Customer Reviews:
no title.......2006-02-08
Another terrific book , supposedly the best in the series ("Strangers and Brothers"), but I think that several others are possibly better. And, really, it ends so dismally. Although I guess any other way would be too trite, and I'm quite sure that this is based on some real event in Snow's life, as I feel all the books are. The dons are all so sharply drawn, each clear in his own character. And the eating and drinking they constantly did! I guess they walked a lot. I loved it. The intrigues and politics that Snow writes about, are worthy of any Washington lobbyist. Except that here we are at Cambridge.
Genuine classic.......2003-11-12
I'd urge you to read this one. Few people describe the inner life of men, or at least his class of 20th century Englishman, so well as Snow. The characterisations are the strength, all vanities and motivations probed as if by a surgeon, though the "closed" politics plot is entertaining enough. Other reviewers list their favourite characters, I'd plump for Winslow and Brown myself. Beautiful writing style.
A splendid novel........2002-08-03
C.P.Snow has some fine qualities; he is succinct, perceptive and astute. This novel, perhaps to a greater extent than any of his others, reflects these qualities as "The Masters" is a triumph of characterisation. Jago, Brown, Calvert, Nightingale and Gay will live long in the memory and the understated way in which Snow brings them to life is most adroit. Ultimately, however, like all of the Strangers and Brothers sequence, it is a novel about the narrator, Lewis Eliot; the relationship between tale and teller here is particularly impressive. The reader becomes unconsciously embroiled in and fascinated by his life - here is a narrator who is both partial and impartial, intense and detached. The claustrophobic, parochial and insular world of academic life is captured perfectly here. I recommend it highly; for anyone who has read it and enjoyed it, I commend to their attention "The Affair" by the same author. Set in the same Cambridge college, many of the characters reappear and it is another very fine read.
One Would Think This Book Might Involve More.......2002-03-19
How does an assortment of 13 professors at an English university choose the next head of their college? "The Masters" examines the personal and university politics that shape this decision through the narrative style of C. P. Snow. This captures a brainy professorial world through heavy reliance on complex and conditional dialogue, acute but unspoken observations, and highly abstract character analysis. Here's an example of his approach: "His manner was deliberately prosaic and comfortable. He was showing less outward sign of strain than any of us; when he was frayed inside, he slowed his always measured speech, brought out commonplaces like an amour, reduced all he could to the matter-of-fact." Still, the story, while minutely imagined, doesn't go deep. It's a tempest in a teapot.
Beautifully-realized portrait of a scholarly enclave.......2000-02-08
A novel set in the intimate, closed world of a school or college (or a convent, or cathedral close) has a better-than-average chance of being fascinating to begin with. Whether a school story is a work of literary art such as Snow's The Masters or Antonia White's Frost in May, a decent novel in the vein of Hughes's Tom Brown's School Days, Kipling's Stalky and Co., or Farrar's Eric, or even the kind of boarding-school story churned out by the likes of Angela Brazil and the author of the Greycliff series, school stories tend to hold one's interest because they are school stories. Generally written by one with insider knowledge, such books seem to reveal not only the characteristics of a society in microcosm, but also the particular stresses and strains imposed by intimate, closed worlds.
Snow's The Masters is perhaps the supreme example of this genre. A perfectly plotted and self-contained novel filled with unforgettable characters (Mrs. Jago, the embittered Despard-Smith and the beautifully-realized Professor M. H. L. Gay come to mind), The Masters is certainly C.P. Snow's best work. Snow's college world is no ivory tower. Passions and ruthless hatreds surface as two factions clash over the election of a new Master of a Cambridge college. The power brokers Chrystal and Brown display their practiced adroitness as they machinate to put their candidate in office and angle for a major benefaction from a wealthy industrialist. Political overtones from the outside world (the novel is set iduring the period of Hitler's rise to power) begin to agitate the election question further. This is a novel to read again and again.
