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silvej01's review against another edition
5.0
Another outstanding work in the twelve part series. The Second World War has begun and Jenkins has joined the army, though not the fray. The book introduces us to many new characters, mostly the fellow officers and enlisted men in Jenkins' regiment based in Northern Ireland. Here again, the subtlety and expressiveness of Powell's writing inspires awe. Much of the book reminded me of the scenes from Shakespeare's Henry V, particularly the conversations of Captains Fluellen, Jamy, Gower and MacMorris. Captain Gwatkin in particular struck me as possessing some of the qualities of Fluellen.
themorsecode's review against another edition
4.0
As with all the books I've read in this series, takes a while to get going then after the new characters are introduced and events take motion it's a joy. Looking forward to the Widmerpool-fest the next book promises to be.
charlottesometimes's review
funny
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
phileasfogg's review
4.0
This review contains spoilers for The Valley of Bones and subsequent books in A Dance to the Music of Time.
The Title
As the title of a book set during World War Two, The Valley of Bones seems to hint that there's going to be a lot of bodies. But it refers to a Bible verse that could serve as a metaphor for the whole series: a prophet stares into a valley of bones and commands them to regrow their flesh and draw breath again, much as Nick Jenkins (or Anthony Powell) is doing with his memories, commanding the long-dead to walk and speak again in these books.
Everything Changes
This instalment of A Dance to the Music of Time is very different to its predecessors. It is fairly strictly linear, with no lengthy flashbacks to 1929. Nick is not constantly having chance encounters with people he met years earlier. The world has changed, and with it his life and his memoir.
He's in a Welsh regiment now, far from everyone he knew previously, immersed in a very different social milieu. No-one among his new acquaintances talks about books or art or music, and Nick's learned that he shouldn't. He's given up trying to explain that he wrote novels and reviewed books before the war. He has discovered that, to people outside his pre-war social circle, such occupations are incomprehensible. The most satisfactory account he can give of his pre-war life is that he wrote for newspapers.
This is clearly not intended to denigrate his fellow soldiers--as I gather some early reviewers of the book thought--but to stress the vast differences between Nick's old life and his new life.
The war has removed him from the companions he chose for himself, what we might call his echo-chamber, people who he sometimes imagines are very different from himself, but who think about and know the same things he does; and given him new companions who are more or less ordinary people, most of whom previously worked in banks in small Welsh towns.
Seedy-smart Bohemianism
There's a striking moment when, told about a marriage that occurred some time ago, in the village many of his new colleagues came from, Nick asks if the couple are still together. The man he's talking to is surprised by the idea that they could be otherwise. The assumptions that Nick draws from his usual social surroundings don't apply in his new life.
It's easy to miss this when reading the series in Australia in the 21st century, and I was mostly oblivious to it, but the lifestyles of many in Nick's circle were fairly unusual at the time the novels are set, and the time most were written. I probably wouldn't have even noticed, if not for the blurbs of some of the old paperbacks in which I read the series talking about Nick's 'world of seedy-smart Bohemianism', to quote from the 1968 Penguin edition of The Valley of Bones. Those seedy-smart characters now seem fairly ordinary and respectable. We are their heirs.
Men at Arms
Inevitably The Valley of Bones shares some common ground with [book:Men at Arms|264121], the first novel in [author:Evelyn Waugh|11315]'s war trilogy. Both are about men similar to the author, considered, even in time of war, to be a little too old to join the army, signing up, training to be officers, and dealing with eccentric superiors.
I enjoyed Waugh's book more, but its pleasures--the humour, the narrative drive, the eccentric characters--are the very things that make it seem less strictly real than The Valley of Bones seems. (I don't know enough about Waugh's war to know if the more memorable moments of Men at Arms, especially those concerning the thunderbox, really happened.) Powell's book also has its moments of hilarity, drawn, as far as I know, from life, like the surprise inspection by General Liddament.
When I read Powell's memoirs later this year I'll be interested to see if he mentions feeling any unease about treading ground that had already been trodden very well in a similar memoir/novel.
I was reminded also of the first volume of [author:Spike Milligan|114722]'s memoirs, [book:Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall|330919], also about Army basic training early in the war, but from the perspective of 'other ranks' rather than officers. I suppose there must be many similar books.
On Holiday
What makes this a particularly Povian (if that's the word?) war novel is the holiday sequence, where Nick briefly returns to his old life and meets again some of the people he and we have been missing. On the train back to London he discusses 19th century French literature with a fellow officer he had met briefly at a party in the early 1920s, and you feel you're back in the main stream of A Dance to the Music of Time.
Widmerpool
But where is Widmerpool while all this is going on? Far from Nick's thoughts, which helps to make the brilliant last page so devastating.
Spoiler
The Title
As the title of a book set during World War Two, The Valley of Bones seems to hint that there's going to be a lot of bodies. But it refers to a Bible verse that could serve as a metaphor for the whole series: a prophet stares into a valley of bones and commands them to regrow their flesh and draw breath again, much as Nick Jenkins (or Anthony Powell) is doing with his memories, commanding the long-dead to walk and speak again in these books.
Everything Changes
This instalment of A Dance to the Music of Time is very different to its predecessors. It is fairly strictly linear, with no lengthy flashbacks to 1929. Nick is not constantly having chance encounters with people he met years earlier. The world has changed, and with it his life and his memoir.
He's in a Welsh regiment now, far from everyone he knew previously, immersed in a very different social milieu. No-one among his new acquaintances talks about books or art or music, and Nick's learned that he shouldn't. He's given up trying to explain that he wrote novels and reviewed books before the war. He has discovered that, to people outside his pre-war social circle, such occupations are incomprehensible. The most satisfactory account he can give of his pre-war life is that he wrote for newspapers.
