Status
Available
Call number
Publication
Modern Library (2004), Edition: Modern Library Pbk. Ed, 112 pages
Description
Literature. Fiction. HTML: When Captain Chris Baldry, a World War I soldier, is sent home with a severe case of shellshock amnesia, he is a stranger to his wife, Kitty, and his adoring cousin, Jenny. Recoiling from the horrors of war and disillusioned with years of superficial married life, his mind has regressed fifteen years, where his heart may take refuge once again in the magic circle of his youth and of his first love, Margaret Allington. In this lyrical and poignant story of a wounded man and the three concerned women who seek to heal him, Rebecca West explores the complexity of the mind and its subtle strategies for coping with life's painful realities. Only when Chris has the courage to face one pivotal moment of truth in his married life will he be able to awaken from his boyish fantasy and become, indeed, "every inch a soldier.".… (more)
Media reviews
Though its style is occasionally a trifle strained, a trifle "Precious," the novel is on the whole, well written, and its plot well handled.
User reviews
LibraryThing member brenzi
'Is it better to pine nostalgically for the irretrievable past or to accept the conflicted present?' This is the question at the heart of Rebecca West’s brilliant 1918 novel, The Return of the Soldier. Captain Chris Baldry has returned from the Great War suffering from shell-shock and amnesia. He
These three women have to come to terms with Chris’ amnesia and help him to either a.) accept his memory loss and allow him to live in the past; or b.) help him to recover his memory and be forced to return to the Front.
This is my first West book but I will certainly be seeking out some of her other work. Not only does she pose a provocative question and address England’s collapsing class system, but the writing is simply exquisite:
“Grief is not the clear melancholy the young believe it. It is like a siege in a tropical city. The skin dries and the throat parches as though one were living in the heat of a desert; water and wine taste warm in the mouth, and food is of the substance of sand; one snarls at one’s company; thoughts prick one through sleep like mosquitoes.” (Page 51)
Another excellent read thanks to LT; I’d never heard of Rebecca West until someone here reviewed this book.
Show More
can’t remember anything from the last fifteen years. Therefore, he doesn’t remember his wife, Kitty; nor his cousin Jenny. But he does remember Margaret Allington, a woman he was in love with fifteen years ago, whose appearance suggests she belongs to a much lower class than the others.These three women have to come to terms with Chris’ amnesia and help him to either a.) accept his memory loss and allow him to live in the past; or b.) help him to recover his memory and be forced to return to the Front.
This is my first West book but I will certainly be seeking out some of her other work. Not only does she pose a provocative question and address England’s collapsing class system, but the writing is simply exquisite:
“Grief is not the clear melancholy the young believe it. It is like a siege in a tropical city. The skin dries and the throat parches as though one were living in the heat of a desert; water and wine taste warm in the mouth, and food is of the substance of sand; one snarls at one’s company; thoughts prick one through sleep like mosquitoes.” (Page 51)
Another excellent read thanks to LT; I’d never heard of Rebecca West until someone here reviewed this book.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Smiler69
Our narrator recounts the homecoming of her cousin, Captain Chris Baldry who, while fighting in the First World War, has been sent home due to shell shock. Chris, who is suffering from amnesia, has had a good portion of his memory wiped out and believes he is sixteen years younger. He doesn't
I absolutely loved this story and it was of special interest to me since I started the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker recently, which is set during WWI, with a psychiatrist who specializes in treating shell shock as one of the principal characters. One of the central issues there is the question of what actually constitutes mental health when men are only considered 'normal' if they are willing to put their lives on the line to fight in a brutal war with countless casualties.
Show More
understand his cousin Jenny's older appearance, doesn't recognize his beautiful young wife Kitty, and instead demands to see his first love, Margaret. While Kitty believes that her husband is just playing a clever trick on everyone, she still agrees to have Margaret brought over to him, but she becomes furious that Chris treats her like a stranger and instead prefers to spend his time with Margaret, a lower-class, physically unappealing woman, who nevertheless makes him very happy. A specialist is brought in who proposes a radical approach that is sure to cure the Captain so that he can return to the front. There is a strong divergence of opinions as to whether that is the best option for his wellbeing, but Kitty is adamant that she wants her husband back to his normal self. Highly recommended.I absolutely loved this story and it was of special interest to me since I started the Regeneration trilogy by Pat Barker recently, which is set during WWI, with a psychiatrist who specializes in treating shell shock as one of the principal characters. One of the central issues there is the question of what actually constitutes mental health when men are only considered 'normal' if they are willing to put their lives on the line to fight in a brutal war with countless casualties.
Show Less
LibraryThing member lauralkeet
This short novel describes one of the tragedies of war from a woman's perspective. Chris Baldry returns from WW I with shell-shock amnesia, and does not remember the last 15 years of his life. He thinks of his cousin Jenny as a playmate, and doesn't recognize his wife Kitty at all. Worse still, the
Rebecca West was 24 years old in 1918, when this book was published. Her writing is wonderful, full of beautiful, descriptive phrases of characters and setting. She also brings a bit of humor with phrases such as, "He was a lank man with curly gray hairs growing from every place where it is inadvisable that hairs should grow..." and "so many of them ... had stood round Chris and looked at him with the consequenceless deliberation of a plumber."
This is an engaging novel by a talented woman writer.
Show More
person he most wants to see is an old girlfriend, Margaret, who is now married to another man. The story is narrated by Jenny, who clearly doesn't think much of the other women: Kitty, because she is spoiled and self-centered, and Margaret because she is of a lower class. While Kitty wallows in grief over her "lost" husband, Jenny learns more about Margaret and Chris' relationship and, together with a doctor, they determine how to use his past to "cure" him. The result is quite poignant and moving.Rebecca West was 24 years old in 1918, when this book was published. Her writing is wonderful, full of beautiful, descriptive phrases of characters and setting. She also brings a bit of humor with phrases such as, "He was a lank man with curly gray hairs growing from every place where it is inadvisable that hairs should grow..." and "so many of them ... had stood round Chris and looked at him with the consequenceless deliberation of a plumber."
This is an engaging novel by a talented woman writer.
Show Less
LibraryThing member rainpebble
The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West; (5*)
The Return of the Soldier is the first WW I novel to be written by a woman and is written in lovely prose.
Chris Baldry, a wealthy soldier, returns from the front suffering from amnesia and having forgotten the past fifteen years of his life. He has
Jenny, our narrator, is Chris's unmarried cousin and childhood playmate who now lives with Chris and Kitty. It appears that she feels romantically inclined toward Chris. Chris asks to see Margaret and Kitty agrees that would be the best thing as Margaret is who he remembers being close to. Margaret whose love for Chris coexists with her tenderness toward her husband, then begins to visit Baldry Court regularly to spend time with the amnesiac.
