I am in what I assume is the minority of readers who come to this classic by way of the Gambia. I always like to read a book set in the country I’m visiting, and so I read JL Carr’s A SEASON IN SINJI when on holiday there. I enjoyed it, so thought I would read this one, which is by far his more famous work.
It shares a lot of similarities with SINJI, involving war veterans, reflections on niche aspects of English culture, and a ragingly homosexual undertone throughout. Just like the other one, it is about two men who find they have a lot in common but somehow are mysteriously separated by the end which is apparently tragic despite them being so extremely straight.
That’s pretty much it: two guys become friends over the course of a month and then it ends.
I did enjoy the way in which they met – as veterans they recognized each other. One has a facial tic, and almost as soon as they meet the other says:
“Oh come on,” he said. “I don’t need to be told you didn’t catch that twitch on the Great Eastern Railway, so we may as well start straight away swapping stories about the same bloody awful place.”
I would be interested to know the extent to which that really is the experience of verterans; that they find each other easy to spot. Much of the book is about church restoration, which is more interesting than it sounds. I also therefore enjoyed learning about religious architecture; here for example is an offhand comment about a church:
It was an off-the-peg job: evidently there had been no medieval wool boom in these parts. This had been starveling country, every stone an extortion.
How interesting! Who knew there was a medieval wool boom and that you could see it in churches.
Overall, though, I’m not sure why this is such a classic. I found it a bit plotless and a little dull.