony of hatred, having lived with him for years & years without ever addressing to him one word of tenderness." They tend to reach out to one another but within a kind of void, much as those adrift might attempt to hang on to any available floating object.

I recall it being said of a oddly-matched British couple that they had a "rather English marriage", except that in the film version of a book with that name, the arrangement involved two men, one being in service to the other, with the difference being that they developed a stronger bond than Leonora & Edward were capable of. There are a string of adulteries, including Dowell's being cuckolded at the hands of the man he most reveres, an occasional suicide and frequently baffling descriptions of the main characters, one by another that seem almost contradictory.

I kept thinking of a Luigi Pirandello play I saw in NYC ages ago with Helen Hayes late in her career, Right You Are If your Think You Are where at various points the characters address the audience with the words: "And that my friends is the truth" but with each statement seeming to contradict the previous "truth". And, I was also reminded of a 1960s Alain Resnais film, Last Year at Marienbad, set at an elaborate spa, where a man & woman meet & one hearkens back to the memory of an affair between the two, when in fact they most probably have never previously met each other. The search for what is truth rather than illusion seems well beyond the grasp of the characters in The Good Soldier. Late in the novel, John Dowell, the narrator, reflects on his life:

I seem to perceive myself following the lines of Edward Ashburnham. I am no doubt like any other man; only perhaps because of my American origin, I am fainter. At the same time, I am able to assure you that I am a respectable person. I have never done anything that the most anxious mother of a daughter or the most careful dean of a cathedral would object to. I have only followed in my unconscious desires Edward Ashburnham. Well, it is all over. Not one of us has got what we really wanted. Why can't people have what they want? The things were all there to content everybody; yet everybody has the wrong thing. Perhaps you can make head or tail of it but it is beyond me. Are all men's lives like the lives of us good people--like the Ashburnhams.

One of the most telling quotes I've come upon is that by Anais Nin and would seem to serve as a coda of sorts for The Good Soldier: "We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are."

With all of this ambiguity, we have to remind ourselves that the world was a vastly different place a century ago, particularly for women who had little prospect of a meaningful career & often were referenced primarily by their spousal relationship but also for wealthy men in search of an identity not defined by their surname, kinship ties to royalty, degree of land ownership or military exploits. Beyond that, when Ford Madox Ford wrote the novel, Europe & Great Britain were on the verge of a radical social transformation that began with the outbreak of WWI.

Ford Madox Ford's best-known novel, The Good Soldier is hardly everyone's cup of tea but it has many qualities that cause one to question & to consider the variables of how each of us relates to one another, well beyond the plot & the characters who are given life within the story.



Ford Madox Ford coauthored various literary efforts with his longtime friend Joseph Conrad and was a part of the literary ferment of the early 20th century that included novelists James Joyce & Henry James, as well as poet Ezra Pound, among others. As founder of the Trans-Atlantic Review in Paris, Mr. Ford worked with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein & other writers. *The first photo image within the review is of Ford Madox Ford, while the second has from left to right: James Joyce, Ezra Pound, John Quinn (American modernist art patron) & Ford Madox Ford.

«Αυτή: η πιο θλιβερή ιστορία που έχω ποτέ μου ακούσει». Αυτή είναι η πρώτη πρόταση του Καλού Στρατιώτη και κατά την γνώμη μου η πιο περιεκτική όλου του μυθιστορήματος. Δεν είναι τυχαίο άλλωστε που ο ίδιος ο Ford είχε επιλέξει ως αρχικό τίτλο του βιβλίου το «Η πιο θλιβερή ιστορία» κάτι που δεν έγινε δεκτό από τον εκδότη ο οποίος δεν έβρισκε καθόλου δελεαστική την ιδέα να κυκλοφορήσει ένα βιβλίο με τον συγκεκριμένο τίτλο κατά την διάρκεια του Α’ Παγκοσμίου πολέμου.

Το γιατί είναι τόσο θλιβερή αυτή η ιστορία έχει πολλές απαντήσεις που όσο προχωράς μέσα της γίνονται ταυτόχρονα ξεκάθαρες και πολύπλοκες, όπως οι άνθρωποι και τα πάθη τους. Αφηγητής και πρωταγωνιστής του μυθιστορήματος είναι ο Ντάουελ ο οποίος μας διηγείται την διάλυση τόσο του δικού του γάμου με την Φλορένς όσο κι εκείνου του φιλικού τους ζευγαριού,0 Έντουαρντ και Λεονόρα Άσμπερναμ.

