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The protagonist is about to tell us the saddest story he has ever heard. It concerns how he and his wife Florence became friends with Captain and Leonora Ashburton, and how what outwardly seemed a happy life became riddle with lies, deception and betrayal. As our confused and saddened narrator attempts to sort out the story in his head, we are lead through a labyrinth of memories, maybe true and maybe false, to an inevitable, catastrophic conclusion.
Ouf, this was a hard read. Ford takes the idea of an unreliable narrator, doubles down, then goes all in. There is not a single thing about our nameless protagonist that you can trust. As he tells his story he goes back and forth in time, makes mistakes, repeats himself, and I suspect, although it is hard to tell, lies.
This makes the whole thing difficult to read and difficult to engage with. The narrator tells us at the beginning how things are going to work out, but during the first half you spend so much time trying to remember if he is married to Florence or Leonora (it is Florence), as well as putting up with the narrator wandering off all over the place, it is difficult to care. Throw on top of that the sadness of the story and the how unlikeable the characters are, and you would be forgiven for giving up on the book after the first couple of chapters.
Yet Ford is a master writer and his experiment, as a piece of literature, is an exceptional success. The protagonist is a wuss, a weakling, and a coward (which reminded me of the narrator in Wuthering Heights), but of course cannot quantify all this in a way that makes us sure how much of what happens is because of his failings or the failings of others. If you stick with it the conclusion lands a heartfelt blow.
So, a beautiful written, fascinating piece of literature for those who love complex narrative, literary experiments, and having to work for it. But if you want a writer who cares if the reader is following, or if the characters are reprehensible, best look elsewhere. Unquestionably a classic, but not for everyone.
