A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement

A Masterpiece on All Counts

A Dance to the Music of Time, inspired by the painting of the same name by Nicolas Poussin, was rated by Time magazine as one of the 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005. Written by the English novelist Anthony Powell, who took almost 25 years to create the 12-volume set, provides a highly-literate and highly-amusing look into the English upper-middle class between the 1920s and the 1970s. The book covers politics, class-consciousness, society, culture, love, social graces, manners, education, power, money, snobbery, humour, and more.

Although daunting in terms of length, the absolutely brilliant narration by the talented Simon Vance rewards the reader over thousands of pages, hundreds of characters, and twelve installments of gorgeous prose. This is a not-to-be-missed collection of novels for any serious reader of English literature.

16 of 16 people found this review helpful

Unappreciated Gem

I won't belabor the point, earlier positive reviewers are right, this is an excellent production of an overlooked gem. It is full of lovely prose and a fascinating re-creation of a bygone era. The interview which accompanies the First Movement, which you should read first, makes an apt comparison to Proust, while pointing out that Powell's acute observations of character focus much less on the narrator and more on the other characters. There is little navel gazing here, and you come to appreciate the narrator "Jenkins" and his modesty which enables him to cast more light on other characters.

Readers of contemporary novels may struggle with the minimal plot of this book... very little happens during the first six hours of narration! But hang in there as Powell populates his world with memorable characters and transports you to another place and time.

Simon Vance does an excellent job.

13 of 13 people found this review helpful

Masterpiece

Powell's Music of Time books are a masterpiece of English literature. Massive in scope but ironically very narrow in its analysis of people, place and time, Powell devoted his life to these novels. His prose are rich, lyrical and incredibly smart. Simon Vance is excellent as always.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

A stately masterpiece. Not for the impatient.

If you could sum up A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement in three words, what would they be?

Profound, multi-layered.

What did you like best about this story?

The brilliantly sharp humour, and the ever deepening insights of both protagonist and indeed reader as the narrative unfolds. A marvellous portrait of an era long gone. To be compared with Brideshead Revisited.

What about Simon Vance’s performance did you like?

The different voices and the sense of wistfulness that Powell intended.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No! Certainly not.

Any additional comments?

I don't blame those people who complained they were bored. It is not for everyone. This is a cerebral slow burner of a tale spread over 12 novels and about 40 years. It's not for those who like a rollicking, tumultuous incident-packed plot. It just aint that sort of work.

For those with time, patience, and an interest in English social history, this is a glorious and profound experience.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Panorama

I suspect real editors will blanche as I compare this to the Ladies #1 Detective Agency. However, as in the L#1DA, the plot is secondary to the character development. In fact there is no plot. You simply get a picture of life in England during a particular period. It is indeed slow listening and that is the point. Before listening, download the Exclusive Interview with James Atlas and Charles McGrath on Anthony Powell. It will set the stage. Anyone hooked on the period pieces of the BBC or PBS should enjoy this book.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

It is no good being a beauty alone...

***** "For reasons not always at the time explicable, there are specific occasions when events begin suddenly to take on a significance previously unsuspected; so that, before we really know where we are, life seems to have begun in earnest at last, and we, ourselves, scarcely aware that any change has taken place, are careering uncontrollably down the slippery avenues of eternity."
-- Anthony Powell, A Buyer's Market

BOOK ONE (A Question of Upbringing): the first of Powell's monster 12-book 'A Dance to the Music of Time' deals primarily with Nick and his fellow students during their last year in public school and first couple years either "up" at University or "down" in the city working. The four major players in the first book: Nicholas Jenkins (the narrator), Charles Stringham, Peter Templer, and Kenneth Widmerpool. These characters all show up again in Book 2. Along with various other characters (Nick's uncle, Jean Templer, Mark Members, JG Quiggin, Bill Truscott, etc.).

BOOK TWO ('A Buyer's Market'): focuses on Nick and some new characters, and many of the old, as they maneuver through the social dinners, dances and teas that seem designed to both stratify society AND bring together these young people together to get married; to find adequate husbands for daughters and satisfy the social or monetary need of the men who are just starting to 'make something' of their lives.