Customer Reviews:
Wonderful book.......2007-09-01
I loved this book. I read it in less than one week. It was just too hard to put down. I would recommend this book to anyone!!
really good.......2007-01-30
I enjoyed the book over all, but I wasn't too keen on the third story. She was not the character I would have wanted to be the heroine, but Denise Hunter handled that well and I found myself, if not liking her at least accepting her. Aside from that I loved it. Would like to read more books by Hunter.
A must read book!.......2006-11-07
This was a wonderful book! I just could not put it down.
This Novella reads like one big story! Wonderful book........2006-03-09
From the back of book: Is marriage their answer? On the historic plains, four women find someone to marry. Will these brides blossom like sunflowers in the prairie heat or wither under the pressures of marriage? Is it really love when...
Sara's trying to escape an abusive stepfather, and her groom marries to please his father?
Jane wonders if the marriage proposal she's received is Luke's reaction to the love he just lost - Jane's own sister?
Mara collects suitors like some women collect teacups - though not the one man she really wants?
Emily says "I do" with the dream of having children but finds her husband has no such desire?
Will these marriages ripen to a full harvest of love or will they produce chaff scattered on the wind? Can these women trust God to orchestrate their lives and loves?
The thing that I really enjoyed about this collection of stories is that it really read like one BIG story. The storyline from the previous story carries over to the next. It makes it a very satisfying read. You really feel like you are in Cedar Springs, Kansas and walk away feeling these people are your friends.
Excellent : ) .......2005-09-26
I thought each of the 4 stories were great.. I def. recommend this book!!
Book Description
Unprecedented in scope and detail, Brothers and Strangers is a vivid history of how the mythic Africa of the black American imagination ran into the realities of Africa the place. In the 1920s, Marcus Garvey—convinced that freedom from oppression was not possible for blacks in the Americas—led the last great African American emigrationist movement. His U.S.-based Universal Negro Improvement Association worked with the Liberian government to create a homeland for African Americans. Ibrahim Sundiata explores the paradox at the core of this project: Liberia, the chosen destination, was itself racked by class and ethnic divisions and—like other nations in colonial Africa—marred by labor abuse.
In an account based on extensive archival research, including work in the Liberian National Archives, Sundiata explains how Garvey’s plan collapsed when faced with opposition from the Liberian elite, opposition that belied his vision of a unified Black World. In 1930 the League of Nations investigated labor conditions and, damningly, the United States, land of lynching and Jim Crow, accused Liberia of promoting “conditions analogous to slavery.” Subsequently various plans were put forward for a League Mandate or an American administration to put down slavery and “modernize” the country. Threatened with a loss of its independence, the Liberian government turned to its “brothers beyond the sea” for support. A varied group of white and black anti-imperialists, among them W. E. B. Du Bois, took up the country’s cause. In revealing the struggle of conscience that bedeviled many in the black world in the past, Sundiata casts light on a human rights predicament which, he points out, continues in twenty-first-century African nations as disparate as Sudan, Mauritania, and the Ivory Coast.
Customer Reviews:
too much in the dining room, not enough in the corridors.......2007-02-25
This book concerns the efforts of an ambitious Conservative politician on the rise - at the start of the book, he becomes a Minister in a newly formed Cabinet. With his power, he wants to prevent Britain's clinging to an independent nuclear deterrent in the late 1950s (Suez makes a brief appearance). Some interesting questions are raised as to whether the moral rightness of this goal -- of which Snow, channeling the scientists who opposed even the use of the bomb at Hiroshima, clearly has no doubt -- can/should be compromised in the interests of furthering the minister's political rise (at the summit of which he can, presumably, do more good) and, too briefly, in the interaction of public opinion with 'informed' expert opinion. The accounts of the English civil service and its interactions with elected officials are excellently-drawn. But as a guide to the intracacies of parliamentary procedure, this book is a bit of a letdown. Much of the action takes place at dinner parties at various aristocratic homes, and the real focus is less on the policy questions than on various characters' love lives. Reason, not emotion, is Snow's strong suit in description and narrative, and so while his language -- at once crisp and dense -- often has a real appeal, it does not move one to care as much about the characters as one is probably supposed to. All in all, an interesting read, but not an essential one. The policy issues, by the way, were real: if they are of interest, they are better explained (and, despite being more or less contemporary with _Corridors_, in a less dated manner) in Richard Neustadt's forgotten gem "Alliance Politics" and the report on the UK's "Skybolt" nuclear deterrent Neustadt wrote for John F Kennedy in 1963, now declassified and published by Cornell University Press.
