Sign-In
Cart
The Good Soldier: Original and Unabridged
Paperback
Classic FictionGeneral Fiction
ISBN13: 9781499764246
Publisher: Createspace
Published: Sep 18 2014
Pages: 162
Weight: 0.54
Height: 0.37 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The Good Soldier by English novelist Ford Madox Ford, is set just before World War I and chronicles the tragedy of Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, and his own seemingly perfect marriage and that of two American friends. The novel was loosely based on two incidents of adultery and on Ford's messy personal life.
The story is narrated by the character John Dowell, half of one of the couples whose dissolving relationships form the subject of the novel. Dowell tells the stories of those dissolutions as well as the deaths of three characters and the madness of a fourth, in a rambling, non-chronological fashion that leaves gaps for the reader to fill. This literary technique forms part of Ford's pioneering view of literary impressionism. Ford employs the device of the unreliable narrator to great effect as the main character gradually reveals a version of events that is quite different from what the introduction leads the reader to believe.
The novel's original title was The Saddest Story, but after the onset of World War I, the publishers asked Ford for a new title. Ford suggested (sarcastically) The Good Soldier, and the name stuck.
The novel opens with the famous line, This is the saddest story I have ever heard. Dowell explains that for nine years he, his wife Florence and their friends Captain Edward Ashburnham (the good soldier of the book's title) and his wife Leonora had an ostensibly normal friendship while Edward and Florence sought treatment for their heart ailments at a spa in Nauheim, Germany.
As it turns out, nothing in the relationships or in the characters is as it first seems. Florence's heart ailment is a fiction she perpetrated on John to force them to stay in Europe so that she could continue her affair with an American thug named Jimmy. Edward and Leonora have a loveless, imbalanced marriage broken by his constant infidelities (both of body and heart) and Leonora's attempts to control Edward's affairs (both financial and romantic). Dowell is a fool and is coming to realize how much of a fool he is, as Florence and Edward had an affair under his nose for nine years without John knowing until Florence was dead.
Also in
Classic Fiction
James Fenimore Cooper: The Leatherstocking Tales Vol. 1 (Loa #26): The Pioneers / The Last of the Mohicans / The Prairie
Cooper, James Fenimore
Hardcover
Four Comedies: The Taming of the Shrew, a Midsummer Night's Dream, the Merchant of Venice, Twelfth Night
Shakespeare, William
Paperback
Before Gatsby: The First Twenty-Six Stories
Bruccoli, Matthew J.
Baughman, Judith
Fitzgerald, F. Scott
Paperback
The Princess Bride Deluxe Limited Edition: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
Goldman, William
Paperback
The Fellowship of the Ring: Being the First Part of the Lord of the Rings
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Paperback
The Lord of the Rings Illustrated by the Author: Illustrated by J.R.R. Tolkien
Tolkien, J. R. R.
Hardcover
The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure
Goldman, William
Hardcover
The Pilgrim's Progress: A Readable Modern-Day Version of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (Revised and easy-to-read)
Bunyan, John
Vermilye, Alan
Paperback
Frankenstein, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
Shelley, Mary
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Stoker, Bram
Paperback