The novel traces the reactions of Jenny and Kitty to Chris's forgetting them and to his undiminished love for Margaret. They grieve, they are filled with anger, but Jenny cultivates a bond with Margaret in order to rekindle her relationship with Chris. They call in doctors to attempt to cure him. Finally a Dr. Anderson arrives. He talks to Kitty and Margaret and learns of the death of Chris and Kitty's son. Margaret suggests that giving Chris some objects loved by his son might shock Chris back to his memory of the last fifteen years. This proposal is put forward. Margaret goes to Chris on the grounds of Baldry Court with the child's ball and jersey. Kitty and Jenny wait watching from the window as Margaret sacrifices her own happiness and Chris' in order to bring him back to a sane and current reality.
In spite of portraying this cure as a sacrifice of Chris and Margaret's happiness and at a risk to Chris's life, for he will now have to return to the front, the doctor moves ahead with what he sees as a possible cure for the young soldier. Chris is repeatedly described as ill, a term which helps make curing him seem the only sensible thing to do.
I find this to be a wonderful book. It is written beautifully and I highly recommend it.
The Return of the Soldier is the first WW I novel to be written by a woman and is written in lovely prose.
Chris Baldry, a wealthy soldier, returns from the front suffering from amnesia and having forgotten the past fifteen years of his life. He has
Show More
forgotten his marriage to Kitty along with the birth and subsequent death of their son, Oliver. He believes himself to be yet romantically involved with the daughter of an innkeeper, Margaret, who is now married to William Grey.Jenny, our narrator, is Chris's unmarried cousin and childhood playmate who now lives with Chris and Kitty. It appears that she feels romantically inclined toward Chris. Chris asks to see Margaret and Kitty agrees that would be the best thing as Margaret is who he remembers being close to. Margaret whose love for Chris coexists with her tenderness toward her husband, then begins to visit Baldry Court regularly to spend time with the amnesiac.
The novel traces the reactions of Jenny and Kitty to Chris's forgetting them and to his undiminished love for Margaret. They grieve, they are filled with anger, but Jenny cultivates a bond with Margaret in order to rekindle her relationship with Chris. They call in doctors to attempt to cure him. Finally a Dr. Anderson arrives. He talks to Kitty and Margaret and learns of the death of Chris and Kitty's son. Margaret suggests that giving Chris some objects loved by his son might shock Chris back to his memory of the last fifteen years. This proposal is put forward. Margaret goes to Chris on the grounds of Baldry Court with the child's ball and jersey. Kitty and Jenny wait watching from the window as Margaret sacrifices her own happiness and Chris' in order to bring him back to a sane and current reality.
In spite of portraying this cure as a sacrifice of Chris and Margaret's happiness and at a risk to Chris's life, for he will now have to return to the front, the doctor moves ahead with what he sees as a possible cure for the young soldier. Chris is repeatedly described as ill, a term which helps make curing him seem the only sensible thing to do.
I find this to be a wonderful book. It is written beautifully and I highly recommend it.
Show Less
LibraryThing member annbury
This book, Rebecca West's first novel, was published in 1918 and has been called "the only book written by a woman about the war during the war". Given its interesting provenance and its status as at least a near classic, I had expected to enjoy it very much, but was a bit disappointed.
The problem
Nor is the writing an issue. Indeed, it is sometimes very beautiful. Ms. West's description of nature -- of changing light and moving water, of vegetation and the way it grows -- are precise, but also emotionally evocative. They made me think of Whistler's paintings, which are not at all precise, because they so strongly evoke moods as well as images. And the structure of the novel is complex but not confusing, involving multiple timelines, one principal narrator but several shifts in narration, and a point of view that shifts over time.
I suppose that what bothered me about the novel is the characters; I did not at the end find them convincing enough to draw me in emotionally as well as aesthetically. To me, three of the four central characters seemed one dimensional -- the hero is innocent, the wife is shallow, the beloved woman is saintly. The fourth, the hero's cousin who is the main narrator, is more complex, but she too became unconvincing to me by the end of the book. There is a high romanticism about it all that, for me at least, says more about the time and place in which it was set than about the characters themselves.
Clearly, my less than enthusiastic response is more a personal emotional judgement than an aesthetic evaluation. The book is well worth reading, and younger, less cynical readers might love it -- I probably would have, when I was a young woman.
The problem
Show More
is not the story, which pulls the reader right along. Two women, the soldier's wife and his cousin, await his return from the war. Before the war he was a wealthy businessman; they are very comfortably established, and very much of the upper class. They learn from a distinctly non-upper class caller that the hero has been wounded, and has woken up in hospital with no memory of anything later than 1906 -- including his marriage. It turns out that in 1906 he and the non-upper class caller were deeply in love. He returns home, and events unfold. Nor is the writing an issue. Indeed, it is sometimes very beautiful. Ms. West's description of nature -- of changing light and moving water, of vegetation and the way it grows -- are precise, but also emotionally evocative. They made me think of Whistler's paintings, which are not at all precise, because they so strongly evoke moods as well as images. And the structure of the novel is complex but not confusing, involving multiple timelines, one principal narrator but several shifts in narration, and a point of view that shifts over time.
I suppose that what bothered me about the novel is the characters; I did not at the end find them convincing enough to draw me in emotionally as well as aesthetically. To me, three of the four central characters seemed one dimensional -- the hero is innocent, the wife is shallow, the beloved woman is saintly. The fourth, the hero's cousin who is the main narrator, is more complex, but she too became unconvincing to me by the end of the book. There is a high romanticism about it all that, for me at least, says more about the time and place in which it was set than about the characters themselves.
Clearly, my less than enthusiastic response is more a personal emotional judgement than an aesthetic evaluation. The book is well worth reading, and younger, less cynical readers might love it -- I probably would have, when I was a young woman.
Show Less
LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
"I suppose that the subject of our tragedy written in spiritual terms, was that in Kitty he had turned from the type of woman that makes the body conqueror of the soul, and in me the type that mediates between the soul and the body and makes them run even and unhappy like a well-matched pair of
This is a war novel, but we are never at the front, and the focus is not on the soldier, Chris, but on the three women in his life--his wife Kitty, his cousin and childhood companion Jenny (who is also the narrator), and his first love Margaret. When the novel opens Kitty and Jenny are at Chris's estate, and he is away at the front, when they receive a visit from Margaret, a dowdy, lower-class woman who informs them that Chris has been wounded.
