Henry Green (1) (1905–1973)

"Loving" is the story of the upstairs-downstairs goings-on at a Protestant-owned and -run manse in the first decades after the founding of the Irish republic. It's also a books I'd never even heard of before it showed up on the Modern Library's list of the twentieth century's one hundred best novels. I think it's a quality book, but not necessarily an enjoyable read. "Loving" might the longest two-hundred pages you'll ever read, and if you're going to get anything at all out of them, you'll have to read them carefully.

Some reviewers here have mentioned that the dialect is challenging, and, for many American readers, it may be. Although it's set during the Second World War, the language it's written in struck me as much older as less accessible. It makes no concessions to an American -- or even non-Irish -- audience. But what really slowed things down for me was the extraordinary intimacy of every conversation and interaction in the book. The characters here live lives governed by custom, even as they are they are, understandably, beset by the usual run of human passions, and they do so in such close quarters that they might as well be at sea. Sometimes I thought that there wasn't a single exchange in "Loving," no matter how practical or inconsequential, that couldn't be seen as uncomfortably intimate. It feels that these people have been living all over each other for generations. It's hardly surprising, then, that can be exhausting to read about.

Luckily, there are some memorable characters here to hold your interest. Charley Raunce -- the new butler, formerly the footman -- is the book's center, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if he was clever, a fool, a scoundrel or a sincere suitor. My estimation of him kept shifting as I read on, and, honestly, he may be all of these things. At any rate, his charisma is undeniable. There's also the maids: lovely Edith, roommate and complement to the more ordinary but still attractive Kate, both of whom display an easy, irresistible sensuality. There's a set of characters -- Nanny Swift, Miss Burch, and Miss Welch -- who seem as old and dug-in as the castle itself, and, finally, there's Mrs. Tennant, the lady of the manor, who displays the kind of eccentricity that only money and inherited privilege can produce.

In the end, to borrow from Joyce, this isn't just a novel about loving but also one about leaving. The house is mostly shut up, the business model that built it expired generations ago, and the castle's residents can only pretend that time hasn't advanced a second since the summer of 1914 for so long. What Green is describing here -- along with a complex web of professional and personal relationships -- is the slow undoing of an institution and a way of life. I didn't find this one easy to read or quite to my taste, but only a writer of real talent could have written it. Recommended.… (més)

If you start to read this novel with heedless attention, then you’re in for a surprise: after an endless stream of dialogues (200 pages on end) you come to the conclusion that there’s barely a storyline in this book. Place of action is a country estate in Ireland, inhabited by British aristocrats, in the midst of the Second World War. Green mainly focuses on the domestic staff, a motley crew who are more or less left to their own devices by the (usually) absent owners, and do almost nothing but bicker and speak ill of each other. On the surface, the setting seems to have a high “Upstairs, Downstairs” content, and “Dowton Abbey” inevitably comes to mind as well.
But as a reader you hardly get a grip on Green's story. He alternates intimate scenes with stiff ones, occasionally lets it come to a comedy of errors (about a lost ring, for example), and especially sows confusion with peacocks that appear at the most unexpected moments. The transitions between scenes are barely noticeable, and nothing is as it seems; the scenes between the love couple Edith and Charley, for example, are apparently charming, but at the same time there appears to be an enormous distance between them.
As a reader you are constantly wrestling with the question of what the actual purpose of the story is. But that clearly turns out to be the wrong attitude. I cannot put it better than Sebastian Faulks, who wrote an introduction to this book: “The inner shape of the novel in this way imitates our experience of living: it promises pattern, then withholds it, insisting on a formless banality; it describes intensity, but as part of a grudgingly accepted monotony; it glimpses poetry, but only from the corner of its eye.” In other words: life as it is. Nicely done, indeed, but with this book Green confirms his reputation of being a “writer’s writer”.… (més)