no title.......2006-03-09
Apparently, it was Snow who coined the phrase "corridors of power" in an earlier book. This one is all about English politics, and the machinations that go on in trying to change policy. I suspect it was far more riveting to an English reader who knows more about the workings of Parliament than I do. Rather dry, and involved, with many, many characters. Only in the last fifty pages or so is there any semblance of suspense. As usual, Lewis Eliot is the narrator and at the heart of matters. Exactly how he got to be such a confidante of Roger Quaife, who seems to be a Minister in another department, I never could figure out. Snow, I suspect, lived these times and questions, but perhaps he was too close to see that his reader might need a little more explanation. Quaife is trying to disengage England from the nuclear arms race, a thoroughly admirable position, but one which would have required Parliament to own up to the fact that England was no longer a super power, a hard pill to swallow indeed. Many times, throughout the book, one or another character expresses the thought that no man can really do much of anything, that government will go on in its own way no matter who is at the helm. If you like to read about power and politics, all the weavings in and out, and subplots, the goings on behind the top, this book would probably rate high with you. I do not think it Snow's best. Once again, he is too detached. Too close to the heartbeat of things.
Hey Minister.......2003-11-27
This book was first published in 1964 as part of the STRANGERS AND BROTHERS series. Lewis Eliot and his wife Margaret are to dine at Roger Quaife's house. Quaife is a Conservative politician. Lewis works in the department of Sir Hector Rose which has someting to do with defense.
Roger Quaife is an effective public speaker. Roger notes that a politician lives in the present. One must first get power and then do something with it.
He perceives that it is not realistic for England to possess its own atomic weapons. He seeks the assistance of Lewis to arrange a meeting with the scientists, Walter Luke and Francis Getliffe. The game being played by Roger is that he seeks the ministry held by Lord Gilbey.
Lewis and Margaret become the guests of a great hostess, Diana Skidmore, at Basset, Diana's house in Hampshire. The subject of Roger's wife's brother comes up during the weekend. Roger claims that in observing etiquette, truth has suffered.
Just following the weekend, Lewis and Margaret are invited to see Douglas and Mary Osbaldiston. Douglas is a highly placed fellow civil servant. Lord Gilbey becomes very ill. Lewis and others visit at the clinic. It is believed that whatever the physical outcome of Lord Gilbey's circumstances, Roger will get his post, unless he has damaged his chances in defending his wife Caro's brother Sammikins.
While visiting Lord Gilbey Lewis earns that he has received a telegram from a former acquaintance of Lewis, Ronald Porson. When Lewis travels to see Porson and complain of his act, he is stopped by the obvious drunken state of the man. Later Lord Gilbey receives the news that he is being removed from office. Roger Quaife is appointed to take his place.
Francis Getliffe is a radical through conscience. He does not want to be a member of a scientific advisory committee but yields to the pressure of Lewis and Roger. A Michael Brodzinski, a person holding diametrical views, is also to be on the committee.
The book concerns, interestingly, the formation of political opinion. The story takes place at the time of the Suez crisis and Suez drives the story inasmuch as a certain sort of jingoism arises in reaction to the French and British embarassment over Suez. Possible defects in Roger's character may have also contributed to the defeat of Roger's policy. He is made to live with the fact that his unfaithfulness to Caro may be disclosed.
