A review by newishpuritan
The Levant Trilogy by Olivia Manning

3.0

This is my third reading of the Fortunes of War sextet. On this occasion, I gave up after book number 5, when the tropes established in the opening two books (Guy's neglect and thoughtlessness, Harriet's inability to reconcile herself to this) had become tedious and repetitive. It's still great writing on a sentence-by-sentence level, very much in the realist tradition, but wrt to the relationships between the main characters, diminishing returns set in round about book 3. However justified Harriet's complaints may be, their endless reiteration loses my sympathy as a reader.