Dark Arts

Well, 'The Soldier's Art' isn't a cheery volume, is it? Although I did rather enjoy the last section, with both Widmerpool and Hogbourne-Johnson having rather an unpleasant time of it. Enjoy might be too strong a word, what with the story about Biggs hanging himself interspersed amongst the amusement - but as I'd forgotten who Biggs was by that point, it had less impact than it might have done. I did wonder whether Powell might deliberately have included the death of a minor character, who he would have expected to have fallen off the reader's radar, as an indicator of the callousness of war and those who are forced to live through it. But going on past evidence, that's not really his style. Anyway, it was hardly up with 'All Quiet on the Western Front'.

These war ones rather merge into a single whole, don't they? Again, I've had to flick back through the book to remind myself what happened in this one, rather than in The Valley of Bones. I was glad to see Stringham and Moreland again. My early dislike of Stringham has entirely evaporated and I now think he's great. This is probably helped by Powell's habit of giving Stringham (and to a lesser extent Moreland) all of his most insightful lines. I know we're supposed to see Stringham's arc as tragic, but I like him much more now than I did when he was a snobby schoolboy, and I think he's probably much more use in this guise than he would have been otherwise. Moreland, now that's really sad. He just doesn't seem to be able to cope with things at all, poor lamb. The whole idea of Mrs Maclintick feeding off her helpless, indecisive 'children' is deeply disturbing. Maybe Powell thought all women were, at base, either like Mrs Maclintick, or alternatively faithless, like Matilda and Priscilla. That would explain a lot.

I did find this volume moving, far more so than The Valley of Bones. I think I was most upset by Chips Lovell's death. He always seemed like a nice, happy-go-lucky bloke, so much more normal than most people in the Powell-iverse. I think I might have liked him if I'd met him at a party. Whereas I think I'd probably run away from most of the rest of them screaming.