Με το πρόσχημα ότι ξεκίνησε να καταγράφει την παραπάνω ιστορία εδώ και κάποια χρόνια δημιουργεί μία ακανόνιστη, χρονικά και δομικά, αφήγηση πάνω από την όποια πλανάται ένα διαρκές «δεν ξέρω». Προσπαθεί να βρει επιχειρήματα για να δικαιολογήσει όλη αυτή την άγνοια ή ακόμα και την αφέλεια με την οποία αντιμετώπιζε την ζωή του αλλά ταυτόχρονα αναζητά δικαιολογίες σε μία προσπάθεια να μην ακυρώσει όλο τον έγγαμο βίο του ή την μακροχρόνια φιλία με αυτούς τους «καλούς ανθρώπους», όπως επανειλημμένα χαρακτηρίζει το ζεύγος Άσμπερναμ.

«Αν για εννέα χρόνια είχα στην κατοχή μου ένα όμορφο μήλο που ήταν στον πυρήνα του σάπιο, κι ανακάλυψα την σαπίλα του μονάχα μετά από εννέα χρόνια κι έξι μήνες μείον τέσσερις ημέρες, δε θα’ ναι αληθές να πω ότι για εννέα χρόνια κρατούσα ένα όμορφο μήλο;»

Αργά ή γρήγορα βέβαια όλα παίρνουν την πραγματική τους διάσταση και οι πρωταγωνιστές γίνονται αυτό που ήταν πάντα και καμία θρησκεία ή κοινωνικός περιορισμός δεν στέκεται ικανός να τους κρατήσει μακριά από τα ένστικτά τους.

Αυτό που κάνει όμως την όλη ιστορία πραγματικά θλιβερή είναι ότι στο τέλος «κανείς δεν πήρε αυτό που ήθελε», όπως τόσο απλά κι έντιμα παραδέχεται ο αφηγητής μας. Και όχι μόνο αυτό. Κάθε πρωταγωνιστής της ιστορίας εκπροσωπεί μία ομάδα της κοινωνίας, μιας κοινωνίας που αγκαλιάζει κάθε τι κανονικό και περιφρονεί οτιδήποτε διαφέρει από αυτό.

«Ο Έντουαρντ ήταν κανονικός άνθρωπος, αλλά υπήρχαν μεγάλες δόσεις συναισθηματισμού εντός του· και η κοινωνία δεν χρειάζεται πολύ συναισθηματισμό, δεν χρειάζεται πολλούς συναισθηματίες. Η Νάνσι ήταν ένα θαυμάσιο πλάσμα, αλλά είχε πάνω της το άγγιγμα της τρέλας· και η κοινωνία δεν χρειάζεται άτομα με το άγγιγμα της τρέλας πάνω τους.»

Ο Καλός Στρατιώτης είναι ένα μυθιστόρημα που μπορεί να διαβαστεί με χίλιους τρόπους και να σε κερδίσει με άλλους τόσους. Η μετάφραση και το επίμετρο από τον Γιώργο-Ίκαρο Μπαμπασάκη ήταν ένα αριστούργημα. Για να είμαι ειλικρινής, βέβαια, δεν περίμενα τίποτα λιγότερο από μία τόσο αγαπημένη σειρά, όπως αυτή της Aldina.

What a sick, rotten, depraved society we're treated to, populated by liars and knaves, and yet I found myself heartbroken by the end, wondering what kind of magic spell Ford had cast on me. Ford is an absolute master of technique--in this case the use of flashbacks and an unreliable narrator--and I found myself riveted throughout. The novel begins with one of the most famous opening lines in literature: "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." That may well be true.

رمان سرباز خوب روايت حوادث زندگي يك جفت زوج آمريكايي و انگليسي است، كه راوي داستان مرد امريكايي مي باشد. وي بدون رعايت ترتيب زماني و به صورت پراكنده به توصيف ماجراها مي پردازد.
در واقع راوي از ديد خود و بدون قضاوت حوادث را روايت مي كند و شايد ماجراي توصيف شده تنها ديدگاه او بوده و تمام حقيقت ماجراها نباشد. در اين كتاب با متن و نوع نوشتاري روبرو هستيم كه در زمان خود تازگي داشته و اثري متفاوت محسوب مي شد.
قسمتي از كتاب:
دنياي عجيبي است، چرا مردم نمي توانند به آنچه مي خواهند برسند؟ همه چيز آنجا بود تا همه را راضي كند. با اين حال همه به چيزي اشتباه مي رسند، شايد شما بتوانيد از سر و ته آن چيزي بفهميد اما از درك من كه خارج است.

