The Return of the Soldier by Rebecca West

At the rate I've been going, there's no way I'm going to meet my goal of reading fifty classics in one year. But I’ve figured out a solution to the problem: shorter books.

Brilliant, no? Screw the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels list (which I find highly suspect, anyway). Now my main criteria for picking books for the Reading Project is that the book must be (1) a classic (as determined by me), and (2) short. The shorter the better. And novellas are best of all.

The Return of the Solider by Rebecca West is just such a novella. Weighing in at only ninety pages (excellent!), it tells the story of an English soldier, Chris Baldry, who suffers shellshock during World War I that’s caused him to forget the past fifteen years of his life. He returns to his country home with no memory of his wife, Kitty, and their life together, and instead is consumed with thoughts of his old girlfriend, Margaret, who he’d long ago fallen out with.

Chris’s cousin, Jenny – the narrator of the story, who lives with Kitty and Chris, and is half in love with her cousin - is sympathetic to his plight. She’s desperately jealous of his rekindled - yet presumably chaste, considering both parties are now married - courtship of Margaret, yet she only wants Chris to be happy. She knows that regaining his memory will cause him to remember all the unpleasantness in his life - the war, the death of his only son, the unwanted responsibilities of his family’s business. Even worse, if Chris regains his memory, and his health is restored, he’s likely to be sent back to the horrors of the front. Plus, Kitty’s somewhat of a bitch, so no one’s rooting for her.

The prose is wonderful - lovely yet not too dense. And the story is so sharp and riveting, that you’re willing to forgive its opaque moments and indefinite ending.

TROTS was like a scoop of lime sorbet, acting as a nice palate cleanser after the dreariness of The Heart of the Matter and West with the Night. I rate it an A-.

 

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