Weymouth Sands

This book surprised me. I didn't expect a story so completely absorbed in the emotions and thoughts of its characters. It spends the vast majority of its 579 pages inside the head of one or another of its many characters: the middle-aged Latin teacher, the deranged mystic, the young arrival from Guernsey, the passionate fisherman, and several others. Powys never seems to put a foot wrong in his exploration of their thinking and it doesn't ring a false note. But, like his idol Thomas Hardy, Powys does have the tendency to go off on a tangent and spend paragraphs, even pages, declaiming his mystical views. This is sometimes absorbing, sometimes dull, very occasionally cringe-worthy. But in the end, I read it with an absorption and at a pace I've rarely experienced. Not for all tastes, but a significant accomplishment.