The Good Soldier is an amazing feat of plot construction. This is the best example of how an unreliable narrator (John Dowell) and fragmentary plot can be used to reveal intricacies of character that could never be as effectively expressed through simple description. Not only is this brilliantly done, but I was amazed to realise how early a piece of modernist work The Good Soldier is- published in 1915. It must have created quite a stir when it was published as its main interest is the destructive potential of manipulation and infidelity.

It's definitely not a book you should pick up if you're looking for a quick, easy read. The narrator's constant unconscious revisions of plot and characterisation had me flicking back and forth quite a bit and I'll probably need to reread in order to properly digest the complicated tangle of relationships. But the pay off for your hard work is a really thorough examination of the protagonist's psyche and cognitive dissonance. In a paradoxical way, Ford makes his narrative and characteristion wholly unclear in order that Dowell's state of mind be more fully revealed.

When I was starting the book, I was quite annoyed because it seemed like the Dowell had given the game away and spoiled the ending by jumping too far forward in time. However- be not disheartened!- there are two rather excellent plot developments unfolded right at the end which are the real source of dramatic tension in the novel and make for a very poignant conclusion.

This book has a a famously unreliable and tormented narrator. The twentieth century is when men came into their own and started to express things that had hitherto been unthinkable in polite society. So I place this novel with the work of D. H. Lawrence, Celine, Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, Hemingway, Faulkner et al; although it seems more genteel, it's really not, because it's about that ugliest of things: white male anguish.

Writers in this era pulled from their souls what propriety would have prevented in earlier eras, and much of this outpouring had to do with an open discussion of men's feelings about women. So the narrator is deemed unreliable in that his point of view is so subjective, and in some ways even a bit sociopathic. He is full of bottled-up rage, which belies his self-presentation as a passive onlooker of the tragic events that unfold. I believe it's told that way because it had hitherto been taboo to openly disparage ladies, so the narrator finds a circuitous way of expressing himself, culminating in a somewhat shocking reveal at the end.

"The Saddest Story" (the original title) is about two couples with a seemingly normal friendship, in which the narrator's wife and the husband of the other couple have been carrying on a clandestine affair for nine years. But it's mainly about the absurdities of convention: how people are forced into marriages with people they don't love, and how love, sexual desire, greed, selfishness etc. seep out and cause all sorts of mischief and tragedy. It's even a kind of plea for a sexual revolution—for a world in which people can love whom they love, and be less naive about sex, to prevent all sorts of catastrophes.

The narrator takes sides with men over women, even when they are guilty of the same transgressions; i.e., his wife Florence is reprehensible for having deceived him, but he deeply identifies with his friend Edward Ashburnham, whose seeking of love outside of marriage is seen as noble and enviable, a way of escaping the clutches of his controlling wife. Both men are in love with a teenaged girl who has been a sort of daughter to one of them, and they have proprietary, fatherly, and romantic feelings for her. If it were not for wives, the narrator seems to say, men could be happy kissing servants in railway cars without fuss, and they could discard their ball-and-chain wives for winsome young virgins or enticing Spanish courtesans when the fancy takes them.

The way the story is told is incredibly witty, entertaining, and funny, full of deceptions and twists and anguish and absurdity and rage, and it's beautifully and masterfully written. In the end, going into the mind of this narrator was a sheer delight, and I would even venture to say that this is one of the best novels I have ever read.

n  Ford Madox Fordn
nasceu em Inglaterra em 1873 e morreu em França em 1939. Foi grande amigo de Joseph Conrad tendo escrito, em colaboração com ele, um romance de ficção-científica - Os Herdeiros - Uma História Extravagante.
O Bom Soldado é considerada a sua melhor obra, fazendo as delícias dos leitores, pela surpresa e pelo divertimento, desde a sua publicação em 1915. É considerado um dos clássicos do século XX e aparece em muitas listas The Best Books.

O Bom Soldado: Uma História de Paixão
"Esta é a história mais triste jamais contada."
Um início prometedor mas enganador. Não é a história mais triste, nem a mais divertida. Nem sequer é uma história original; paixões, suicídios, casamentos fastidiosos, infidelidades, são casos comuns na literatura. O que torna este romance uma delícia é a forma como é narrado.

