Grrr. Aaaargh.

To misquote Woody Allen, that's days of my life I'm never going to get back. So I'm not going to spend more days blogging about the wasted days, if you get my meaning....

I will say, though, that I actually liked the end of vol 11, even if it took me a few re-readings to work out what had actually happened. In fact, maybe it was *because* it took me several re-readings to work out what had happened. At least it made me *think*. And it had Moreland.

Having got to the end, I was somewhat disturbed to realise that I only liked four characters - Moreland, Matilda, Stringham (only at the end, mind) and Chips Lovell. I probably would have liked Pennistone if anything remotely interesting had been done with him; I also thought Gwatkin had a bizarre kind of dignity - and of course, as you will all be aware, I don't count Isobel as a character at all. I think it's fair to say that if you only like 4 characters out of a cast of 300, you're not going to find the book as a whole particularly enjoyable either, at least unless the unlikeable characters are masterpieces of delineation (which they're not).

One word, though, in support of Pamela Widmerpool. Thank God for her, frankly, because without her the last 3 volumes would have been pretty unbearable. She is a totally ridiculous character but paradoxically, I think she's the closest Powell gets to painting a fascinating monster with enough of a vulnerable underbelly to pull you in. He just tips it a bit too far. For me, Widmerpool himself just doesn't work at all in the last 3 volumes.

Finally, insofar as it is even remotely positive, what is written above applies only to vols 10 and 11. Volume 12 is honestly the silliest thing I have ever read. And I speak as one who has read all of the early works of Jeffery Archer.