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Title details for The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford - Wait list

The Good Soldier

by Ford Madox Ford
Gildart Jackson
Audiobook (Includes supplementary content)
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Handsome, wealthy, and a veteran of service in India, Captain Edward Ashburnham appears to be the ideal "good soldier" and the embodiment of English upper-class virtues. But for his creator, Ford Madox Ford, he also represents the corruption at society's core. Beneath Ashburnham's charming, polished exterior lurks a soul well-versed in the arts of deception, hypocrisy, and betrayal. Throughout the nine years of his friendship with an equally privileged American, John Dowell, Ashburnham has been having an affair with Dowell's wife, Florence. Unlike Dowell, Ashburnham's own wife, Leonora, is well aware of it.


When The Good Soldier was first published in 1915, its pitiless portrait of an amoral society dedicated to its own pleasure and convinced of its own superiority outraged many readers. Stylistically daring, The Good Soldier is narrated, unreliably, by Dowell, through whom Ford provides a level of bitter irony. Dowell's disjointed, stumbling storytelling not only subverts linear temporality to satisfying effect, it also reflects his struggle to accept a world without honor, order, or permanence. Called the best French novel in the English language, The Good Soldier is both tragic and darkly comic, and it established Ford as an important contributor to the development of literary modernism.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 30, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400199471
      • File size: 207590 KB
      • Duration: 07:12:28

  • Languages

    • English

  • Levels

    • Lexile® Measure: 1040
    • Text Difficulty: 6-8

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      This is the (fictional) memoir of an ass. John Dowell's wife, Florence, faked a heart ailment so that she could remain at a German spa where, under John's very nose, she conducted a nine-year affair with John's pal, Captain Edward Ashburton. At last, Florence downed a lethal poison, and Edward cut his own throat, leaving John to stew perplexedly over what he calls "the saddest story I have ever heard." Published in 1915, this intricately woven classic has garnered widespread critical acclaim. Versatile narrator Kerry Shale well understands its tone, atmosphere, and subtext, as well as the character and crisis of its narrator/antihero. Yet he often seems to rush, thereby weakening important moments. He uses only a small vocal range, which, together with his pace, makes some passages monotonous. Y.R. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

Levels

  • Lexile® Measure:1040
  • Text Difficulty:6-8

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