As things develop though the machinations of Brodzinski, whose strong held views verge on madness, Lewis and Francis Getliffe become subject to enquiries concerning their political stances in the 1930's. Cold war issues intrude in the alliance with the United States. Lord Lufkin, an aerospace manufacturer and Lewis's former employer, warns him that he knows secrets dangerous to Roger Quaife's official position.
Caro Quaife's world is not kind. It is tolerably good-natured. If you are really in trouble you are on your own. Roger Quaife is compelled to resign. Lewis then submits his own resignation to Sir Hector Rose. A novel of politics resembles a novel of manners in Snow's excellent rendering.
Customer Reviews:
Agoraphobia.......2007-04-29
In 1939 Lewis and his brother Martin, nine years younger, argue over whether Martin's anticipated marriage to Irene is a good career move. In the course of the argument Martin mentions the fission affair. The war having begun, Lewis is now employed as a temporary civil servant in the ministry of Thomas Bevill. The permanent secretary there is Hector Rose. Lewis is able to place his brother in the fission program at Barford. Walter Luke, Lewis's friend, is also there, in addition to Kurt Puchwein, a German refugee, Mounteney, an older man and Nobel Prize recipient. Several of the sientists involved are Communist sympathizers. In the initial arrangement of the enterprise there was an underestimate of the men, time, and materials required to achieve the goals set for it.
After the Americans join the war and several of the scientists are sent to America, Walter Luke pushes for support for his scheme of producting heavy water. The minister, Thomas Bevill, decides to support Luke's proposal. In the first attempt there is failure. Additional government backing is received, (it is by no means a sure thing), and success follows failure. Minute amounts of uranium are being changed to plutonium. Luke and another worker get radiation sickness as a result of the Barford experiments.
In 1945 one of the scientists returns from America, Los Alamos, to announce a bomb has been developed. The news causes Martin and Luke desolating disappointment. Francis Getliffe and another English scientist travel to America to protest the use of the bomb. The next thing that Lewis knows is that the bomb has been detonated. The reaction he discerns, of the people in the pubs, is fear. Following the use of a bomb at Nagasaki, the news of Hiroshima causes dismay to everyone. The scientists assumed that Nagasaki, the plutonium bomb, had been dropped as an experiment.
Security agents came to believe that an English-born atomic scientist has been providing information to the Russians. After another scientist is arrested, Martin is able to wear-down the British-born suspect because he has worked with him, side-by-side. Even the hardiest people, it seems, are subject to agoraphobia, a sense of extreme isolation, loneliness.
In this novel the series title, STRANGERS AND BREOTHERS, comes into play. Lewis and his brother Martin have a bitter quarrel. In the end the younger brother plots his course to get out from under the influence of the older brother. Distrusting ideology, (this was written in the fifties), Martin decides to pursue pure science in an academic setting. He gives up power. C.P. Snow is particularly adroit, Proustian, in this volume.
Customer Reviews:
Riven by angst.......2007-04-29
C.P. Snow is something of a latter-day Trollope. The series is quasi-autobiographical. The author's training was as a physicist. Obiviously his twin interests of politics and psychology have been poured into his STRANGERS AND BROTHERS series.
When this book opens it is 1938 and the narrator, Lewis Eliot, is married to Sheila Knight, a person who cannot love. Sheila knows that Lewis has sacrificed the idea of having children and part of his career for her betterment. Lewis cannot accept that in regard to his marriage to Sheila he has become his own prisoner. He is a legal advisor to Paul Lufkin, a tycoon.
Sheila is prepared to do a good turn for a sixty year old man, a has-been. She is ready to set him up in publishing. Beautiful and hag-ridden, she has business acumen. Lewis encourages her to support the said Robinson in his plans. Later he learns that Sheila is wrongly rumored to prefer women to her husband. Robinson , it seems, has started the rumor. Additional hurtful gossip is brought to Lewis's attention. Sheila confronts Robinson with spreading slander.
