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.

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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.

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For the patient

Anthony Powell's epic dance through 20th century middle-class Britain is perfect audiobook fodder - a single first person, continuous narrative without time shifting, like David Copperfield. Although it is framed as a recollection or memoir Powell keeps the timeline clean, so to speak, with virtually no asides from the "present day" on the significance of the events related, or foreshadowing of how things turned out later on. It is minimalist in terms of plot development and very little of significance happens but in 19th century style you get lengthy ruminations on various characters' states of mind from the apparently omniscient narrator - and there are plenty to talk about, some 300 by one count over the twelve novels. The narrator himself is a virtual cipher as a character, really just a kind of personified camera to allow Powell to describe the other characters in close-up, as well as a unifying thread to tie them together. His occasional incursions of emotion fail to convince, but then Britain between the wars was a barely explicable era anyway... a kind of collective post-traumatic stress was abroad, with spiritualism and Marxism its expressions. It would not be to everyone's taste and drags severely at some points, but does manage to achieve real life-likeness - a kind of literary Nashville. As for Simon Vance, he does deal intelligently with the text, making sense of highly complex sentences and sentiments and keeping the ironic humour prominent and the characters engaging (Stringham is the one I wanted to hear more from). One warning - the interview with a critic of the end of the recording is chock-full of spoilers about the rest of the series, so avoid it if you like to be surprised.

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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.

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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.

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The greatest English novel of the 20th century

This multivolume masterwork surpasses Prousts's bloated and frankly overrated "In Search of Lost Time/Remembrance of Things Past" in elegance, profundity, nuance and humor. The Dance to the Music of Time is perhaps too subtle for our crude, simplistic and superficial age.
The narration is excellent.

2 people found this 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.

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English people sitting in drawing rooms talking

A preponderance of novels in the Modern Library Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century seem to fall into the general classification of bored and uninteresting rich people clamoring to be in rooms filled with equally rich and equally boring rich people talking crap about the people who don't happen to be at that particularly drawing room function.

A Dance To The Music of Time generally fits into this category but also happens to be much more extremely ambitious. Originally written as 12 novels loosely autobiographical of Powell's life, the story begins in the years after World War I following the protagonist Nick Jenkins and the young men with whom he attended college through World War II, The Cold War and through the British Hippie movement. Published over 25 years, Powell had originally envisioned a 20-volume aeries but, luckily, was talked down from that foolish notion.

Later publishings grouped the 12 books into four volumes, or Movements, as cleverly coined. This fit in with the theme as the title is indicative of 1636 Poussin painting of the same name featuring four maids believed to represent the four seasons.

The First Movement includes the first three novels, A Question of Upbringing: 1921-1924, A Buyer's Market: 1928-1929, and The Acceptance World: 1931-1933. These are the formative years of the young men as they grasp for their economic and political futures during a particularly tumultuous time with the slumping of markets and the rising of totalitarianism on both the left and right.

As narrator, Nick Jenkins spends very few lines talking about his burgeoning career as a writer but, instead, focuses his descriptions of the lives with whom his own is own is interwoven.

Powell was a contemporary of Evelyn Waugh and George Orwell who were certainly more heralded but much less ambitious. Powell said he wanted to write about the English Middle and rising Upper Class because he knew another war was inevitable and it would upend the traditional British class structure in the offing. His prediction proved true.

Powell writes well on this topic which also happens to be my least favorite. I am debating continuing through the remaining Three Movements (nine novels) but am likely to break it up with something a little less nauseating then self congratulatory pampered Brits.

1 person found this 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.

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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.

3 people found this helpful