I delved into Delderfield's books straight after the Luxembourgish chaos; all this normality overdose was truly needed - loved every single reference to the train commuters from south east London to the City (myself reading about them while on the very same train route 120 years later was expectedly soothing).
But I now think I have paid my time; I won't have to read the other two Swann Saga books, Charles Dickens is the way ahead - Actually, the most dramatic scene of the book was real event which gave Dickens an eternal train hatred. Delderfield-wise, it was nothing serious, of course, just the main hero losing a leg in a train accident while saving his family, but, you guessed it right, there was a happy ending, with the hero becoming the ultimate master of prosthetic leg usage and even giving advice to the docs on how it works etc etc.
Anyway, I spent most of the book wondering how the title was justified... the writer realised that too apparently, thus, after hastily making sure that the last side-character of the book would live happily ever after, he started explaining why God is an Englishman...
The headquarters of the company are some sort of a temple! English people are unique tradesmen! (Stop the boats! :))
and, even more annoying than the nationalist frenzy, if the writer knows that he failed to convey his message throughout his book, shouldn't he just rewrite it? Just adding a couple of pages in the end is insulting for both of us.
Comments