At a dinner Lewis is asked if he knows Austin Davidson, an art connoisseur and a member of one of the notable academic dynasties. He discovers that his wife writes in secret in the manner of Emily Dickinson and Emily Bronte. She hides her work from him but shows her work to Robinson who gives it praise. Sadly his use of her work is that it serves as an opportunity to spread a yet more hurtful rumor, that she has backed Robinson in order to get published. In her misery, Lewis tries to speak with Sheila of other people's lives also riven with angst. This is to no avail since, in the end, she destroys her creative work.
Suicide is accomplished when, in the black-out, Lewis is away from home attending yet another formal dinner. Lewis had tensed for signs of strain and had felt resentment at the distraction of Sheila's moods. This blended with the pity and protective love he felt for Sheila.
In 1941, two years later, Lewis runs into Margaret Davidson. Five years later she becomes his second wife and the mother of his son, Charles.
Thus, C.P. Snow sets up his characters with problems detailing on man's journey through life in a highly interesting milieu. The point of the exercise is to show the social circumstances from which individuals emerge to play intellectual and emotional roles. The actors engage in jobs in government, academia, law and medicine, and business. Novels in the series continue to seem fresh and pertinent to tasks and events Americans may now confront and/or consider.
As time passes, the reader appreciates more than ever the cleverness C.P. Snow uses to array his characters with historical and novelist-made attributes, recognizable in hind-sight. For example, Sheila resembles Vivian Eliot, the first wife of the poet. Austin Davidson, the father of Lewis's second wife, Margaret, calls to mind Anthony Blunt, art connoisseur to Her Majesty, the Queen. (This book came out in America in 1956. It was disclosed in the 1990's that Anthony Blunt along with Kim Philby and others had functioned as a Communist spy. He was stripped of his knighthood.)
Finally, Lewis Eliot, running true to course, works at a ministry during WW II. He has been described by his mentor, George Passant, as a preposterously unselfish friend. Against his better judgment he gives evidence on a friend's behalf, not minding the collateral damage, if any.
no title.......2006-04-28
I dunno, this series seems to be losing steam, but I can't quite put my finger on it. This one was definitely better than "The New Men", but not nearly as riveting as "Time of Hope", "The Light and the Dark", or "The Masters". I get the feeling that Snow has distanced himself more, is being rather more detached and objective. He had to bring his son near death for him to see into his nature and come to finally understand his core being. Wasn't there some other way? How autobiographical is this series? I would love to know. Still good, however, and definitely worth the read.
Average customer rating:
|
Stranger and Brother: A Portrait of C.P. Snow
Phillip Snow
Manufacturer: Scribner Book Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
British
| World Literature
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
| 18th Century
| 19th Century
| 20th Century
| Classics
| Contemporary
| General
| Historical
| Humor
| Letters & Correspondence
| Middle
| Old
| Poetry
| Renaissance
| Shakespeare
| Short Stories
ASIN: 068417801X |
Customer Reviews:
THE LIGHT AND THE DARK, before lithium.......2003-10-15
This book, THE LIGHT AND THE DARK, (this series, STRANGERS AND BROTHERS, for that matter), contains absolutely first-rate psychology. Indeed, one could say that psychological observation is C.P. Snow's forte. Roy Calvert is about five years younger than Lewis Eliot. Through chance they have college rooms in the same entry.
Some believed that Roy Calvert would be the Orientalist of his generation. He had a special melancholy belonging to some chosen natures. He wanted to be elected a fellow of the college, but things were proceeding slowly. Arthur Brown was working on the election. It would be a close thing. Lewis was too new to the institution to be of much use. His friend, Francis Getliffe, a scientist, was waiting to be convinced that Roy Calvert was first-rate in his field. Roy Calvert was experiencing a darkness of mind. All through the period of melancholy his intelligence was as lucid as ever.