Edward Ashburnham e Leonora são um casal inglês que, durante umas férias, conhece o casal americano John Dowell e Florence, com o qual convive durante nove anos.
O Capitão Ashburnham (o bom soldado) é um pinga-amor;
Leonora é uma dama e uma esposa compreensiva sempre atarefada a tapar os buracos que o marido abre com as suas leviandades;
Florence é uma doente cardíaca que dorme de porta trancada, porque qualquer intimidade com o marido lhe pode provocar uma sincope mortal;
John é um homem crédulo, confiante e um esposo extremoso.

É Dowell que conta a história, dirigindo-se directamente ao leitor, de uma forma desordenada - misturando o momento presente com recordações do passado - e aos poucos vai revelando e revelando-se e, no fim, nada é o que parece. Assim como nos acontece quando conhecemos alguém e de quem, à primeira vista, gostamos ou não, mas - pelo que ouvimos da pessoa, do que os outros contam, do que observamos - acabamos, noutros momentos, por ter uma opinião completamente diferente da inicial.

Esta é A Mais Triste de Todas as Histórias mas, como diz na introdução, apenas "para quem sofra do mal da sisudez, que é um mal do coração."
É um romance surpreendente que promete uma tragédia e oferece uma comédia. Não é um livro de difícil compreensão embora exija uma leitura atenta, por a narrativa ser tão saltitante e o narrador pouco colaborante, sempre a ocultar os seus pontos fracos, quer da consorte quer do leitor/ouvinte.
"Em todas as associações matrimonias há, ao que creio, um factor constante: o desejo de ocultar à pessoa com quem se vive algum ponto fraco do nosso carácter. É que é intolerável viver constantemente com um ser humano que apercebe os nossos pequenos defeitos. É verdadeiramente normal fazê-lo e por isso é que muitos casamentos resultam infelizes."
Quando o terminei fiquei na dúvida se seria um livro de "gosto muito" ou "gosto muito muito". Deixei-o uns dias "a apanhar ar" para ver se tudo se evaporava ou algo me ficava. Ficou. Entre outras coisas, reforçou a minha convicção de que ninguém é transparente para ninguém e que viver (e ler) é uma constante surpresa que nos impede de morrer de tédio...

Oh, what to say about this book? I think Ford Madox Ford is probably a very good writer. The unreliable narrator, the prose, the style. These are all marks of a good writer.

Semi spoiler alert…

But oh, how tiresome the tales of the rich and privileged, and their are tiresome marital melodramas. Unpleasant people behaving abominably. And at no point did I find I could care for any of the characters.

My biggest issue with the sort though is the first person omniscient narration. Surely this is a no go? Detailed descriptions of another characters thinking and actions when they have neither been seen or reported can never be right can it?

When I so wanted to like this story.

But I’m sure others will.

Μοντερνισμός σε σωστές δόσεις. Αδιάφορη ως προς το θέμα ιστορία, ψιλομπανάλ ίσως, αλλά τρόπος γραφής που κρατά το ενδιαφέρον του αναγνώστη.

Ο καλός στρατιώτης ήρθε για να πάρει την θέση του σημαντικότερου αναγνώσματός μου για το έτος, μέχρι στιγμής. Ενώ έχω πολλές σημειώσεις, παραμένουν μέχρι τώρα όλες διάσπαρτες και μάλλον καλώς· εάν ο Τζον Ντόουελ, ο αφηγητής, αφέθηκε στον λεγόμενο λαβύρινθό του, τότε γιατί να μην αφεθούμε και οι υπόλοιποι;

Ο καλός στρατιώτης, η ιστορία πάθους, οι ημερομηνίες και τα αμέτρητα «δεν ξέρω» του αφηγητή, είναι λίγα από τα σημάδια ενός καλού ψεύτη, ή κάποιου που πράγματι δεν ξέρει ποια είναι η αλήθεια και απλώς κάνει την προσπάθειά του να καταλάβει, εις βάρος του αναγνώστη. Μάλλον το καλύτερο βάρος που θα μπορούσε να έχει ένας αναγνώστης, μιας και τα ας τα πούμε ψέματα, είναι που κάνουν την αφήγηση μια ζωντανή εξομολόγηση και προκειμένου να υπάρξει εξομολόγηση πρέπει να υπάρξει και κάποιο αυτί ή στην περίπτωσή μας, μάτι, να τη διαβάσει. Είμαστε τόσο τυχεροί.

Από τις πρώτες σελίδες ένιωθα να δυσκολεύομαι να παρακολουθήσω μια απλή, κατά τα άλλα, ιστορία, αλλά ταυτόχρονα όσο προχωρούσα τόσο γιγαντωνόταν η αίσθηση πως κάτι σημαντικό γίνεται εδώ. Πως παρά το μεταξύ των Αμερικάνων και Άγγλων, κάτι ιδιαίτερα Γαλλικό συνέβαινε.

