676. A Dance to the Music of Time

A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell
1951-1975

Around 3000 pages

Every country needs its own Proust. Anthony Powell is our British Proust, and created one of the most impressive works of all time. In fact, I might even like this more than In Search of Lost Time. Sorry Marcel.

Okay, hear me out: this is a fast read. I know, that's probably worthy of an eye roll, but I don't think page count necessarily determines the difficulty of a novel. There are 200 pagers on this List that took me much longer to read, because it was such a slog. But I didn't want to put this one down, and would have happily kept reading as many volumes as Powell could pump out.

Obviously at 12 volumes, this is a challenging novel to summarize succinctly. But our main character is Nicholas Jenkins, who is much more of an everyman than Marcel. I found Kenneth Widmerpool to be one of the most memorable characters in fiction, and his arc was just as compelling as Nick's.

I'm sorry I can't stop comparing the two, but both Proust and Powell are wizards. They manage to capture an entire lifetime with breathtakingly beautiful prose. I also love reading about the British upper class during this time period, so even the "slice of life" scenes were wildly entertaining.

Definitely an essential read.

RATING: *****

Interesting Facts:

Over a million words.

Time magazine included the novel in its list of the 100 best English-language novels from 1923 to 2005.

UP NEXT: W, or the Memory of Childhood by Georges Perec