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Posted by DariaSockey in Reviews on Monday, August 08, 2011 10:00 AM
Strange but fun.
That was the conclusion of our book club when we met last evening to discuss the 1906 novel Manalive by G.K. Chesterton. Chesterton, a Catholic convert and one of the most brilliant essayist of the 20th century, is best known for expository works such as Orthodoxy, What’s Wrong With the World, and The Everylasting Man.
But he also wrote several novels. These can be an acquired taste, since they are all decidedly odd. The protagonist of Manalive, Innocent Smith, is a larger-than-life character — both physically and philosophically.
His arrival at a London boarding house is like an explosion. Those around him are at first shocked but then enchanted by his eccentric take on everything and everyone. Under Smith’s influence, each of them is awakened from a bored, dreary existence as they grasp his conviction that every facet of Life is a miracle. But their newfound happiness — including several budding romances — is threatened when Smith is accused of monstrous crimes.
The book is packed with paradoxical lines you want to copy to your desk top. Here’s my favorite:
Imprudent marriages! And pray where in earth or heaven are there any prudent marriages? Might as well talk about prudent suicides ... What’s the alternative to marriage, barring sleep? It’s not liberty, Rosamund. Unless you marry God as our nuns do in Ireland, you must marry Man ... the only third thing is to marry yourself ... the only companion that is never satisfied, and never satisfactory.
You can download Manalive as an free ebook on project Gutenberg, Google Books, and Amazon Kindle. But two of our bookclub members found that they benefitted from this recently released
Ignatius Press Edition. It’s an annotated edition, which means it’s packed with footnotes that help explain obscure historical references and other items that the reader may not fully understand.
Also, the introduction is by Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesteron Society. As Ahlquist holds forth on the point — and pointlessness — of book introductions, you can imagine his hero nodding in approval.
Page 1 of 1 pages
I think you’d all enjoy Father Brown. I just love those stories. I love the last line of the one about the stolen ruby. Fr. Brown points to the abbey, now the stately home of some aristocratic family. “A great carved jewel, and that too was stolen”. Ha!
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