A Good Soldier

It's a story in which he has actively - and passively - participated, been in up to his ears, eyes, neck, heart and guts. We're the ones "hearing" it; he's the one telling it, despite this initial, hopeless attempt to deflect attention from his own presence and complicity. And if the second verb of the first sentence cannot be trusted, we must be prepared to treat every sentence with the same care and suspicion. We must prowl soft-footed through this text, alive for every board's moan and plaint. Dowell is an American - except that he comes from Philadelphia, where "there are more old English families than you would find in any six English counties taken together".

His wife Florence comes from Stamford, Connecticut, where "they are more old-fashioned than even the inhabitants of Cranford, England, could have been".

The Dowells have been living in continental Europe - "imprisoned" there by Florence's delicate health - as "leisured Americans, which is as much to say that we were un-American". They meet Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, he on leave from service in India, she "so extraordinarily the real thing that she seemed too good to be true". The Ashburnhams are what the English call or what Dowell thinks the English call "quite good people". Yet they prove to be no more "good" or "the real thing" than the Dowells are "American".

For almost 10 years the two couples have known one another, though never in either of their home countries: The Ashburnhams join them there. They take tea and watch the miniature golf, they listen to the Kur orchestra; Dowell does his Swedish exercises while his wife takes the waters. Together the couples dance a social "minuet", they make a "four-square coterie", an "extraordinarily safe castle", they are a "tall ship" on a blue sea, proud and safe.

Except - has your foot gone through the floorboards yet? They are "a prison full of screaming hysterics". But it is also true that they are footing that polite minuet at the same time - for nine years and six weeks before "four crashing days" end it all.

Dowell does the name deliberately suggest something wooden? This is a desperate attempt at social and narrative ordinariness. It is not so much that we don't believe the ploy; more that Dowell doesn't have the skill, or the insight, to reduce his tale to a mere fireside yarn. The storyteller isn't up to the level of his own story; he is a bumbler obliged to convey an intrigue of operatic passion which he himself only partially understands.

Identity, geography, psychology, narrative: Here is the third sentence of the novel: Again, I don't know. This is literary impressionism of Jamesian subtlety yet with a crisper delivery; it is also the most perfectly deployed example of the unreliable narrator. But what it absolutely is not is muddle; all is utterly under the novelist's control. As VS Pritchett wrote of Ford: He confused to make clear.

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What to hold on to as the floor shifts and creaks beneath you? I suggest the most weighted, and therefore the most dangerous, words of the opening pages: These words repeat, and each time prod us into questioning: Yet the word is set differently on its first two appearances, once plainly, once between quotes. When is a heart not a heart? Edward, as well as Florence, has a condition that requires his presence at Nauheim. You might expect that having a "heart" would mean that "matters of the heart" were off-limits. But this would be false logic: This is one book for which an introduction can do little damage in terms of giving away the plot, because Dowell gives it away himself, even if half-unaware that he is doing so.

Everything I have quoted comes from the very beginning of the novel when - as it seems to Dowell - he hasn't even decided on a stratagem for telling his story: One of these items ships sooner than the other. Buy the selected items together This item: Ships from and sold by Amazon. Customers who viewed this item also viewed. Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1. Adult Children of the Emotionally Ill.

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Try the Kindle edition and experience these great reading features: Share your thoughts with other customers. Write a customer review. Read reviews that mention mental illness good soldier mentally ill ally golden borderline personality personality disorder ill mother love someone growing up with a mentally highly recommend reading this book ill parent illness in the family recommend this book mother also reading this book book really memoir brave honest. Showing of 34 reviews.

Top Reviews Most recent Top Reviews. There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later. I ordered this book to give to a young woman whose father, whom she loves, and who does clearly love her in the way he can, is mentally ill. After reading it, I realized that my young lady's father is both far more functional and far more severely ill than the mother portrayed in the book, and that the drama in the book wouldn't even rival the drama in her life, so early in my reading of the book, I decided not to give it to her.

Additionally, although it is possible that her father will end up in the same sort of condition as the mother in this book, I think that is both more and less hopeful than the future she has before her and I didn't want to put more worry or any false hope into her head. Rather, I just wanted a book that would help her feel less alone and I didn't end up thinking this book would ultimately serve this for her.

However, immediately upon finishing this book, I did give it away to another young woman whose stepmother struggles with the same sorts of demons in the same sorts of ways and I did think it would serve as a good message of solidarity for her to see the author progressing through her young adult life successfully despite the parental insanity and mean-spirited words interspersed with loving messages and acts.

This same young woman's biological mother also struggles with mental illness and may progress eventually to the depths of the mother in this book and I don't think it's a bad thing for this young woman to be warned of that possibility by reading this book. Therefore, although I didn't give it to the intended recipient, it only took me about 2 days to find someone else that I thought would benefit from this uncomfortable read.

See a Problem?

I finished this book last night. The novel has potential narrative inconsistencies that suggest different, hidden plot elements. For example, Dowell marries an heiress who ostensibly has a bad heart. He states repeatedly that he has no need or interest in her money—one might argue that he protests his lack of interest rather too much. Florence eventually dies, stated by Dowell to be suicide.

If readers suspend their trust in the narrator, some may be left with the impression that the narrator is obfuscating, happy his wife dies and not doing anything to prevent it; just as he does little throughout the entire book. Thus, behind the more or less explicit narrative lurks a possible counter-narrative in which Dowell is something of a sociopath, caring for no one but himself, an observer of others who are living more fully while never actively engaging very intensely in life himself, and indeed, perhaps a voyeur relishing the demise of others.

Florence supposedly poisons herself in a possibly painful manner, and Edward supposedly cuts his own throat, but as always in this novel, we only have Dowell's word for it, and he epitomises the "unreliable narrator. Some commentators have even suggested that Dowell, who presents himself as considered by all to be passive, murders both Florence and Edward. In this view the entire story is his justification for doing so without his admitting his guilt.

The narrator, husband to Florence. Dowell is an American Quaker , either a gullible and passionless man who cannot read the emotions of the people around him or a master manipulator who plays the victim. John Dowell's wife and a scheming, manipulative, unfaithful woman who uses Dowell for his money while pursuing her affairs on the side.

She fakes a heart ailment to get what she wants out of her husband and has a lengthy affair with Edward Ashburnham. Friend of the Dowells and husband of Leonora. Ashburnham is a hopeless romantic who keeps falling in love with the women he meets; he is at Nauheim for the treatment of a heart problem, but the ailment is not real, he used it as an excuse to follow a female heart patient to Nauheim.

He is Dowell's opposite, a virile, physical, passionate man. Edward's wife by a marriage that was more or less arranged by their fathers. Leonora comes to resent Edward's philandering as much for its effect on her life as on her marriage and asserts more and more control over Edward until he dies. The young ward of the Ashburnhams; Edward falls in love with Nancy after he tires of Florence.

Eventually, Edward arranges for Nancy to be sent to India to live with her father, but she goes mad en route when she learns of Edward's death. Although he believes himself to be romantically attached to her, he quickly becomes disillusioned by her thirst for his money. A young, pretty, married woman with whom Edward fell in love.

Leonora pays for her treatment for a weak heart at Nauheim, knowing that Edward would follow her there. Maisie's heart gives way after she hears Florence and Edward talking about her disparagingly and she dies. How well can we judge the characterisations the novel when Dowell was such an unreliable narrator?

A question to consider is whether he presented himself in a true light, or manipulated his description of events to prevent the reader from discovering his true character. He has interpreted character by religion, by nationality, by gender, and by the calendar…Dowell's disillusionment follows the arc of modernism.

He begins with presuppositions typical of much Victorian characterization: