This has been on my reading bucket list since it first showed up on a recommended list distributed in a British lit survey course I took in college. It continued to show up, like "Best of the 20th Century" lists. Now I've found out why. From its great opening line that sounds a tad Russian--"This is the saddest story I have ever heard"--to its last revelation of many revelations of character and the human condition--it is always in top artistic form.
It predates The Great Gatsby by a decade and I'm guessing Fitzgerald read it. The first person narrative structure begins similarly, one man, the American John Dowell, discounting himself as a major player as he promises to tell the story of a bigger player, the British Captain Edward Asburnham, the "good soldier" of the title. Like Gatsby, the circles in which they move are largely affluent, and marriage conventions are flouted. But there the similarities begin to disappear. FMF's characters are more self-deceived than self-made, and there are the cultural contrasts of American vs. European character and protestant vs. Catholic tossed in for good measure. John Dowell proves to be a difficult narrator: though he suggests that it is the understandable problem of ordering memory that he builds the story hesitantly and thus sometimes doubles back to fill in more facts, the tangled story telling may be due as much to his own reluctance to deal with certain truths until he is finally ready. He may not be as much of a bystander as he initially suggests, or as innocent.
To say more would spoil the plot. This is an absorbing read, and relatively short. It is also worth reading as a model of modern literary art. It is well informed by the recent arrival of psychology, it strains against the rigidity of Victorian and Edwardian social codes, it smashes Aristotle's rules about plot progression. How the story is told is as important as the story. Energy electrifies it and that makes it a pleasure to read despite the fact that it deals considerably with pathetic human weaknesses.
The critical introduction is reliable as most Penguin classic supplementary essays are, and is best read afterward since there are spoilers. Helpful notes do not intrude on the text but are discretely listed at the end.
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Top reviews from other countries
imtiaj
This is a good reliable edition with less commentary and introductory notes like ...
Reviewed in India on August 31, 2017
Les Nixon
Where did this version come from?
Reviewed in Australia on September 21, 2020