Super quick post tonight, because it’s late. In fact, let’s do it in bullet points.
- I read To Let by John Galsworthy, originally published in 1921
- (In fact, I listened to the audiobook – which was good, though it kept repeating lines of dialogue that I assume were meant to be edited out)
- It’s the third of the Forsyte Saga
- The first was published in 1906, but then Galsworthy went on a bit of a role – with one in 1920 and another in 1921
- I read the first one a few years ago, for Tea or Books?, and then the middle one towards the end of last year
- To Let really relies on you remembering what happened in book 1 – the doomed, cruel marriage of Irene and Soames
- To Let is chiefly concerned with the next generation – particularly the love that blooms between Irene’s son and Soames’s daughter from their subsequent marriages
- (But these two – Fleur and Jon – don’t know the other exists. They don’t even know that their parents used to be married.)
- Fleur has a much more eligible, but profoundly dull, suitor
- It’s a classic Romeo and Juliet sort of pairing, but if Romeo and Juliet don’t know why they aren’t a perfect match in the eyes of their families
- Galsworthy is just very good, isn’t he? There’s a reason he was such a staple in the Edwardian era
- It became fashionable to despise him in the mid-century, particularly if you were someone like George Orwell (who described bad books as ‘Galsworthy-and-water’)
- But he really gets families, regrets, secrets, sacrifice, stubborness
- He even makes reading about young, selfish people falling love bearable, and that’s impressive in my eyes
- To Let has such a brilliant final line – you *almost* feel sorry for a character you’ve spent three books loathing
- I am amazed that the three books of the first trilogy of the Forsyte Saga are so distinct, and each cover a distinct and intense theme, and yet work together masterfully as a series. Bravo, John.
- Will I ever read the (gulp) six books in the Forsyte Chronicles? Does anyone? Perhaps in the next six decades.
