HjemGrupperSnakMereZeitgeist
Søg På Websted
På dette site bruger vi cookies til at levere vores ydelser, forbedre performance, til analyseformål, og (hvis brugeren ikke er logget ind) til reklamer. Ved at bruge LibraryThing anerkender du at have læst og forstået vores vilkår og betingelser inklusive vores politik for håndtering af brugeroplysninger. Din brug af dette site og dets ydelser er underlagt disse vilkår og betingelser.

Resultater fra Google Bøger

Klik på en miniature for at gå til Google Books

Indlæser...

Loving (1945)

af Henry Green

Andre forfattere: Se andre forfattere sektionen.

MedlemmerAnmeldelserPopularitetGennemsnitlig vurderingOmtaler
7161831,499 (3.39)83
"Loving is set in the vast hereditary house of the Tennants, an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, but the story mainly involves their servants. The war has led to a scarcity of experienced staff, and when Eldon the butler dies, Raunce the head doorman is assigned his job. The other servants are taken aback by this irregular promotion, but lovely young Edith, a recent hire, is quite attracted to the older Raunce and a flirtation begins. And it is Edith who discovers Mrs. Tennant's daughter, whose husband is fighting at the front, in bed with a neighbor one morning, scandalizing the whole household. When the Tennants depart for England, Raunce is left in charge of the house and struggles to control its disputatious inhabitants as well as to secure the love of Edith, especially after a precious family jewel disappears. In Loving, Henry Green explores the deeply precarious nature of ordinary life against the background of the larger world at war"--… (mere)
Indlæser...

Bliv medlem af LibraryThing for at finde ud af, om du vil kunne lide denne bog.

Der er ingen diskussionstråde på Snak om denne bog.

» Se også 83 omtaler

Viser 1-5 af 18 (næste | vis alle)
"Loving" is the story of the upstairs-downstairs goings-on at a Protestant-owned and -run manse in the first decades after the founding of the Irish republic. It's also a books I'd never even heard of before it showed up on the Modern Library's list of the twentieth century's one hundred best novels. I think it's a quality book, but not necessarily an enjoyable read. "Loving" might the longest two-hundred pages you'll ever read, and if you're going to get anything at all out of them, you'll have to read them carefully.

Some reviewers here have mentioned that the dialect is challenging, and, for many American readers, it may be. Although it's set during the Second World War, the language it's written in struck me as much older as less accessible. It makes no concessions to an American -- or even non-Irish -- audience. But what really slowed things down for me was the extraordinary intimacy of every conversation and interaction in the book. The characters here live lives governed by custom, even as they are they are, understandably, beset by the usual run of human passions, and they do so in such close quarters that they might as well be at sea. Sometimes I thought that there wasn't a single exchange in "Loving," no matter how practical or inconsequential, that couldn't be seen as uncomfortably intimate. It feels that these people have been living all over each other for generations. It's hardly surprising, then, that can be exhausting to read about.

Luckily, there are some memorable characters here to hold your interest. Charley Raunce -- the new butler, formerly the footman -- is the book's center, and I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if he was clever, a fool, a scoundrel or a sincere suitor. My estimation of him kept shifting as I read on, and, honestly, he may be all of these things. At any rate, his charisma is undeniable. There's also the maids: lovely Edith, roommate and complement to the more ordinary but still attractive Kate, both of whom display an easy, irresistible sensuality. There's a set of characters -- Nanny Swift, Miss Burch, and Miss Welch -- who seem as old and dug-in as the castle itself, and, finally, there's Mrs. Tennant, the lady of the manor, who displays the kind of eccentricity that only money and inherited privilege can produce.