At first Kitty and Jenny refuse to believe Margaret, this drudge they have never heard of--why wasn't Kitty as Chris's wife informed of this by the war office? But it turns out to be true. Chris is shell-shocked and suffering from amnesia--he does not remember his wife Kitty or that they had a child who died. What he does remember is Margaret, his first love, who is now the dowdy woman who visited Kitty and Jenny.
Chris is returned to his estate to recuperate and to recover his memories. Despite various attempts to convince him that he is married to Kitty, he is happy only in the company of Margaret. Though she looks old, worn, and poor, she has an inner peace about her, and Chris sees, not her worn physical appearance but the inner glow that comes through. Kitty never warms to Margaret and wants only to bring Chris back to the present, even though "curing" him will mean sending him back to the front. Jenny wavers between letting Chris live happily in the past with Margaret or bringing him back to the present reality.
Although this is a war novel, we see and experience little of the war; instead we see the devastating effects of the war, what it does to one's senses, both to a soldier and to civilians. There is also a lot in this short novel about the struggle between the classes. It was very much grating on me to read how disdainfully Jenny and especially Kitty spoke about Margaret: "They hated her as the rich hate the poor as insect things that will struggle out of the crannies which are their decent home and introduce ugliness to the light of day...." The book was somewhat different from what I was expecting, but I'm glad I read it.
3 stars
Show More
carriage horses, and had given himself to a woman whose bleak habit it was to champion the soul against the body."This is a war novel, but we are never at the front, and the focus is not on the soldier, Chris, but on the three women in his life--his wife Kitty, his cousin and childhood companion Jenny (who is also the narrator), and his first love Margaret. When the novel opens Kitty and Jenny are at Chris's estate, and he is away at the front, when they receive a visit from Margaret, a dowdy, lower-class woman who informs them that Chris has been wounded.
At first Kitty and Jenny refuse to believe Margaret, this drudge they have never heard of--why wasn't Kitty as Chris's wife informed of this by the war office? But it turns out to be true. Chris is shell-shocked and suffering from amnesia--he does not remember his wife Kitty or that they had a child who died. What he does remember is Margaret, his first love, who is now the dowdy woman who visited Kitty and Jenny.
Chris is returned to his estate to recuperate and to recover his memories. Despite various attempts to convince him that he is married to Kitty, he is happy only in the company of Margaret. Though she looks old, worn, and poor, she has an inner peace about her, and Chris sees, not her worn physical appearance but the inner glow that comes through. Kitty never warms to Margaret and wants only to bring Chris back to the present, even though "curing" him will mean sending him back to the front. Jenny wavers between letting Chris live happily in the past with Margaret or bringing him back to the present reality.
Although this is a war novel, we see and experience little of the war; instead we see the devastating effects of the war, what it does to one's senses, both to a soldier and to civilians. There is also a lot in this short novel about the struggle between the classes. It was very much grating on me to read how disdainfully Jenny and especially Kitty spoke about Margaret: "They hated her as the rich hate the poor as insect things that will struggle out of the crannies which are their decent home and introduce ugliness to the light of day...." The book was somewhat different from what I was expecting, but I'm glad I read it.
3 stars
Show Less
LibraryThing member labfs39
In less than 100 pages, Rebecca West creates a microcosm of British society in 1916 and a love triangle centered around an upper class WWI soldier. In the novel there are many dichotomies of wealth, class, and physical beauty, but the most important is the moral dilemma at the heart of the story:
The story begins with Kitty, the beautiful and cold wife of Chris Baldry, lamenting that she has not heard from her soldier husband for a fortnight. Attending her is Chris's cousin Jenny, who is the narrator of the story. Jenny is brushing Kitty's damp hair and remembering the days when Chris was home and so happy (he was happy right?), when a woman requests to see Kitty. Margaret Grey is dumpy, unfashionable, poor, and uncultured, barely respectable in the eyes of the two ladies, but she has important and delicate news to impart. Chris is coming home. The catch is that he has amnesia and remembers Margaret, with whom he was passionately in love fifteen years ago, but not his wife, Kitty. Thus the stage is set for the drama which unfolds in this small setting.
In my mind, the most interesting and complex character is Jenny, the story's narrator. As a cousin of Chris's, she is a member of the upper class, yet she is in some sort of dependent position within the household. She is also in love with her cousin. Unmarried, gentile, and sympathetic to the plight of the lower class Margaret, Jenny is reflective amid the stark contrasts surrounding her. She is the one who struggles most with the moral question of Chris's return. I wish I could pull her from the shadows and hear her story in full.
I enjoyed this quick read for the descriptions of British society in the midst of change; change which Rebecca West was personally eager to see come. I also wrestled a bit with the moral question she poses. But what made this a memorable read for me was the enigma of Jenny.
Show More
is it better to preserve life and love or reality and truth?The story begins with Kitty, the beautiful and cold wife of Chris Baldry, lamenting that she has not heard from her soldier husband for a fortnight. Attending her is Chris's cousin Jenny, who is the narrator of the story. Jenny is brushing Kitty's damp hair and remembering the days when Chris was home and so happy (he was happy right?), when a woman requests to see Kitty. Margaret Grey is dumpy, unfashionable, poor, and uncultured, barely respectable in the eyes of the two ladies, but she has important and delicate news to impart. Chris is coming home. The catch is that he has amnesia and remembers Margaret, with whom he was passionately in love fifteen years ago, but not his wife, Kitty. Thus the stage is set for the drama which unfolds in this small setting.
In my mind, the most interesting and complex character is Jenny, the story's narrator. As a cousin of Chris's, she is a member of the upper class, yet she is in some sort of dependent position within the household. She is also in love with her cousin. Unmarried, gentile, and sympathetic to the plight of the lower class Margaret, Jenny is reflective amid the stark contrasts surrounding her. She is the one who struggles most with the moral question of Chris's return. I wish I could pull her from the shadows and hear her story in full.
I enjoyed this quick read for the descriptions of British society in the midst of change; change which Rebecca West was personally eager to see come. I also wrestled a bit with the moral question she poses. But what made this a memorable read for me was the enigma of Jenny.
Show Less
LibraryThing member cbl_tn
Christopher Baldry's wife Kitty and his cousin Jenny wait for him at his home in Harrow Weald and imagine the dangers facing him in the trenches. Memories of Christopher are everywhere in the house and on the grounds of the estate that he loves so well. However, when Christopher unexpectedly
This novel retains the immediacy of the emotional burden borne by the women on the home front during World War I. Women were not physically present in the trenches, yet the trenches left an imprint in their souls. While some women had to deal with the death of their husbands, lovers, or sons on the battlefield, others, like the women in this short novel, had to adapt to men who had been physically or psychologically wounded. 21st century novelists like Jacqueline Winspear and Charles Todd attempt to recreate the social context of WWI. Rebecca West lived through it, and her novel allows 21st century readers to briefly inhabit that world.
