Kinder, gentler

Just polished off TKO and will attempt to post without spoilers. Broadly speaking I'm enjoying things a lot more, partly I'm sure it's having an unbroken run at the books so I do actually remember the vague outline of what's going on and who had done what to whom.

I'm something of a fan of Vol. 6, the end of chapter one where Nicholas casually recites a litany of the dead fathers of the neighbourhood was the first time I've felt an emotional engagement with any of the books. I thought the build-up to that moment entirely justified and the foreshadowing of Nick's own war portentous but not overdone.

I'm even coming around to the random-meeting-up-ness of it all, justifying it in my own mind by thinking that actually his social circle isn't huge and at least he's now related to a fair number of the people he's talking about.

His marriage itself, or at least the way it is presented, I still find hugely problematic, although The Kindly Ones as a title probably offers as bald a clue as you'll get as to Nick/Powell's attitude towards women.

Having said that I have warmed to Nicholas, what I had missed before was his self-deprecation and the way his elder self looks back on his younger self's behaviour with a kind of horror. I excavated some undergraduate essays a few months ago and had a similar feeling (I wonder, incidentally, how long it will take to garner the same shudder of shame from these posts). Nick may be bland but he is a fairly decent chap, even feeling a pang of guilt for not rushing to the defence of Widmerpool of all people when discussing him with Duport.

Widmerpool and Donners dominate the book even when they're not around very much, and I'm very much enjoying the innuendo about what Donners' peccadilloes may or may not be. Both he and Widders seem pretty scary, especially in the case of Widmerpool where you've had the added benefit of seeing him at several intermediate stages. As a reader you know more about him, really, than even Nick. Sir Magnus on the other hand, remains mysterious but no less malevolently interesting.

So if I'm right, this puts me more in the Andrew camp than the Will camp with regard to TKO. Roll on Autumn...