In the end, to borrow from Joyce, this isn't just a novel about loving but also one about leaving. The house is mostly shut up, the business model that built it expired generations ago, and the castle's residents can only pretend that time hasn't advanced a second since the summer of 1914 for so long. What Green is describing here -- along with a complex web of professional and personal relationships -- is the slow undoing of an institution and a way of life. I didn't find this one easy to read or quite to my taste, but only a writer of real talent could have written it. Recommended. ( )
  TheAmpersand | Nov 2, 2023 |
If you start to read this novel with heedless attention, then you’re in for a surprise: after an endless stream of dialogues (200 pages on end) you come to the conclusion that there’s barely a storyline in this book. Place of action is a country estate in Ireland, inhabited by British aristocrats, in the midst of the Second World War. Green mainly focuses on the domestic staff, a motley crew who are more or less left to their own devices by the (usually) absent owners, and do almost nothing but bicker and speak ill of each other. On the surface, the setting seems to have a high “Upstairs, Downstairs” content, and “Dowton Abbey” inevitably comes to mind as well.
But as a reader you hardly get a grip on Green's story. He alternates intimate scenes with stiff ones, occasionally lets it come to a comedy of errors (about a lost ring, for example), and especially sows confusion with peacocks that appear at the most unexpected moments. The transitions between scenes are barely noticeable, and nothing is as it seems; the scenes between the love couple Edith and Charley, for example, are apparently charming, but at the same time there appears to be an enormous distance between them.
As a reader you are constantly wrestling with the question of what the actual purpose of the story is. But that clearly turns out to be the wrong attitude. I cannot put it better than Sebastian Faulks, who wrote an introduction to this book: “The inner shape of the novel in this way imitates our experience of living: it promises pattern, then withholds it, insisting on a formless banality; it describes intensity, but as part of a grudgingly accepted monotony; it glimpses poetry, but only from the corner of its eye.” In other words: life as it is. Nicely done, indeed, but with this book Green confirms his reputation of being a “writer’s writer”. ( )
  bookomaniac | Jul 16, 2022 |
Really enjoyed this. A bittersweet upstairs downstairs story set in an Irish country house populated by (mainly) English landlords and their servants during WWII. Intrigue and gossip, laughter and suspicion and love stories. ( )
  Estragon1958 | May 23, 2022 |
For anyone not born, bred and educated in mid 20th Century England, Henry Green could be difficult to appreciate. Evelyn Waugh is under appreciated in the US too, for the same reason. Both use dialogue to define character, and a significant part of that definition is to establish where in the labyrinthine class system they actually fit. An emancipated American might say "class does not define character", but in Green's time it certainly defined the perception of character, if not by the author then by the other personae in the book. And the way they spoke was the key. ( )
  scunliffe | Jul 17, 2021 |
very british. ( )
  stravinsky | Dec 28, 2020 |
Viser 1-5 af 18 (næste | vis alle)
ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse

» Tilføj andre forfattere (3 mulige)

Forfatter navnRolleHvilken slags forfatterVærk?Status
Green, Henryprimær forfatteralle udgaverbekræftet
Gorey, EdwardOmslagsdesignermedforfatternogle udgaverbekræftet
Du bliver nødt til at logge ind for at redigere data i Almen Viden.
For mere hjælp se Almen Viden hjælpesiden.
Kanonisk titel
Originaltitel
Alternative titler
Oprindelig udgivelsesdato
Personer/Figurer
Vigtige steder
Vigtige begivenheder
Beslægtede film
Indskrift
Tilegnelse
Første ord
Citater
Sidste ord
Oplysning om flertydighed
Forlagets redaktører
Bagsidecitater
Originalsprog
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

Henvisninger til dette værk andre steder.

Wikipedia på engelsk (1)

"Loving is set in the vast hereditary house of the Tennants, an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, but the story mainly involves their servants. The war has led to a scarcity of experienced staff, and when Eldon the butler dies, Raunce the head doorman is assigned his job. The other servants are taken aback by this irregular promotion, but lovely young Edith, a recent hire, is quite attracted to the older Raunce and a flirtation begins. And it is Edith who discovers Mrs. Tennant's daughter, whose husband is fighting at the front, in bed with a neighbor one morning, scandalizing the whole household. When the Tennants depart for England, Raunce is left in charge of the house and struggles to control its disputatious inhabitants as well as to secure the love of Edith, especially after a precious family jewel disappears. In Loving, Henry Green explores the deeply precarious nature of ordinary life against the background of the larger world at war"--

No library descriptions found.

Beskrivelse af bogen
Haiku-resume

Current Discussions

Ingen

Populære omslag

Quick Links

Vurdering

Gennemsnit: (3.39)
0.5 1
1 6
1.5
2 12
2.5 5
3 20
3.5 8
4 40
4.5 1
5 12

Er det dig?

Bliv LibraryThing-forfatter.

 

Om | Kontakt | LibraryThing.com | Brugerbetingelser/Håndtering af brugeroplysninger | Hjælp/FAQs | Blog | Butik | APIs | TinyCat | Efterladte biblioteker | Tidlige Anmeldere | Almen Viden | 203,240,022 bøger! | Topbjælke: Altid synlig