Ultimately Roy Calvert was elected a fellow after a hiatus during the spring and the summer to gather votes. Since his election brought joy to others, he pretended joy, but the melancholy had taken hold. Lewis was placed in a precarious position. What does one do when one senses a friend is wildly out of control. An older man tells Lewis that young men do silly things. To be successful a scholar needs obsessive devotion to the subject and a touch of supreme confidence. It was believed that Calvert had those traits.
Having undergone two bouts of bipolar disorder, Roy told Lewis that Lewis believed in predestination but he did not. He would still fight his condition. He would not consider it a given. It had come to the point where Lewis's presence deprived him of peace of mind.
Roy sought knowledge of God. He knew that his acts of faith were hollow. Then he learned a clergyman friend was self-absorbed. His sadness was returning. By age twenty eight Roy was spending dark nights. He spent time in Germany on scholarly tasks. A report was received that he was in too close contact with some of the Nazi officials. He did not consider matters of self-preservation as most people do.
Upon his return from Berlin he went through another dark period. He reacted with bitter anger to criticism of a now deceased collaborator. In his worst hours he had a sort of desperate charity. Roy had an elaborate dinner for his friends.
Both Roy and Lewis were distressed over the war. They held war-related jobs. Then Roy went into training to be a pilot. He married. He participated in bombing raids and went missing. It is understood he sought danger purposely.
The writing is elegant and fine. One is transported to Oxbridge in the thirties and forties, to stately houses, to government offices, to foreign cities. Snow's portrayal of the main characters is done with economy and precision.
Uff...what a waste of time!.......2000-04-11
Im not gonna waste to many words about this, but I should start by saying that I only read the "the light and dark". So it is fear to say that my knowledge about the series is limited but...the best thing about the book was when I finnished it! FINALLY! For me the book was so superficial and shallow. The book is about a guy in some sort of crises that never is really explained and it is written in such a way that it doesnt give you a possibility to suggest what is going in this guys head. A very passive writing, like describing a landscape! Im sure the auther has some indebt knowledge of human and there behaviour but he sure has trouble sharing it! I did manage to get through the book though and that is fine. I know now that I will never read a book by mister C.P.Snow again. If you are thinking of reading something by him you should read the first 50 pages. If you like it, fine go on, if not stop. The rest is excactly the same. Just another party or visit or what ever...nothing juicy! Regards, Arni
Extraordinarily Insightful Novels that Begin Greatest Series.......1999-07-03
I have never relished a series of novels (or a long novel) as I have Strangers and Brothers. In these serious works begin an unsparing examination of character in trying situations, of love and power, of obsession, of reason and unreason, of society and politics. I have read the series numerous times. Whenever I sought to interrupt my reading with something else, I grew frustrated at the other author's dullness of perception, the bluntness of his insight. It is a haunting series, to which any reader will return again and again. I should speak of the downsides: there is very little humor, and until one has read about 150 pages, the novels are not very interesting. However, if one gets that far, the next 2000 pages have a grip like no other. The series is a knowing, sophisticated, unsentimental examination of intelligent and usually well-meaning people in conflict. It is perhaps the most underrated series of books that have been written in this century. It is compelling, and you will always remember it, and return to it.
These books begin a wonderful cycle of novels.......1999-02-27
Love, politics, alienation, change. CP Snow tackled the "big topics". These books begin an eleven novel cycle, using as a focal point a provincial Englishman of humble origin who works his way up the rungs of law, into academia, and finally into government. These novels trace the narrator, Lewis Elliot, from his early small town days through his first entry into academia. Snow's style is easy, deliberate, and narrative--these books are not "experimental" in any sense, but instead are a "good read" in the best old-fashioned sense. Have you ever wished for books with both good plots and artistic merit? Then you must begin here. Snow understood a lot about us--that sometimes the most brilliant personalities are not the most successful, that the politics of small groups and the politics of large groups are entirely different, and that both faith and love have odd play with those whom they possess from time to time, and in Strangers and Brothers he spins his themes out well....I highly recommend.
