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Anthony Powell
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The Kindly Ones (A Dance of Music and Time) Kindle Edition

by Anthony Powell (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 out of 5 stars 125 ratings

Anthony Powell’s universally acclaimed epic A Dance to the Music of Time offers a matchless panorama of twentieth-century London. Now, for the first time in decades, readers in the United States can read the books of Dance as they were originally published—as twelve individual novels—but with a twenty-first-century twist: they’re available only as e-books.

As volume six, The Kindly Ones (1962), opens, rumblings from Germany recall memories of Nick Jenkins’s boyhood and his father’s service in World War I; it seems clear that all too soon, uniforms will be back in fashion. The looming threat throws the ordinary doings of life into stark relief, as Nick and his friends continue to negotiate the pitfalls of adult life. Moreland’s marriage founders, Peter Templer’s wife—his second—is clearly going mad, and Widmerpool is, disturbingly, gaining prominence in the business world even as he angles for power in the coming conflict. War, with all its deaths and disruptions, is on the way. 

"Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician."--ChicagoTribune

"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu. . . . Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's."--Elizabeth Janeway, New YorkTimes

"One of the most important works of fiction since the Second World War. . . . The novel looked, as it began, something like a comedy of manners; then, for a while, like a tragedy of manners; now like a vastly entertaining, deeply melancholy, yet somehow courageous statement about human experience."--Naomi Bliven, New Yorker

 

“The most brilliant and penetrating novelist we have.”--Kingsley Amis

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  1. Book 6 of 12
    A Dance to the Music of Time
  2. Print length
    272 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    The University of Chicago Press
  5. Publication date
    December 1, 2010
  6. File size
    2.1 MB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004DNWDPU
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The University of Chicago Press (December 1, 2010)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ December 1, 2010
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 2.1 MB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1446440850
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 out of 5 stars 125 ratings

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Anthony Powell

Anthony Powell

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4.4 out of 5 stars
125 global ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • sharyn
    5.0 out of 5 stars excellent series
    Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    im cheating and writing the same review for each of these 12 books because the reasons i love them are the same for each

    if you love proust, evelyn waugh, atonement and the like - then you will love these books - they are a wonderful - principally internal monologue/dialogue based - stroll through the middle of the 20th century - nothing much happens, nobody is particularly happy, but it's fascinating in any case

    although - there's a chance that - given my love for long series - i may just love these because there's 12 of them...
    3 people found this helpful
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  • John C. Cravey
    4.0 out of 5 stars What a fine book
    Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2017
    Verified Purchase
    **NOTICE**: This review is for the Anthony Powell novel, not the Jonathan Littell novel. Someone linked this with the reviews for the Jonathan Littell novel without my permission and I can't delete it from one without deleting it from both. I say again: If you are looking for a review of the Jonathan Littell novel, skip this review. And, now, let's talk about the magnificent novel, THE KINDLY ONES, by Anthony Dymoke Powell CH, CBE (1905-2000).

    There are two parallel subplots. The first is a flashback to Nick’s childhood and the run-up to World War I. The second is Nick’s adult life during the run-up to World War II.

    “The kindly ones” is another name for the furies of Greek mythology. I don’t think Powell is using this reference in a strictly metaphorical sense. Even in earlier books in this series, there’s an undercurrent of the occult. Here, we meet a sorcerer, Dr. Trelawney, who is gaining quite a following among the upper ranks of society. Even General Conyers is a follower. Is Powell implying that because we mortals have meddled in things that we shouldn’t, the furies have punished us with wars?

    The elegiac flashback to Nick’s childhood can’t be topped. It has a flavor. All of the characters, especially the family’s staff, are solid.

    This entire book is Powell at the top of his game. From beginning to end the narrative marches forward purposefully. The dialogue is pitch perfect and plentiful. There are no “dud” characters. Even old Ted Jeavons returns. And Powell hasn’t scrimped on the humor. For example,

    “Templer’s clothes gave the familiar impression—as Stringham use to say—that he was ‘about to dance backwards and forwards in front of a chorus of naked ladies’.”

    3.6 stars
    One person found this helpful
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  • Christopher C.
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Furies unleashed on Britain twice in 25 years
    Reviewed in the United States on December 19, 2010
    When we last left Anthony Powell's 12-volume work "A Dance to the Music of Time", we were in the late 1930s and steadily approaching the outbreak of the Second World War. THE KINDLY ONES, the sixth novel in the sequence, unexpectedly opens with a flashback to the start of the First. In 1914, Nicholas Jenkins is an eight or nine year-old, living in a rented manor in the countryside where his father is stationed. For some fifty pages, we follow some disputes and love affairs among the family's servants, until an offhand mention that Archduke Ferdinand has just been assassinated casts a shadow over Jenkins' youth.

