The Good Soldier

Two nice young couples
rich, impeccable manners
prone to heart trouble.

The ultimate “I wish I liked it” book for me. This doesn't usually happen, most books I read, you'd notice from my average score on my profile, I'm able to find enjoyment in because of their better qualities, ignoring the qualities I don't love from them. And this book certainly has better qualities. The prose feels like poetry at times. It's extremely thought provoking. The meandering and constant tangents make sense in terms of what the book is saying. For these reasons I rated it above my personal enjoyment, but it just didn't land for me.

The constant meandering makes it hard to follow. At the beginning of the novel, the narrator sets your expectations, explaining that he's going to tell the story as if he's explaining it to a friend by the fire in his house. When you tell a long story to a friend like this, you often go on tangents and talk about other related things, give minor stories about certain people in your story; it makes sense. It also makes sense in terms of it being an unreliable narrator. If you subscribe to this interpretation, the narrator is constantly trying to control your perception of the people in his story by telling you different things about them. But at times I felt it was too much to follow, as sometimes the tangents aren't mini stories, they're just statements; most of the time these statements or mini explanations are where the prose shines through, the narrator giving a beautiful description of something. Perhaps as someone with ADHD, the distractions were too much for me, and they wouldn't be for someone else, but I could never get past it. I really wish I liked this book

Reading this for the first time in 2019, what to say?

I don't mind the dryness. I don't have a problem with the story telling in a rambling recall. However, the inherent gender, social, religious and racial bigotry is difficult to stomach.

Really loved reading this, especially how well Ford pulls off the unreliable narrator in so few pages. I already feel like I need to read it again.