Customer Reviews:
WOW!.......2005-10-20
One of the finest works of fiction that I have ever read. It just gripped me, from start to finish, in clean, tight, expressive prose. Hard to believe it is fiction, it reads so like an autobiography. Finishes in the summer of 1933, when Eliot is 27. So much of the book is devoted to his obsession/passion/love for Sheila Knight. I came to understand, as he did at the end, that he had no other choice but to love her, even though she would come close to ruining his ambition and career. Snow has a way of deliniating a human character so that you see it to the core, and always contrasting that nature with the events and circumstances that surround it. How much choice do we really have? That is the point. Utterly gripping.
highly readable, interesting.......2002-04-18
..."Time of Hope" has its Keating analogue do the narrating (it's in first person). Yes, we assume Dominique Francon considers herself superior to Keating, whereas Sheila waffles in this respect over Elliot, but here there is no Howard Roark to compare Elliot to. Yes, Keating is a plagiarist as well as a social climber, but he plagiarizes only Roark, and again here there is no Roark. Yes, Elliot calls Sheila "schizoid" and seeks to characterize her as a sort of Zelda Fitzgerald, but her actual behavior in the book has nothing whatsoever of the psychotic about it.
So what's the point? Beats me. This is a story of a man determined to rise from the lower class who does--to a point. He comes to decide that his rise is checked by the very thing that engendered it, his mother's ambition for him, but this is HIS reading; he may be wrong.
Customer Reviews:
So Disappointed.......2005-10-25
First book written in the series, written in 1940, but second in chronological order, "Time of Hope" being the first, starting in 1914, when Lewis Eliot is almost 9 years old. I started with "Time of Hope", thinking that since it was first in time, I should read it first. Perhaps that was a mistake, since I do not think "Strangers and Brothers" can hold a candle to "Time of Hope", written in 1949. That was a masterpeice, pure and simple. In "Strangers and Brothers" the narrative seems plodding, heavy, and at times downright preachy. And because I already knew that it was due mainly to George Passant alone that Lewis becomes the barrister he was, and the success that he was, the characterization of George by his trial lawyer as a man who has wasted his life seemed just plain wrong. No man who gives another man a chance he would never have had otherwise has wasted his life. He helped Lewis rise from his lower middle class beginnings with his prodding, encouragement, and most of all money, money that he had to take from those funds with which he regularly helped his parents. None of this is brought out in "Strangers and Brothers". But here too, as in "Time of Hope" is still that vagueness about what exactly George and Jack and Olive did that such a fuss was made about. All is implied; there are no scenes which take place telling us what happened. This did not hold me at all, and I found it tedious in spots. To be fair, I already knew that the three would be acquited from "Time of Hope", and maybe that colored my reading to some extent. Although to set the facts straight, Lewis was not the one who got George off; it was Getliff, his first employer when he was a young barrister.
A most impressive, imaginative story.......2001-03-04
Set in a provincial English village, Strangers and Brothers was written in 1940 and is the first of a series featuring the protagonist Lewis Eliot. The main cast is a group of poor young college students who are mentored by one of their law professors, George Passant, a man of remarkable gifts who exerts a crucial influence on the lives of the young people he has gathered around himself.
Passant attracts the devotion of the group, and helps them with advice, lending them money and generally persuading them of their worth and motivating them to go on to greater things. He also parties with them. Eliot is one of the group who goes on to become a solicitor (lawyer).
Passant is a passionate, scrupulously honest idealist who is endlessly optimistic about human value and worth; a penchant that leads him into quixotic ventures, and eventually into trouble with the law on a fraud accusation, from which Lewis Elliot eventually extricates him.
The story is entirely about complex human motivations and relationships, with no violence, explicit sex, high speed auto chases or any of the other devices deemed so necessary by modern fiction writers. Yet it is fascinating, full of tension, and holds the reader's interest to the end.