Show More
returns to them, he has left those memories behind. A concussion has left him with amnesia and no memory of the last 15 years of his life, or of his wife, Kitty. In his mind, he is a young man still in the throes of his first love. No matter what happens next, nothing will ever be the same for Christopher or for the three women who love him.This novel retains the immediacy of the emotional burden borne by the women on the home front during World War I. Women were not physically present in the trenches, yet the trenches left an imprint in their souls. While some women had to deal with the death of their husbands, lovers, or sons on the battlefield, others, like the women in this short novel, had to adapt to men who had been physically or psychologically wounded. 21st century novelists like Jacqueline Winspear and Charles Todd attempt to recreate the social context of WWI. Rebecca West lived through it, and her novel allows 21st century readers to briefly inhabit that world.
Show Less
LibraryThing member laytonwoman3rd
This is the story of what happens when Captain Chris Baldry comes home from the battlefields of WWI in 1916, shell-shocked, with no memory of his life after a certain day in 1901. That long-ago day was spent with his first love, a socially inappropriate one, which he now expects to return to,
Reviewed in 2010
Show More
despite the fact that he has been told he is married to someone else, the lovely, cold and Totally Appropriate Kitty, who awaits him in his family home. The changes that have taken place in his home, the sight of his wife, the shabby, married state of his former lover, his own aging and that of his childhood playmate/cousin Jenny, who narrates the story--none of these deter Chris from pursuing happiness as he had as a much younger, carefree man. Meanwhile, the three women in various ways seek to return him to "himself" and to the life he should be living in 1916, all the time realizing that a "cure" will mean his return to the war as well. Highly recommended.Reviewed in 2010
Show Less
LibraryThing member katiekrug
"There were only two real people in the world, Chris and this woman whose personality was sounding through her squalor like a beautiful voice singing in a darkened room."
I don’t know how to do justice to this perfect little gem of a book. An intriguing story, sparely but fully drawn characters,
Chris Baldry is the titular soldier who returns from the front of World War I suffering from shell shock and amnesia which has erased his memory of the past 15 years. He does not recognize his current life, home, or wife; in fact, he is still infatuated with Margaret, his first love from 15 years ago. The story is narrated by Chris’ cousin, who provides the perfect balance between distance and proximity to the story. As it unfolds, the narrator’s views slowly evolve as she perceives the truth of Chris’ life.
"I felt, indeed, a cold intellectual pride in his refusal to remember his prosperous maturity and his determined dwelling in the time of his first love, for it showed him so much saner than the rest of us, who take life as it comes, loaded with the unessential and the irritating."
How the three women – the wife, cousin, and first love – react to Chris’ condition and the circumstances in which they find themselves forms the central tension of the story. The resolution is both expected and heart-wrenching.
Beyond the plot, however, West imbues the simplest gesture and act with import and grace. Describing a woman sitting beside the sleeping figure of a man, she writes:
"It was the most significant, as it was the loveliest, attitude in the world. It means that the woman has gathered the soul of the man into her soul and is keeping it warm in love and peace so that his body can rest quiet for a little time. That is a great thing for a woman to do… What we desire is greatness such as this, which had given sleep to the beloved."
I had downloaded this onto my Kindle, and at the next opportunity, purchased a copy to add to my permanent library.
I don’t know how to do justice to this perfect little gem of a book. An intriguing story, sparely but fully drawn characters,
Show More
and language that is rich and languid and heartbreakingly beautiful – it is all here in a book that despite the plot is less about war and more about duty and the sublimation of one’s true character.Chris Baldry is the titular soldier who returns from the front of World War I suffering from shell shock and amnesia which has erased his memory of the past 15 years. He does not recognize his current life, home, or wife; in fact, he is still infatuated with Margaret, his first love from 15 years ago. The story is narrated by Chris’ cousin, who provides the perfect balance between distance and proximity to the story. As it unfolds, the narrator’s views slowly evolve as she perceives the truth of Chris’ life.
"I felt, indeed, a cold intellectual pride in his refusal to remember his prosperous maturity and his determined dwelling in the time of his first love, for it showed him so much saner than the rest of us, who take life as it comes, loaded with the unessential and the irritating."
How the three women – the wife, cousin, and first love – react to Chris’ condition and the circumstances in which they find themselves forms the central tension of the story. The resolution is both expected and heart-wrenching.
Beyond the plot, however, West imbues the simplest gesture and act with import and grace. Describing a woman sitting beside the sleeping figure of a man, she writes:
"It was the most significant, as it was the loveliest, attitude in the world. It means that the woman has gathered the soul of the man into her soul and is keeping it warm in love and peace so that his body can rest quiet for a little time. That is a great thing for a woman to do… What we desire is greatness such as this, which had given sleep to the beloved."
I had downloaded this onto my Kindle, and at the next opportunity, purchased a copy to add to my permanent library.
Show Less
LibraryThing member pamelad
The soldier is Chris Baldry, married to the beautiful, polished, empty Kitty. Suffering from shell-shock Guy forgets fifteen years of his life, including the ten years of his marriage to Kitty, and remembers his first love, the kind and generous Margaret. A short, beautifully written novel.
LibraryThing member whitewavedarling
This was a beautiful and brilliant book. It made me remember how in love with reading I was after reading Romeo and Juliet in seventh grade. The stories aren't similar, but I had that same reaction. The story sweeps you in with beauty and brilliance, and tears you apart with the same. If
Show More
Shakespeare and Henry James had come together to form their perfect idea of a writer, and to combine their styles into one which could strike at readers long after a book was closed, the result would have been Rebecca West. I'll be reading it again before long, once I recover from all the thoughts encased here, and in mind, after reading only once. Show Less
LibraryThing member Widsith
I'll tell you I think the Second World War was much more comfortable because in the First World War the position of women was so terrible, because there you were, not in danger. Men were going out and getting killed for you and you'd much prefer they weren't. […] There was a genuine humanitarian
—Rebecca West (in a 1981 interview with the Paris Review)
I kept thinking of this quote when I was reading The Return of the Soldier, because I feel like it's a novel that comes out of that mixture of anger and guilt that Rebecca West is talking about – anger at the complacency of civilians, and guilt at the idea that you are one of them. This is at least one way to explain the intense unlikeability of the central characters.