This is clearly not intended to denigrate his fellow soldiers--as I gather some early reviewers of the book thought--but to stress the vast differences between Nick's old life and his new life.
The war has removed him from the companions he chose for himself, what we might call his echo-chamber, people who he sometimes imagines are very different from himself, but who think about and know the same things he does; and given him new companions who are more or less ordinary people, most of whom previously worked in banks in small Welsh towns.
Seedy-smart Bohemianism
There's a striking moment when, told about a marriage that occurred some time ago, in the village many of his new colleagues came from, Nick asks if the couple are still together. The man he's talking to is surprised by the idea that they could be otherwise. The assumptions that Nick draws from his usual social surroundings don't apply in his new life.
It's easy to miss this when reading the series in Australia in the 21st century, and I was mostly oblivious to it, but the lifestyles of many in Nick's circle were fairly unusual at the time the novels are set, and the time most were written. I probably wouldn't have even noticed, if not for the blurbs of some of the old paperbacks in which I read the series talking about Nick's 'world of seedy-smart Bohemianism', to quote from the 1968 Penguin edition of The Valley of Bones. Those seedy-smart characters now seem fairly ordinary and respectable. We are their heirs.
Men at Arms
Inevitably The Valley of Bones shares some common ground with [book:Men at Arms|264121], the first novel in [author:Evelyn Waugh|11315]'s war trilogy. Both are about men similar to the author, considered, even in time of war, to be a little too old to join the army, signing up, training to be officers, and dealing with eccentric superiors.
I enjoyed Waugh's book more, but its pleasures--the humour, the narrative drive, the eccentric characters--are the very things that make it seem less strictly real than The Valley of Bones seems. (I don't know enough about Waugh's war to know if the more memorable moments of Men at Arms, especially those concerning the thunderbox, really happened.) Powell's book also has its moments of hilarity, drawn, as far as I know, from life, like the surprise inspection by General Liddament.
When I read Powell's memoirs later this year I'll be interested to see if he mentions feeling any unease about treading ground that had already been trodden very well in a similar memoir/novel.
I was reminded also of the first volume of [author:Spike Milligan|114722]'s memoirs, [book:Adolf Hitler: My Part in His Downfall|330919], also about Army basic training early in the war, but from the perspective of 'other ranks' rather than officers. I suppose there must be many similar books.
On Holiday
What makes this a particularly Povian (if that's the word?) war novel is the holiday sequence, where Nick briefly returns to his old life and meets again some of the people he and we have been missing. On the train back to London he discusses 19th century French literature with a fellow officer he had met briefly at a party in the early 1920s, and you feel you're back in the main stream of A Dance to the Music of Time.
Widmerpool
But where is Widmerpool while all this is going on? Far from Nick's thoughts, which helps to make the brilliant last page so devastating.
bookpossum's review against another edition
4.0
This sequence of novels continues to delight. This time, Nick is dealing with the tedium and inefficiencies of being in the army in the early days of the war, nowhere near any active service. The problem of not knowing what a codeword means is wonderfully illustrated when Nick is on phone-answering duty in the Company Office.
"It was Maelgwyn-Jones, Adjutant of our Battalion.
'Fishcake,' he said."
...
After repeats of this:
"'Fishcake, I tell you ...'
I know Leather and Toadstool ...'
'Fishcake has taken the place of Leather - and Bathwater of Toadstool. What the hell are you dreaming about?'"
Nick goes off to see Gwatkin, the captain:
"'But we were not to get Fishcake until we had been signalled Buttonhook.'
'I've never heard of Buttonhook either - or Bathwater. All I know are Leather and Toadstool.'"
Wonderful stuff.
"It was Maelgwyn-Jones, Adjutant of our Battalion.
'Fishcake,' he said."
...
After repeats of this:
"'Fishcake, I tell you ...'
I know Leather and Toadstool ...'
'Fishcake has taken the place of Leather - and Bathwater of Toadstool. What the hell are you dreaming about?'"
Nick goes off to see Gwatkin, the captain:
"'But we were not to get Fishcake until we had been signalled Buttonhook.'
'I've never heard of Buttonhook either - or Bathwater. All I know are Leather and Toadstool.'"
Wonderful stuff.
eliser217's review against another edition
2.0
Not my favorite in the series. Things definitely take a sharp turn in this novel when Jenkins starts military service. There isn't as much interaction with the characters who have been in the series since the beginning, so you are learning about all new people. It definitely gives a different view of things.
nocto's review
4.0
This series has really hit its stride; the gradual change in the characters over the years is what really matters here not the plot, of which there isn't much. This book sees Nick in his mid-thirties(ish), I guess; I find it a bit alarming that this is the start of the “autumn“ of his life! I was concerned that the military nature of this, as Nick gets into his role for the Second World War, would take us back to the all male cast that annoyed me in the first book, but I ended up fairly satisfied, even though the cast is pretty much all male. The characters are more varied & interesting now.
neiljung78's review against another edition
funny
reflective
4.0
I enjoyed this. Either I’m just getting used to it or the way stuff gives it a focus or poignancy that appeals to me.
omnibozo22's review against another edition
3.0
Nick Jenkins endures military training while awaiting D-Day, though he doesn't know it. As a dabbler on the fringes of London society, Nick accumulated lots of friends, family and acquaintances. Many of them keep popping up, mostly to bedevil him as he experiences the massive stupidities of military life. As with watching M*A*S*H, these just are funny for me. Too close to the truth. I'm already well into the next in the series, The Soldier's Art. Characters lifted for the HP series keep popping up. Dobby is in Bones.
giddypony's review against another edition
5.0
Perfection. Through the intertwined characters you get a sense of war and t h e randomness of it.