Some Do Not

Some Do Not ... is the first of the tetralogy known by the collective title Parade's End. It is an arresting though difficult read, at times brutally modernist. In my current reading blitz I enjoyed it but you really have to concentrate as you read this one. Maybe it's just me but there are some books to which you can get away with not giving your full commitment - this is not one of them.

The author is the magnificently named English novelist Ford Madox Ford - though even that nomenclature conceals a story - he changed his surname from the germanic Hueffer in the wake of the Great War. The shadow of that conflict leers over the text even though the trenches are not described. Instead we have an obliquely described and poignant love story woven in and around a world undergoing seismic change. A beautifully crafted novel.