This book is CRACKERS.
Like, I wasn't sure early on if I was going to finish it because it just seemed so peculiar. I did a lot of skimming. But there was enough humor to keep me going. The problem for me was that the humor was alternated with some passages of what felt like pretty heavy prose, and the tone felt very uneven.
I give you a sample of the hilarity, because when it was funny, it was very, very funny:

"Is that Dr. Warner?" cried Rosamund, bounding forward in a burst of memory, amusement, and distress. "Oh, I'm so sorry! Oh, do tell him it's all right!"
"Let's take hands and tell him," said Michael Moon. For indeed, while they were talking, another hansom cab had dashed up behind the one already waiting, and Dr. Herbert Warner, leaving a companion in the cab, had carefully deposited himself on the pavement. Now, when you are an eminent physician and are wired for by an heiress to come to a case of dangerous mania, and when, as you come in through the garden to the house, the heiress and her landlady and two of the gentlemen boarders join hands and dance round you in a ring, calling out, "It's all right! it's all right!" you are apt to be flustered and even displeased.

That mental picture kept me laughing for pages.

The main idea is that a boarding house full of dull people receives an unexpected visit from one Mr. Smith, a large man with grasshopper-like abilities who appears over the wall one day. He promptly throws everything into disarray and does all the things that no one's thought of doing since they were kids. But then there's an intended elopement, a run-in with the local doctor and criminal specialist, and a sudden distrust of Mr. Smith, who appears to have a very questionable record of violence and philandering.

The conclusion of the matter is... all kinds of batty, bonkers bananas.
But after I finished it, I keep revising my opinion a little and thinking, "You know, I think I liked it." Probably worth a reread now that I know what in the name of sanity it all means!
But don't read the Goodreads description. It spoils it all totally. It was more interesting to just come upon the answer by degrees.
UPDATE: I've just edited the Goodreads description to take out the spoilers, but it might take a while to show up.

I keep thinking I need to read more Chesterton, and especially his fiction. And then I read a book like this and I think, “I’m not smart enough to read Chesterton.” The premise behind this book is one that seems normal, and maybe even dull, on the surface. Carried out through the novel, though, it was for me first confusing and then intriguing.

What if we didn’t live as though we were happy? What if we were really happy? What if every day was new and the joy in life was not in finding the new but in appreciating the mundane as though it were new and novel and wonderful?

The thing I loved most about this book was that it could be read just for entertainment, but the enjoyment didn’t stop there. It wasn’t easy reading, necessarily, but it wasn’t imposing, either. I liked it. A lot. And, however unsmart I may be, I will keep trundling through Chesterton here and there. It’s worth it for the delight factor.

“I won’t deny,” he said, “that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.” (92)

This was the first book by Chesterton that I have read. I thoroughly enjoyed this witty story of life, love, and learning to covet ones own possessions as given by God.

Title: Manalive

Author: GK Chesterton [You didn't think I could leave him out of this, did you?]

Published: 1912

Year I read it: 2011

One sentence summary: The odd and enthusiastic Innocent Smith arrives at a London boarding house full of disillusioned modernists; but after the stir he causes in the cause to improve his fellow tenants, he is arrested and charged with burglary, polygamy, and attempted murder, turning the boarding house into the trial of Innocent.

Interesting fact: Chesterton was friends and philosophical adversaries with George Bernard Shaw, author of Pygmalion.

Three reasons to read it:

Chesterton is all about paradox - and this book is full of them! I won't spoil the ending, but let's just say that Innocent is himself a paradox.
If you need a reminder of the delight of the little things, this would be a great book to read. There are so many moments we moderns/post-moderns take for granted that the author recognizes and celebrates.
This novel is witty and funny and perfectly Chesterton. [Don't tell anyone, but I actually preferred this to Man Who Was Thursday]



One reason you maybe shouldn't:

It is very obviously and intentionally a parable.


Great quotes:

“I don't deny," he said, "that there should be priests to remind men that they will one day die. I only say that at certain strange epochs it is necessary to have another kind of priests, called poets, actually to remind men that they are not dead yet.”

“This man's spiritual power has been precisely this, that he has distinguished between custom and creed. He has broken the conventions, but he has kept the commandments.”

“Marriage is a duel to the death which no man of honour should decline.”

“I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I shall not use it to kill him–only to bring him to life.”



Part of my series "31 Days of Books" over at Wait and Hope

Chesterton IS Innocent Smith. Even after his death he's firing life and laughter into people who've forgotten what it looks like. He's a breath of fresh air in a post-post-modern world. The chapter where Smith threatens his university professor into admitting his preference for life over death will stick with me - it's such a perfect summary of how easily our intellectual rhetoric can deceive us, and how obvious the truth becomes when the lie is backed up against the wall.

I am a big fan of GK Chesterton, so it pains me to give him such a low rating on one of his novels. But this novel just didn't work as far as I was concerned. It was the story of a naif, a college professor named Innocent Smith who was accused of a murder when visiting a household of people who do not really appreciate his personality. The first half of the story is the bickering between Smith and the various characters who inhabit the house where the story takes place. The second half of the story is a "Law & Order" style legal proceeding in which Smith makes his case for innocence. In some ways this is a crime novel, but it's not really that. There's plenty of Chesterton style humor in the story, and of course Chesterton's own style of social criticism. But my experience here is that it's hard to follow this story, and you lose attention quickly. While a great lover of Chesterton may appreciate "Manalive", most others would not. Therefore, I render it a verdict of only 3 stars....

Epically boring. It started off good, but then got really confusing toward the end, and I couldn't understand what was happening. It took me a week to read.