A slim parable set during the First World War, the book centres on two women in exactly that "pampered, unnatural state" that West complained about – passing their time in luxurious indolence at their country seat while they wait for the man of the house to return from the front. Against this background, West orchestrates a simple but diverting ethical dilemma: when Captain Chris Baldry does come back, he's shell-shocked and suffering from acute amnesia. He can't remember the last fifteen years of his life, he has no idea who his wife is, and he's demanding to see the woman he was in love with fifteen years ago.
It should be the set-up for a melodrama, but West instead uses it – rather unexpectedly – to make a quick, vicious exploration of class relations and the nature of authenticity. Mrs Grey – our soldier's old flame, long since married to someone else – is a working-class lady, and our upper-class narrator finds her uncongenial to a degree that leaves a modern reader breathless. Mrs Grey is described as being ‘repulsively furred with neglect and poverty’, her face ‘sour with thrift’, ‘a cancerous blot on the fair world’ – ‘not so much a person as an implication of dreary poverty, like an open door in a mean house that lets out the smell of cooking cabbage and the screams of children’.
What this class horror boils down to is an instinctive feeling that Mrs Grey, and those like her, are somehow not quite human – not fully real. Like her tortoise-shell umbrella, she is ‘unveracious’ (a word that crops up twice). And this unpleasant impulse is played out against the struggle over what to do with Chris, whom shell-shock has now delivered into his own unveracious world – where, to his wife's consternation, he's perfectly happy.
Happiness may be important, but the argument made by this book is that truth is more important. It is ‘a draught that we must drink or not be fully human’. By the end of the novel the narrator has come to see that it's Chris's elegant wife, not his working-class ex, who is ‘the falsest thing on earth’, and she draws a sobering conclusion about her own cherished existence:
The whole truth about us lies in our material seeming.
This is what makes the war so effective as a backdrop: an unignorable reality that threatens to make all these interpersonal dramas seem false (‘pampered’, ‘unnatural’) in comparison.
This is the sort of book that makes me really appreciate the discipline of reviewing, because it's only as I've tried try to get my thoughts down in words that I realise quite how much is going on here, considering the whole thing can be read in a couple of hours. It would make an excellent companion read to JL Carr's A Month in the Country, another English novel exploring the effects of shell-shock. This was actually Rebecca West's first novel, written when she was just 24 (she was 89 when she gave the interview at the top of this review, and as sharp as ever), and there is perhaps a certain immaturity to the set-up. But you still feel that you're communing with a uniquely incisive mind, and with so many ideas fizzing around here, it represents extraordinary bang for your buck for 140 pages.
Show More
feeling of guilt about that in the first war. It was very curious, you see. There I sat on my balcony in Leigh-on-Sea and heard guns going in France. It was a most peculiar war. It was really better, in the Second World War, when the people at home got bombed. I found it a relief. You were taking your chance and you might be killed and you weren't in that pampered sort of unnatural state.—Rebecca West (in a 1981 interview with the Paris Review)
I kept thinking of this quote when I was reading The Return of the Soldier, because I feel like it's a novel that comes out of that mixture of anger and guilt that Rebecca West is talking about – anger at the complacency of civilians, and guilt at the idea that you are one of them. This is at least one way to explain the intense unlikeability of the central characters.
A slim parable set during the First World War, the book centres on two women in exactly that "pampered, unnatural state" that West complained about – passing their time in luxurious indolence at their country seat while they wait for the man of the house to return from the front. Against this background, West orchestrates a simple but diverting ethical dilemma: when Captain Chris Baldry does come back, he's shell-shocked and suffering from acute amnesia. He can't remember the last fifteen years of his life, he has no idea who his wife is, and he's demanding to see the woman he was in love with fifteen years ago.
It should be the set-up for a melodrama, but West instead uses it – rather unexpectedly – to make a quick, vicious exploration of class relations and the nature of authenticity. Mrs Grey – our soldier's old flame, long since married to someone else – is a working-class lady, and our upper-class narrator finds her uncongenial to a degree that leaves a modern reader breathless. Mrs Grey is described as being ‘repulsively furred with neglect and poverty’, her face ‘sour with thrift’, ‘a cancerous blot on the fair world’ – ‘not so much a person as an implication of dreary poverty, like an open door in a mean house that lets out the smell of cooking cabbage and the screams of children’.
What this class horror boils down to is an instinctive feeling that Mrs Grey, and those like her, are somehow not quite human – not fully real. Like her tortoise-shell umbrella, she is ‘unveracious’ (a word that crops up twice). And this unpleasant impulse is played out against the struggle over what to do with Chris, whom shell-shock has now delivered into his own unveracious world – where, to his wife's consternation, he's perfectly happy.
Happiness may be important, but the argument made by this book is that truth is more important. It is ‘a draught that we must drink or not be fully human’. By the end of the novel the narrator has come to see that it's Chris's elegant wife, not his working-class ex, who is ‘the falsest thing on earth’, and she draws a sobering conclusion about her own cherished existence:
The whole truth about us lies in our material seeming.
This is what makes the war so effective as a backdrop: an unignorable reality that threatens to make all these interpersonal dramas seem false (‘pampered’, ‘unnatural’) in comparison.
This is the sort of book that makes me really appreciate the discipline of reviewing, because it's only as I've tried try to get my thoughts down in words that I realise quite how much is going on here, considering the whole thing can be read in a couple of hours. It would make an excellent companion read to JL Carr's A Month in the Country, another English novel exploring the effects of shell-shock. This was actually Rebecca West's first novel, written when she was just 24 (she was 89 when she gave the interview at the top of this review, and as sharp as ever), and there is perhaps a certain immaturity to the set-up. But you still feel that you're communing with a uniquely incisive mind, and with so many ideas fizzing around here, it represents extraordinary bang for your buck for 140 pages.
Show Less
LibraryThing member TadAD
West's short book (almost a novella, really), was written in 1918. It is the story of a man returning from the war, suffering from shell-shock, and unable to remember the last 15 years of his life. Grappling with this are three women: Kitty, his wife of ten years; Margaret, the woman whom he loved
Poignant, stark, no less moving or apropos for being set in the war of nearly a century ago rather than today's conflicts—an almost perfect gem of a book.
About the only complaint I could have is with the edition. I wish I had ordered the 198 page Garden City edition instead of the Digireads paperback. The latter caused my eyes to swim from the small font and very closely-set lines of text.
Show More
15 years ago; and Jenny, his cousin, who narrates the story, and whose thoughts provide the discussion of the damage caused by war.Poignant, stark, no less moving or apropos for being set in the war of nearly a century ago rather than today's conflicts—an almost perfect gem of a book.