Events seem to guide the paths of these people in and out of each others lives. Probably the most painful to watch is Widmerpool, who seems always to exist in a socially difficult place and constantly dealing with sugary embarrassments.

I love how art is taking on a larger presence in his novels. Not a surprising fact given that the book itself is named after a painting with the same name by Nicolas Poussin. But, internal to the book, it makes sense given that Edgar Bosworth Deacon (an artist) plays a part and that Nick is now working in a publishing house devoted to art books.

There are parts of this novel that, obviously, bring to mind Marcel Proust, but a lot of the first two novels, at least, seem substantively more related to both Evelyn Waugh and F. Scott Fitzgerald. I wonder if the either the character of Members/Quiggin is, in fact, E. Waugh. And if so, who the other writer "is".

***** "Emotional crises always promote the urgent need for executive action, so that the times when we most hope to be free from the practical administration of life are always those when the need to cope with the concrete world is more than ever necessary"
-- Anthony Powell, The Acceptance World

BOOK THREE ('The Acceptance World'): There is something amazing about Powell's attempt to gather the passage of time, the progression of life, the dynamic of relationships over 12 novels. When I read Proust and as I read Powell and even Knausgaard, I am always a bit shocked by the boldness of folding together six (Knausgaard), seven (Proust), or twelve novels into a narrative that actually works.

Reading Powell reminds me of reading an Evelyn Waugh that is stretched out over decades, or reading Proust where instead of the narrator focusing in, the narrator is actually ignoring the inner-life and capturing the world and the people around him. It is kind of dizzying if you step back and think about it. It is like reading Downton Abbey serialized from the 30s into the 60s with more characters, more art, and a bit more London and bit less Abbey.

So, I'm done with A Dance to the Music of Time: First Movement and done with Spring. Bring on Summer and I'm guessing World War 2.

18 of 24 people found this review helpful

simon vance - gifted narrator.

Superb reading of great book.So many characters, so many voices , how does Simon Vance do it?

7 of 9 people found this review helpful

An Innocent Time

If you’ve listened to books by Anthony Powell before, how does this one compare?

I made it through all four movements of A Dance to the Music of Time -- that's 12 separate novels -- and I think this sits with the third movement as the most appealing. The early parts of this may be the strongest of the entire cycle, but they are also the most conventional. Powell writes with real grace and patience, and he introduces the first of his more than several dozen characters. Still, the star of all the novels is the voice, and it's at its most pure here at the start.

Bottom line, you can read this movement without going on to the others, but you really can't do the reverse.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

An immersion in English life between the wars

This understated book is the first of a series that grew on me and became enthralling. Written in form of an autobiography, it tells the life of an author from his boyhood after the first world war through his youth in school and at Oxford, his military service during the second world war, and afterward through his old age in perhaps the late 60s. The story is an assemblage of small moments in his relationships, in the military and otherwise mainly with artists, musicians and authors. One character recurs throughout, acting as a sort of archetypal figure of trage-comedy.

Some may find the pace too slow; there is little action, but give the books a chance. I found myself feeling as if I was there, too, seeing, hearing, feeling, even smelling, life as it was in England then. Taken as a whole, it has a mythic force. I found it haunting and well as amusing. Simon Vance achieves a tour de force of portraying widely diverse characters completely convincingly, enabling me to become immersed in the story.

I recommend listening to rather than reading these, at first, because the various accents of the characters are key to the story. Being unfamiliar with British class society, and their various accents, I would have lost a great deal if I had started with the books.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Was tough to take! but brilliantly written.

I found this "First Movement" at times to be so snobbish that I cringed at being British ! However the quality of writing and descriptive gift that Anthony Powell is well worth pursuing and although disappointing even slightly boring, as a story,the autobiographical quality of the book really is a fascinating "painting" of life between the First and Second World Wars, in Britain. If one wants to get lost in someone else's life and time which is not too far away from almost memorable glimpses of Old England with the emphasis on entertaining listening, then this is a book, the first of four movements which is worth the literary effort, and will certainly will not fail to be enjoyed.

2 of 3 people found this review helpful