    THE KINDLY ONES then returns to where the Dance had left off. In late 1938 Jenkins visits Stourwater again and several old acquaintances reappear. An elderly character dies and Jenkins must sort out his belongings. A drunken Bob Duport makes some uncomfortable revelations after Jean Templer's life during her affair with Nick almost a decade earlier. Finally, the start of World War II pushes every adult member of society into some new job. The pervading sentiment of THE KINDLY ONES is melancholy and wistfulness. Jenkins' perusal of the documents of a deceased relative offer a sad meditation on the mounting failures of one's life. The Seven Deadly Sins tableaux introduced here reduces the characters to grotesque caricatures and plays a role in a later volume of the Dance, where it is shown as a symbol of a bygone era.

    Although the flashback fills in some of Nicholas Jenkins' past, he remains an enigmatic narrator, reporting the events around him in great detail but never betraying much of his own feelings. As the novel comes to an end, he is desperate to find some way into the army, but why he wants to join is a mystery (adventure? serving his country? not looking like an intellectual layabout?). There is twice mention that wife Isobel is expecting a child, but I don't expect to hear much about the raising of a family in the next volume. But the novel does encompass much more than the aristocratic rounds of the previous volumes, and we do enter among some of the lower classes.

    When I started THE KINDLY ONES, I found the 1914 flashback to be slow-going, and I thought this was going to be one of the lesser volumes in the Dance. By the end of the novel, I was convinced that the flashback has its place in the novel's overall feeling of melancholy. Powell's particular generation had a rough time of it, living through two outbreaks of total war that decimated their families and acquaintances. It's not all poignant reflections, though. There continue to be moments of great humour here, such as a charismatic cult leader who speaks in pretentious riddles, or Widmerpool's buffoonish transition to full-time soldier.

    With every volume read, I look ever more forward to moving onto the rest of the sequence. This is a moving chronicle of an entire generation.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Jason Adams
    5.0 out of 5 stars Best volume yet
    Reviewed in the United States on March 31, 2018
    With “The Kindly Ones,” Powell turn in his best effort yet. Referencing in the title the Furies of Greek Myth, Powell draws parallels between the beginning of the two wars that marked the lives of Jenkins and his cohorts. He starts the story 25 years prior to the current narrative, relating how his parents’ generation dealt with the run up to World War I. In a quaint tale of haunted servants and bearded gurus, Powell introduces a new slate of characters that serve as connective tissue to the story of an older Jenkins who must deal with the changes unleashed on British society by the approach of World War II. In addition to his normal ear for dialogue and penchant for understated stories, Powell outdoes himself in tying together the elements of the previous five volumes into a story of endings and darker beginning. A joy to read.
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Dominic Swayne
    5.0 out of 5 stars Recommended
    Reviewed in the United Arab Emirates on November 1, 2021
    Verified Purchase
    Book in perfect condition, excellent prompt service!
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  • Jim Morrison
    4.0 out of 5 stars The Kindly Ones
    Reviewed in France on September 26, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    Pour quelqu'un qui est ras de bol avec le monde moderne, ce livre-ci est un soulagement. Les caracteres se preparent pour la deuxieme guerre mondiale.
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  • James Brydon
    5.0 out of 5 stars Simply magnificent
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 23, 2012
    Verified Purchase
    Simply wonderful! This sixth volume of the majestic Dance to the Music of Time starts with a recapitulation of memories of Nick Jenkins' childhood, and in particular the apocalyptic events of the day on which World War One broke out. While humour is at the forefront throughout the series, there is also an ever-present undercurrent of melancholia.
    After a glimpse into Jenkins' childhood, with a brief cameo from his Uncle Giles, we are brought back to the months leading up to the war, and the struggle to eke out an economic subsistence doing an aesthetically unsympathetic time. Hugh Moreland looms large, as does the menacing Kenneth Widmerpool, as pompous and odious as ever.
    In this particular volume General Conyers, old, venerable and seen by many as a relic from a bygone age suddenly establishes himself as one of the pivotal figures in the sequence. and is unmasked as an innovator and conduit for modern though.
    Yet the most striking character to emerge for the first time in this volume is the alchemical thaumaturge whose unorthodox commune struck terror into the pre-adolescent Jenkins
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  • P. Curran
    5.0 out of 5 stars This is a marvellous book by Anthony Powell - the ...
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 31, 2018
    Verified Purchase
    This is a marvellous book by Anthony Powell - the 6th novel in the 'Dance to the Music of Time' series.
    Yet all the reviews here refer to a completely different book - same title but by Jonathan Littell!
    Surely the two books should have their own reviews.
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  • Margaret Warrener
    5.0 out of 5 stars a window on a recently lost world.
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 24, 2013
    Verified Purchase
    Description of emotions,never easy, are done with such restraint & fluency.
    Echos of lives bouncing off each other.
    Great style
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