C.P. Snow is also the author of The Search, The Affair, Homecoming and several other best selling novels of his day. This as a story that caught and held my interest.
Joseph H Pierre
Greatest Series of Novels Ever Read.......2000-08-22
I have read many series of novels - from The Forsyte Saga (Galsworthy) to Dance to the Music of Time (Powell), from The Raj Quartet (Scott) to The Alexandrine Quartet (Durrell). This is the best. It is the most profound, sensitive, deeply involving series of novels, set iun England from about 1920 through the mid-1960s, against the background of the small town where the barrister grew up, the university he attended and became a fellow, the world of nuclear physics during W.W.II (in which his brother is a scientist) and the related worlds of espionage involving nuclear secrets, Cabinet politics, and high business.
Snow's interests are many: obsessive love, the gaining and holding of power over others (politics in all sorts of worlds), manners, psychological infirmity. He is fascinated by the development and shredding of character and power. Warning: these books take about 150 pages to get into, so it does require patience. Once you are into the series, there is no satisfaction to be gained from any other book until the series is done. (My reaction when reading others is "why won't the author REALLY tell us what is happening in this scene?").
These books are truly great and truly under-appreciated. (The poor, overly reductive television series in the mid-1980s or early 1990s didn't help).
A Masterpiece of Modern History and Personal Observation.......2000-08-06
This is the first book in a series of wonderful novels by C.P.Snow.
Snow was a molecular physicist in England in the 1930-1940's. During world war II he became a civil servant, engaged in recruiting scientists to the war efforts, especially the development of the atomic bomb.
His books contain detailed observation of all levels of life in this setting; pre-world war II England (Strangers and Brothers), academic politics in Cambridge (The Masters), Whitehall politics (Corridors of Power) and the discovery of atomic power and the dread of its consequences (The New Men). All his books are woven with sensitive descriptions of his personal life and that of his friends. His first wife, suffering froms schizophrenia, had almost crippled him emotionally (Homecomings, A Time of Hope) untill he met his second wife who taught him to experience love and friendship.
His work as Civil Servant Commissioner and industry earned him a knighthood in 1957.
Stangers and Brothers is the first book, telling the story of Lewis Eliot (CP Snow's literary identity) and his encounter with George Passant between 1925-1933, who brought together a group of young people in an idealistic search for personal, social, and sexual freedom. It is a fascinating decription of social ideas typical of pre-world war II England, yet universal to young adulthood's search for independence.
I enjoyed almost all of Snow's books and I certainly recommend this one too. I sincerely wish all his books were available, but unfortunately many are out of press.
Books:
- The Other Side of the River: A Story of Two Towns, a Death, and America's Dilemma
- The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking True Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow FDR
- The Prince (Bantam Classics)
- The Road
- The Sugar Solution: Weight Gain? Memory Lapses? Mood Swings? Fatigue? Your Symptoms Are Real - And Your Solution is Here
- The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
- The Ultimate Gift (The Ultimate Series #1)
- This Moment on Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future
- Toxic In-Laws: Loving Strategies for Protecting Your Marriage
- Travels in a Stone Canoe: The Return to the Wisdomkeepers
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The Double Bind: A Novel
- Holy Image, Hallowed Ground
- Apremont
- CCEL Classics CD: works by Saint Augustine, John Calvin, John Donne, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawr
- Edie: Girl on Fire
- Human Sexuality Today
- Huey: Spirit of the Panther
- A User's Guide to the View Camera, Third Edition
- CCEL Classics CD: works by Saint Augustine, John Calvin, John Donne, Julian of Norwich, Brother Lawr
- Rumbo Al Sur, Deseando El Norte: UN Romance En DOS Lenguas
The New Men (Strangers and Brothers)
Last Things (Strangers and Brothers)
The Conscience of the Rich (Strangers and Brothers)
Corridors of Power (Strangers and Brothers)
Time of Hope (Strangers and Brothers)