About the only complaint I could have is with the edition. I wish I had ordered the 198 page Garden City edition instead of the Digireads paperback. The latter caused my eyes to swim from the small font and very closely-set lines of text.
Show Less
LibraryThing member Stevil2001
It's probably a disservice to Rebecca West to read her work as part of an investigation into the life of H. G. Wells. Still, reading about her relationship with Wells made me want to find out what she was like as a writer, as I have never read any of her work, so I picked up The Return of the
I knew The Return of the Soldier was a Great War novel going in, but that was pretty much all I knew, so I was surprised to find a book that wasn't as much about the war as I thought. Christoper Baldry is a soldier who returns from the front, yes, but his ailment is that he's forgotten his life since 1901, and the novel (or, more accurately, novella) is an investigation into why someone might do this. Sure, the war is the triggering event, but the novel is more a portrait of how the person we thought we ought to be turns out not to be the person we become, and the tragedy that can result from that. West observes character most acutely, and it's in the highs and lows of being where this novel really shines. Not that there's a whole lot else to it, at 90 pages. She sets things up so that the title has a pretty compelling and sad double meaning in the end, too. (Wikipedia reads the ending as much more pat than I think it is intended to be. The wound is healed, but the tragedy lingers.) West is working in that sort of Woolf school of early modernism, and I think one of its better practitioners. Quick, but complex.
Show More
Soldier, the most popular of her books published during their relationship. (Though I am also curious about The Judge based on Wells's account of its composition in H. G. Wells in Love, and a friend recommended Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.) Like Catherine Wells, West's literary interests are very different from those of her lover, though I was amused when a "Bert Wells" rated a brief mention. (Seemingly no connection beyond the name, though.)I knew The Return of the Soldier was a Great War novel going in, but that was pretty much all I knew, so I was surprised to find a book that wasn't as much about the war as I thought. Christoper Baldry is a soldier who returns from the front, yes, but his ailment is that he's forgotten his life since 1901, and the novel (or, more accurately, novella) is an investigation into why someone might do this. Sure, the war is the triggering event, but the novel is more a portrait of how the person we thought we ought to be turns out not to be the person we become, and the tragedy that can result from that. West observes character most acutely, and it's in the highs and lows of being where this novel really shines. Not that there's a whole lot else to it, at 90 pages. She sets things up so that the title has a pretty compelling and sad double meaning in the end, too. (Wikipedia reads the ending as much more pat than I think it is intended to be. The wound is healed, but the tragedy lingers.) West is working in that sort of Woolf school of early modernism, and I think one of its better practitioners. Quick, but complex.
Show Less
LibraryThing member essexgirl
What a sad but warm book. This warrants rereading time and again.
LibraryThing member mikerobbins
Before I read this, I had known of Rebecca West only through her famous book on Yugoslavia, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon. Born in London in 1892, she had little formal education, her family being in genteel poverty. She trained as an actress, but seems to have acted little, becoming a sufragette and
As the book opens, two women are in a country house just outside London on a bright day in the early spring of 1916. They are well-to-do; Kitty is the attractive wife of Baldry, the master of the house, and Jenny, less pretty, is his cousin. Jenny has started to worry that they have heard nothing of Baldry, a serving soldier, for several weeks. Kitty assures her that the War Office would have informed her if there were anything amiss. They are interrupted by the arrival of Margaret, a dowdy woman of limited means from a bleak suburb nearby. She informs them that Baldry is, in fact, in hospital in Boulogne, that he has lost his memory after an explosion, and that he has regressed some 15 years to the time when, as a young man, he loved her. That is why the War Office has not been in touch; it is Margaret to whom Baldry has written, and it is her that he wishes to see.
Baldry is brought home, and is indifferent to his wife; a little less so to his cousin, who he does remember, albeit as a young woman – but he spends his time with Margaret. He is unconcerned that she is now a middle-aged, married, suburban dowd. It becomes clear that he still loves her. Meanwhile his wife, Kitty, desperately wants him restored to normality.
There is an understated lyricism in West’s writing that makes the book poignant and vivid. The sequences in which Baldry remembers his early courtship of Margaret 15 years earlier are set on Monkey Island at Bray, in a curve of the Thames, where Margaret’s father is landlord of the Monkey Island Inn. The place is real enough; today it is an hotel and conference centre just a mile or so from the M4 motorway. West and Wells had frequented Monkey Island immediately before the First World War. In the book, it is a quiet country pub catering to the odd passing boatman. Baldry describes how it was reached:
...a private road... followed a line of noble poplars down to the ferry. Between two of them... there stood a white hawthorn. In front were the dark-green, glassy waters of an unvisited backwater, and beyond them a bright lawn set with many walnut-trees and a few great chestnuts, well lighted with their candles...
To anyone who knows the countryside in the south of England, this is evocative. In April, May and June the sky turns a deeper blue and the trees and hedgerows come alive; the white and pink chestnut candles are a delight, as are the white patches of hawthorn.
Underneath this lyricism, however, this book has some hard themes, some of which must have raised eyebrows at the time. Some have seen the book as a clinical description of combat trauma. Others will see a feminist message here – that the dependence of women on men distorts the behaviour of both, and is even a driver for war. There is plenty of evidence in the book for this interpretation and besides, West was a strong proponent of women’s rights. But perhaps we shouldn’t apply modern labels to people who pre-date them.
Class is another theme. Margaret, the woman to whose affections Baldry has returned, is a woman of a lower station. Jenny and Kitty meet Margaret for the first time, when she first calls at the Baldry house: She wore a yellowish raincoat and a black hat with plumes. The sticky straw hat had only lately been renovated by something out of a little bottle bought at the chemist’s. ...Margaret starts to explain that Baldry is wounded, in Boulogne, and that it seems they do not know. Her words are not taken at face value: This was such a fraud as one sees recorded in the papers ...Presently she would say that she had gone to some expense to come here with her news and that she was poor... These class tensions have still not been excised from British life.
However, West makes an even more important point that is made much more explicitly, and in my view less well, by a more famous book, Heller’s Catch-22. That is the whole question of the logic of war. Kitty, the spurned wife, calls in a series of doctors to try to bring back his memory and restore him to normal. If she succeeds, he will of course return to the front. Cousin Jenny understands this, and feels growing sympathy for Margaret. It slowly becomes clear that, by trying to restore him to “normal” and send him back to war, Kitty is being monstrously selfish. The lover is right; the wife is wrong; restoration to “normal” means death. This was a brave message for 1918.
