The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West
The Return of the Soldier, by Rebecca West
He interrupted me with a sneer that we parsons are inveterately eighteenth century and have our minds perpetually inflamed by visions of squires’ sons seducing country wenches, and declared that he meant to marry this Margaret Allington. “Oh indeed,” I said. “And may I ask what Kitty says to this arrangement?” “Who the devil is Kitty?” he asked blankly. “Kitty is your wife,” I said quietly but firmly. He sat up and exclaimed, “I haven’t got a wife! Has some woman been turning up with a cock-and-bull story of being my wife? Because it’s the damnedest lie!”
“I determined to settle the matter by sharp common sense handling. “Chris”, I said, “You have evidently lost your memory. You were married to Kitty Ellis at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on the third, or it may have been the fourth”-you know my wretched memory for dates-“of February in 1906.” He turned very pale and asked what year this was. “1916”, I said to him. He fell back in a fainting condition.
Timothy Findley, whose depressing WWI novel I also read this month, was the wet blanket warmup calculated to cause me to hate this book, and he failed even in that. Oh no, I said, not yet another WWI broken soldier book.. I’d had enough of those, and was heartened only by the brevity (90 pages) of West’s book. I shouldn’t have worried. West manages to make you care more for the three main characters and their friend the narrator in 90 pages than many authors do in a full length novel.
Yes, a soldier “returns” from the trenches having lost something, and yes, there are passages describing the endless mud and blood and gas and the stench of rotting corpses, but there’s much less of it than you’d think from the title. The real conflict is not about guns or lost youth or existential angst so much as it is a tragic love triangle, in which the soldier, who long ago chose one path over another, has lost his memory and gone back to the crossroads and chosen differently, unaware of having already gone down the other path.
I had a hard time deciding whether west rehashed the tired old Madonna/whore dichotomy or turned it on its head. Of the two female love interests, the pretty, wealthy one is a cruel ice queen on the inside, while the “filthy scrubwoman” has a heart of gold. Does the man who made the wrong choice once upon a time now have a chance to start over? Does he face the “choice of Hercules” (pleasure vs. duty), and which is the right choice? Rebecca West doesn’t provide the answers, but she asks the most disturbing questions. High recommendations.
He interrupted me with a sneer that we parsons are inveterately eighteenth century and have our minds perpetually inflamed by visions of squires’ sons seducing country wenches, and declared that he meant to marry this Margaret Allington. “Oh indeed,” I said. “And may I ask what Kitty says to this arrangement?” “Who the devil is Kitty?” he asked blankly. “Kitty is your wife,” I said quietly but firmly. He sat up and exclaimed, “I haven’t got a wife! Has some woman been turning up with a cock-and-bull story of being my wife? Because it’s the damnedest lie!”
“I determined to settle the matter by sharp common sense handling. “Chris”, I said, “You have evidently lost your memory. You were married to Kitty Ellis at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on the third, or it may have been the fourth”-you know my wretched memory for dates-“of February in 1906.” He turned very pale and asked what year this was. “1916”, I said to him. He fell back in a fainting condition.
Timothy Findley, whose depressing WWI novel I also read this month, was the wet blanket warmup calculated to cause me to hate this book, and he failed even in that. Oh no, I said, not yet another WWI broken soldier book.. I’d had enough of those, and was heartened only by the brevity (90 pages) of West’s book. I shouldn’t have worried. West manages to make you care more for the three main characters and their friend the narrator in 90 pages than many authors do in a full length novel.
Yes, a soldier “returns” from the trenches having lost something, and yes, there are passages describing the endless mud and blood and gas and the stench of rotting corpses, but there’s much less of it than you’d think from the title. The real conflict is not about guns or lost youth or existential angst so much as it is a tragic love triangle, in which the soldier, who long ago chose one path over another, has lost his memory and gone back to the crossroads and chosen differently, unaware of having already gone down the other path.
I had a hard time deciding whether west rehashed the tired old Madonna/whore dichotomy or turned it on its head. Of the two female love interests, the pretty, wealthy one is a cruel ice queen on the inside, while the “filthy scrubwoman” has a heart of gold. Does the man who made the wrong choice once upon a time now have a chance to start over? Does he face the “choice of Hercules” (pleasure vs. duty), and which is the right choice? Rebecca West doesn’t provide the answers, but she asks the most disturbing questions. High recommendations.