This is a wonderful example of Modernism, and I'm glad that this was assigned in my Conrad course (as Conrad and Ford worked together on a few pieces and were friends). As promised with most modernist literature, we have a wonderful unreliable narrator that keeps weaving around the story who, clearly, doesn't know half of the stuff that he talks about. That makes it uniquely interesting to me. But of course, there is also a lot of outside-of-the-marriage courtship going on that was fun to try and unravel.

But the real fierceness of desire, the real heat of a passion long continued and withering up the soul of a man is the craving for identity with the woman that he loves. He desires to see with the same eyes, to touch with the same sense of touch, to hear with the same ears, to lose his identity, to be enveloped, to be supported. For, whatever may be said of the relation of the sexes, there is no man who loves a woman that does not desire to come to her for the renewal of his courage, for the cutting asunder of his difficulties. And that will be the mainspring of his desire for her. We are all so afraid, we are all so alone, we all so need from the outside the assurance of our own worthiness to exist.

There are some wonderful moments where our narrator, John Dowell, compares America to Britain (Dowell is an American, but the Ashburnhams are British. There are also some nice snipes at the Catholics. And of course, Dowell decides that he gets to talk about women, womanhood, and femininity (even though he knows, clearly, nothing about anything). All of this makes the read fun, but keep in mind there is a lot of text to trudge through. If you like stories that come to you chronologically, this story isn't going to appeal to you. However, I think it is one of the best Modernist pieces that I have read in a long, long time.

When bored rich people philander.... Some lovely passages but not enough to hold my interest for long. The mark of a classic is that is relevant many years after publication and this one missed the mark.

A structurally fascinating book, especially for it's time, but hard to enjoy the actual story.

Quick reread for book club. I remembered almost nothing of the story and found it surprising how ‘soapy’ it felt to me. In one sense, I enjoyed it because it was easy, ‘dishy’ retelling of the marriages of the Dowells and Ashburnhams and specifically their affairs. On the other hand, the attitude towards women was consistently horrible; again and again, Edward’s and John’s troubles are blamed on the women in their life, even when they are clearly culpable too. It got old. And the characterization of poor Nancy was everything I hate about white male writers: beautiful, naive, virginial, and mad. Booooo. My opinion of the book actually went down due to this reread.

Interesting tale of our duality and feelings.

Interesting to read something written in the early 1900s. A story about couples, but not quite in the league of Stegner's Crossing to Safety.

edward is a deeply evil man.