"Αυτή: η πιο θλιβερή ιστορία που έχω ποτέ μου ακούσει – η πιο θλιβερή."

Η ιστορική φράση με την οποία ξεκινάει ο Καλός Στρατιώτης, ήδη προδίδει τα πάντα και ταυτόχρονα δεν αποκαλύπτει τίποτα. Βέβαια, κάθε τυχαίο απόσπασμα είναι ποιητικό, συγκινητικό και απλά θεσπέσιο. Κάθε παράγραφος στέκεται ως μέρος του όλου αλλά και μόνη της, εκατομμύρια φορές καλύτερα από τα so called διηγήματα των λογοτεχνικών καιρών που διανύουμε. Μάλιστα, ενώ οι πληροφορίες ως γεγονότα και ημερομηνίες είναι σε πλούτο, σχεδόν ελπίζεις να υπήρχε κάποιο άλλο βιβλίο, ενός άλλου αφηγητή, εξίσου φανταστικού ή υπαρκτού με τον Τζον, ώστε να γράψει για εκείνον, ώστε να ικανοποιηθεί η ακόρεστη περιέργειά μας.

Δυο ανδρόγυνα εύπορης αμερικάνικης και αγγλικής κοινωνίας κάνουν παρέα μέσα στο διάστημα εννιά ετών. Η Φλορένς Ντόουελ με την εύθραυστη καρδιά της, από κάθε άποψη, ο σύζυγός της που μας αφηγείται χωρίς να ξέρει και πολλά ή μάλλον ενώ ξέρει τα πάντα, η Λεονόρα Άσμπερναμ που χαρτογραφεί τους έρωτες του συζύγου της Έντουαρντ και άλλοι δορυφόροι του Έντουαρντ, ο οποίος μέχρι το τέλος, συνθέτεται από πράξεις και λόγια που δημιουργούν κι άλλα ερωτηματικά. Και οι τέσσερις αβοήθητοι, όλοι έρμαια των εαυτών τους.

Ο αναγνώστης καταλήγει να πίνει το τσάι του και να θυμίζει λες και έχει παραβρεθεί σε κηδεία ή σαν μόλις να του παρουσίασαν μια μεγάλη αποτυχία ή ασχήμια της κοινωνίας. «Τι τα θες» και «Τι να γίνει». Εάν όλοι οι εμπλεκόμενοι συγκρούονται ενώ βαστάνε γερά τις αντιλήψεις τους γύρω από κανονικότητα, κοσμιότητα, καθωσπρεπισμό και φυσικά εθνική και θρησκευτική πίστη, γίνεται η παραδοχή, πως κατά μια έννοια κανείς δεν μπορεί να ξεφύγει από τα πάθη του, ό,τι κι εάν σημαίνει πάθος για τον καθένα τους - και μάλλον ευτυχώς.

Some questions arise when reading The Good Soldier. Is it an impressionistic masterpiece? Is it a tragedy or a comedy? Published in 1915, from the pen of Ford Madox Ford, it is unique enough to have been described by its critics as all of the preceding and more. Subtitled "A Tale of Passion", it is unique both in my experience and within the author's total work.
The story is narrated by an American, John Dowell, who invites the reader to sit down with him beside the fire of his study to listen to the "saddest story" he has ever known. Set during the decade preceding the Great War, the story, while appearing to be sad for some of the participants, is truly sad only in the ironic sense of the word. Thus we encounter one of the themes of the book--the distinction between appearance and reality.
The characters are not particularly likable or sympathetic. Considering that, it is counter intuitive, but the reader is spurred on to read the novel by the precision and the beauty of the prose and the intrigue within the story. The narrative unfolds in a mosaic-like way with a traversal of the narrator's memory back and forth over the nine year period that is covered. The mosaic is interlaced by motifs including the importance of the date: August 4, and the apparent existence of a heart condition in some of the character's lives. I mentioned the narrator's memory, but one experiences a growing realization that the narrator is inherently unreliable; perhaps John Dowell is the most unreliable narrator in literary history--so much so that I cannot help but think that Ford may have been influenced by Leo Tolstoy's philosophy of history. When complete, the tale is ended perfectly much as it begins.
The result is a beautiful small novel that ranks high in this reader's experience. When a book improves with each rereading some call it great or a classic. My personal term is transcendent, as the books for which I have experienced this effect embody transcendence on one or more levels of reading. The Good Soldier is one such book for me.