Product Description

The meeting of John and Florence Dowell and Edward and Leonora Ashbumham in a German health spa is the centre of a train of lies, deceptions, adulterous love triangles and deaths. John Dowell, a memorably "unreliable" narrator, calls it "the saddest story I have ever heard". His narrative distance stems partly from the distance in time of the events, partly from his absence from some of them, but mostly from his ignorance or denial of realities as intimate as his wife's serial deception.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #542683 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Sara Haslam, Open University
"It is excellent to see a Broadview edition of this seminal modernist work."

About the Author
Born in Devon in 1873, and educated in England, Germany and France, Ford changed his original surname, Hueffer, in 1919, after having served with the British army in World War I (1914-1918). He wrote over 60 works including novels, poems, criticism, travel essays and reminiscences, Ford also edited the English Review (1908-11) and the Transatlantic Review (1924, Paris). THE GOOD SOLDIER (1915) is considered his masterpiece. From 1927 on Ford lived in the United States and in France.

Customer Reviews

Sad Story, Amusingly Told
Terrific book, extremely advanced for its time, though it does show Jamesian influences. It starts out: "This is the saddest story I've ever heard." Quite loosely written, with an ingenuously lazy wit, and it's a very complex story about two couples, ironically narrated by an American man, who is a splendid combination of naive and penetrating psychological insights, who is trying to document and piece together the steps leading to the suicide of Edward, his English friend, who in spite of the fact that he was an excellent fellow he was unable to keep his hands off whatever women came his way, and fall madly in love with the least appropriate damsels. I suspect the English fellow is a self-portrait, for the narrator is very gauche, and innocent, and not at all like Ford.

Simple greatness
This deceptively simple, heart-breaking story will change the way you think about novels, writing and the canon of English literature. It is a masterpiece of the first order: simply told by a narrator who frequently doubts his ability to tell his own story it is a study of sadness and loss that is as near to "The Great Gatsby" as anything written in this country. It should not be missed under any circumstances: the reward of reading it is enormous.

I love you with my ford
An astonishing study of repressed passions and for me the birthplace of that 20th Century favourite the unreliable narrator. I really wanted to add that, important as Henry James may be, it was Ford's collaboration with Conrad that is at the root of the truly innovative narrative structure of this book.