An expensive specialist has arrived to “cure” Baldry – that is to say, restore his memory. Margaret, the working-class woman that he loves, protests to the doctor:
“What’s the use of talking? You can’t cure him,” – she caught her lower lip with her teeth and fought back from the brink of tears, – “make him happy, I mean. All you can do is to make him ordinary.”
“I grant you that’s all I do,” he said. ..”It’s my profession to bring people... to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it’s the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don’t see the urgency myself.”
In Catch-22, the American airman, Yossarian, finds that there is a twisted logic: if you request relief from combat duty on the grounds of insanity, you must be wrong, because to do so is sane. West is subtler but the message is the same; by being “cured”, Baldry will be made to go back to the front, which is mad. Being restored to sanity would make Baldry do something insane. The Return of the Soldier is a beautiful book, but it is also a very subversive one; it questions not only the definition of normality, but, in so doing, the very nature and legitimacy of the authority of one human over another.
Show More
then the lover of H.G. Wells. She turned to writing and had a distinguished career in serious journalism. She also wrote a number of novels, but it seems unlikely that most are widely read now. The Return of the Soldier, however, has never quite been forgotten and was filmed, with a stellar cast, in 1982. Her first book, it was published in 1918.As the book opens, two women are in a country house just outside London on a bright day in the early spring of 1916. They are well-to-do; Kitty is the attractive wife of Baldry, the master of the house, and Jenny, less pretty, is his cousin. Jenny has started to worry that they have heard nothing of Baldry, a serving soldier, for several weeks. Kitty assures her that the War Office would have informed her if there were anything amiss. They are interrupted by the arrival of Margaret, a dowdy woman of limited means from a bleak suburb nearby. She informs them that Baldry is, in fact, in hospital in Boulogne, that he has lost his memory after an explosion, and that he has regressed some 15 years to the time when, as a young man, he loved her. That is why the War Office has not been in touch; it is Margaret to whom Baldry has written, and it is her that he wishes to see.
Baldry is brought home, and is indifferent to his wife; a little less so to his cousin, who he does remember, albeit as a young woman – but he spends his time with Margaret. He is unconcerned that she is now a middle-aged, married, suburban dowd. It becomes clear that he still loves her. Meanwhile his wife, Kitty, desperately wants him restored to normality.
There is an understated lyricism in West’s writing that makes the book poignant and vivid. The sequences in which Baldry remembers his early courtship of Margaret 15 years earlier are set on Monkey Island at Bray, in a curve of the Thames, where Margaret’s father is landlord of the Monkey Island Inn. The place is real enough; today it is an hotel and conference centre just a mile or so from the M4 motorway. West and Wells had frequented Monkey Island immediately before the First World War. In the book, it is a quiet country pub catering to the odd passing boatman. Baldry describes how it was reached:
...a private road... followed a line of noble poplars down to the ferry. Between two of them... there stood a white hawthorn. In front were the dark-green, glassy waters of an unvisited backwater, and beyond them a bright lawn set with many walnut-trees and a few great chestnuts, well lighted with their candles...
To anyone who knows the countryside in the south of England, this is evocative. In April, May and June the sky turns a deeper blue and the trees and hedgerows come alive; the white and pink chestnut candles are a delight, as are the white patches of hawthorn.
Underneath this lyricism, however, this book has some hard themes, some of which must have raised eyebrows at the time. Some have seen the book as a clinical description of combat trauma. Others will see a feminist message here – that the dependence of women on men distorts the behaviour of both, and is even a driver for war. There is plenty of evidence in the book for this interpretation and besides, West was a strong proponent of women’s rights. But perhaps we shouldn’t apply modern labels to people who pre-date them.
Class is another theme. Margaret, the woman to whose affections Baldry has returned, is a woman of a lower station. Jenny and Kitty meet Margaret for the first time, when she first calls at the Baldry house: She wore a yellowish raincoat and a black hat with plumes. The sticky straw hat had only lately been renovated by something out of a little bottle bought at the chemist’s. ...Margaret starts to explain that Baldry is wounded, in Boulogne, and that it seems they do not know. Her words are not taken at face value: This was such a fraud as one sees recorded in the papers ...Presently she would say that she had gone to some expense to come here with her news and that she was poor... These class tensions have still not been excised from British life.
However, West makes an even more important point that is made much more explicitly, and in my view less well, by a more famous book, Heller’s Catch-22. That is the whole question of the logic of war. Kitty, the spurned wife, calls in a series of doctors to try to bring back his memory and restore him to normal. If she succeeds, he will of course return to the front. Cousin Jenny understands this, and feels growing sympathy for Margaret. It slowly becomes clear that, by trying to restore him to “normal” and send him back to war, Kitty is being monstrously selfish. The lover is right; the wife is wrong; restoration to “normal” means death. This was a brave message for 1918.
An expensive specialist has arrived to “cure” Baldry – that is to say, restore his memory. Margaret, the working-class woman that he loves, protests to the doctor:
“What’s the use of talking? You can’t cure him,” – she caught her lower lip with her teeth and fought back from the brink of tears, – “make him happy, I mean. All you can do is to make him ordinary.”
“I grant you that’s all I do,” he said. ..”It’s my profession to bring people... to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it’s the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don’t see the urgency myself.”
In Catch-22, the American airman, Yossarian, finds that there is a twisted logic: if you request relief from combat duty on the grounds of insanity, you must be wrong, because to do so is sane. West is subtler but the message is the same; by being “cured”, Baldry will be made to go back to the front, which is mad. Being restored to sanity would make Baldry do something insane. The Return of the Soldier is a beautiful book, but it is also a very subversive one; it questions not only the definition of normality, but, in so doing, the very nature and legitimacy of the authority of one human over another.
Show Less
LibraryThing member streamsong
Christopher Baldry is at war, in the trenches of WWI France.
At his elegant English estate, two women wait for his return. Kitty Baldry is his beautiful but superficial wife. Jenny Baldry is a cousin who loves him dearly and understands him deeply.
And then one day a third woman, Margaret West
On investigation her story is true. Christopher Baldry has lost his memory of the last fifteen years due to shell shock. He returns home and can be comforted by no one but his previous love, Margaret. He has no memory of his wife and is dismayed by the aging and changes of his cousin and others he knows.
What will be the key to unlocking his memory? And what will be the price?
This is a wonderful gem of a story. It’s very short and available on Project Gutenberg. One could read it in a few hours. But it’s by no means short on impact. It will definitely be appearing on my list of favorite reads for this year.
