Dance: VB

With The Valley of Bones, we are into the three novels of the Dance sequence set in the second world war.  When I first read Dance, I liked these novels least of all, but my view changed gradually and now they are some of my favourites.  They are in no sense "war novels", for although Nick Jenkins is in the army, he does not see action  - but the unusual surroundings of war, the intensity and strain, and the upsetting of social strata, all create unparalleled opportunities to observe and comment on how and why humans behave.  And, of course, what he is describing is of great interest in its own right, especially in the third "war" novel, The Military Philosophers.

Nick finds himself in Valley of Bones in an out of the way regiment in South Wales, with which he has - almost extinct - family connections.  The soldiers are largely bank employees among the officers and miners among the men.  Apart from widening Powell's social field dramatically, this new gallery offers a host of intriguing characters, some drawn in cameo and some more fully.  The boredom, routine, and petty irritations that make up much of army life, and of war itself, are well to the fore; but there is never any lack of pulse, and occasional leaves back to London draw in the characters and themes we have got to know over recent novels.  And his pungent observation of relations between the sexes is unimpaired; here, Umfraville describes the difficulty of persuading his first wife (there were several!) to marry him:

'There was all that business of "Not tonight, darling, because I don't love you enough", then "Not tonight, darling, because I love you too much" - Christ, I've been through the whole range of it.  The nearest some women get to being faithful to their husbands is making it unpleasant for their lover.  However, that's by the way.  The point is that Dolly married me in the end.'

But he is just as sharp on the subject of getting a bit older: 

" nothing dates people more than the standards from which they have chosen to react",

and on people who pride themselves on being realists, and who can be brusque or even rude on that account:

Kedward dealt in realities.  There is much to be said for persons who traffic in this corn, provided it is always borne in mind that so-called realities present, as a rule, only a small part of the picture.

Finally, Powell - through Nick - remains conscious that books (his books?) really only reach a few.  Having failed to get a literary point across, Nick says:

I was impressed for the ten thousandth time by the fact that literature illustrates life only for those to whom books are a necessity.  Books are unconvertible assets, to be passed on only to those who possess them already.

Comments

[glo]

Nice quotations.
Making the most of my current reading of Pride and Prejudice, I can offer a suggestion by Jane Austen about how to be successful with a woman.
Miss Bingley remembers that Mr Darcy said about Elizabeth Bennet:
'She a beauty! - I should as soon call her mother a wit.' (Volume 3 chapter 3)
So utterly funny! How could Miss bingley not love Mr Darcy? Well, she probably didn't realise how funny it is but it worked! And criticizing a woman and her mother in the same sentence is such a brilliant idea!

I have now reached volume 3 chapter 10: Lydia is married to Wickham and Elizabeth is aware of Mr Darcy's help to make the marriage possible.