Off the market!

Very relieved to be able to use a blog title that I came up with several weeks ago (can you tell?). I finished A Buyer's Market last night as the bus pulled up at my stop. The last hundred pages or so flew by actually, and I think I'm now getting to grips with the interconnected style of the books, which may have hampered my progress through BM initially.

The change of tone did for me at first - I miss the jolly japery of A Question of Upbringing, but that's right I think - don't we all miss our college days? I know I do, even though to some extent I still have them. The transition from volume 2 to 3 is less dramatic and I suspect we'll now see more gradual progressions through the Dance after a frantic opening movement.

Overall, this is definitely Jenkins' Budding Grove period, and the book is obviously littered with rites of passage - a wedding, an engagement, a funeral, even, we presume, Jenkins losing his virginity in a splendidly bathetic moment. We're also treated to his overly-earnest musings on love and which women might be suitable for/worthy of him, and did I detect a hint of jealousy when it's revealed that Widmerpool has got his end away before him? This theme, by the way, is picked up almost immediately in The Acceptance World, and I suspect, will continue at least until the end of the "spring movement".

The other comment I have is to semi-seriously (sorry!) note the Proust influence beginning to creep in. Not just the musings on time or the interminable salon scenes, but Jenkins pondering art and a career as a writer, the strange way in which people drop in and out of each other's lives (these people really need Facebook), and the emergence of Widmerpool as a Charlus-esque comic character. Perhaps Stringham is to become our Saint-Loup.

Finally, I had a good discussion about Powell (pronounced Pole apparently), with a Fellow of Kings a week or so ago. He read the books as they appeared, which must have been great fun to do, if a little confusing each time when trying to remember all of the characters after a break of a year. He concurs, by the way, with Mme Garrood that the middle volumes are a joy, but the final one a bit of a let down. I told him I'd get back to him with my thoughts next August.