At his elegant English estate, two women wait for his return. Kitty Baldry is his beautiful but superficial wife. Jenny Baldry is a cousin who loves him dearly and understands him deeply.
And then one day a third woman, Margaret West
Show More
appears at the door. She is a judged to be a very common type; both the Baldry’s are rather appalled at her appearance and manner. But Margaret has a strange story – Christopher Baldry has been wounded and has written to Margaret whom he loved in his youth instead of writing to his wife or family.On investigation her story is true. Christopher Baldry has lost his memory of the last fifteen years due to shell shock. He returns home and can be comforted by no one but his previous love, Margaret. He has no memory of his wife and is dismayed by the aging and changes of his cousin and others he knows.
What will be the key to unlocking his memory? And what will be the price?
This is a wonderful gem of a story. It’s very short and available on Project Gutenberg. One could read it in a few hours. But it’s by no means short on impact. It will definitely be appearing on my list of favorite reads for this year.
Show Less
LibraryThing member worrellw
This was a tragedy chock full of lovely prose. Her comment that "Not a sentence should be wasted." is a standard she holds herself to in this lovely short novel.
LibraryThing member Feleciak
3 stars
A wealthy Englishman returns from war shell-shocked as an amnesiac. He doesn't remember his wife but desperately wants to find the woman he was in love with some 15 years before. His devoted cousin, who wants him well and happy, tries to make sure it happens. They all come together but
A wealthy Englishman returns from war shell-shocked as an amnesiac. He doesn't remember his wife but desperately wants to find the woman he was in love with some 15 years before. His devoted cousin, who wants him well and happy, tries to make sure it happens. They all come together but
Show More
suffer in various ways. Good ending but left to the readers interpretation. I'd recommend it. Show Less
LibraryThing member thorold
This short novel is a minor and rather early work by an author I really need to read more of. On the face of it, it's a "home-front" war novel, in which three women find themselves caring for a man who has come back from the trenches psychologically scarred. But it struck me as much more general
If you know something about West's biography, it's also amusing to notice how she uses the very Mister-Pollyish location of an inn on an island in the Thames to represent the idyllic past, and how the story centres on a man who is loved simultaneously and complacently by an absurd number of women (although probably not quite as many at once as Mr Wells...).
Show More
than that. West uses the war as the clearest possible topical expression of the dreadful arbitrariness of life, and the story really seems to be about the irreversibility of time, and the need to face up to where we are because we aren't able to go back to where we were. Which is perhaps just the tiniest bit trite, but it provides a very useful framework on which to hang some really magnificently acute observations of the way relations between men and women and between people of different social classes and degrees of wealth function. It's especially interesting to see the way she implicates the reader in her narrator's shockingly physical disgust for the poverty of Margaret (a person she comes to admire and even love) to make us see how deeply class-prejudice is ingrained in the dominant ideology, and at the same time how false it is.If you know something about West's biography, it's also amusing to notice how she uses the very Mister-Pollyish location of an inn on an island in the Thames to represent the idyllic past, and how the story centres on a man who is loved simultaneously and complacently by an absurd number of women (although probably not quite as many at once as Mr Wells...).
Show Less
LibraryThing member wendyrey
a young man comes back from the first war with amnesia, he has forgotten his wife and marriage but remembers his first love Margaret. A short, sad, well written book. Excellent read.
LibraryThing member lisasil27
Written during the war, the novel gives an insight into how the War affected the civilian society during and after the war. West's use of unchanging setting sets a claustrophobic mood which illustrates the "domestic bubbles" the three women are caught in and the shell-shock that "imprisons" Chris
Show More
in his blissful past. Show Less
LibraryThing member GarySeverance
Rebecca West (nee Cicely Isabel Fairfield 1892-1983) began her distinguished career in the second decade of the 20th Century, a period of exciting international literary contributions. The publication of the British writer’s first novel, The Return of the Soldier, established her immediately as
The story involves a shell-shocked soldier sent home from combat in the trenches in France during World War I. He is unfit to continue his mission because of retrograde amnesia that causes him to believe he is living in an earlier period of his life, a time long before his army service. Returning home to England, he tries to take up his life as it was before even though people who were important to him have aged 15 years. He feels as young as he did in those days and receives support during his delusion of youth by his current wife and his former lover.
The structure and psychological content of this novel remind me of Virginia Woolf’s early work, The Voyage Out. I enjoyed the surprising, illuminating flashes of insight of the characters that made me realize the depth of talent shown right out of the literary gate of this young, 21 year old writer. The novel is a bit long on description of flora even though the environment is important in the story. The content of the story is relevant today due to the new diagnosis of shell-shock, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder applied to soldiers in increasing numbers.
I pushed the buttons on my Kindle and went to the Kindle Store to buy her second novel, The Judge. I am looking forward to reading the complete work of Rebecca West (fiction and non-fiction), now considered a leading intellectual woman of the 20th Century.
Show More
one of a group of very talented women authors. The short, modernist novel is filled with indications of West’s brilliance and clear insight that make the reader sit up and take notice while reading the simple and direct narrative.The story involves a shell-shocked soldier sent home from combat in the trenches in France during World War I. He is unfit to continue his mission because of retrograde amnesia that causes him to believe he is living in an earlier period of his life, a time long before his army service. Returning home to England, he tries to take up his life as it was before even though people who were important to him have aged 15 years. He feels as young as he did in those days and receives support during his delusion of youth by his current wife and his former lover.
The structure and psychological content of this novel remind me of Virginia Woolf’s early work, The Voyage Out. I enjoyed the surprising, illuminating flashes of insight of the characters that made me realize the depth of talent shown right out of the literary gate of this young, 21 year old writer. The novel is a bit long on description of flora even though the environment is important in the story. The content of the story is relevant today due to the new diagnosis of shell-shock, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder applied to soldiers in increasing numbers.
I pushed the buttons on my Kindle and went to the Kindle Store to buy her second novel, The Judge. I am looking forward to reading the complete work of Rebecca West (fiction and non-fiction), now considered a leading intellectual woman of the 20th Century.
Show Less
LibraryThing member thatotter
An elegant, deceptive slip of a novel, written during and about World War I.
"Disregarding the national interest and everything else except the keen prehensile gesture of our hearts toward him, I wanted to snatch my cousin Christopher from the wars and seal him in this green pleasantness his wife
"Disregarding the national interest and everything else except the keen prehensile gesture of our hearts toward him, I wanted to snatch my cousin Christopher from the wars and seal him in this green pleasantness his wife
Show More
and I now looked upon." Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original language
English
Original publication date
1918
Physical description
112 p.; 8.03 inches
ISBN
0812971221 / 9780812971224