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Caught / Back / Concluding
Dazzling, daring and full of original insight and wit, Henry Green offers a unique view of a class-ridden Britain enduring both war and its aftermath. In the apocalyptic atmosphere of the Blitz, so brilliantly evoked in Caught, gossip spreads like wildfire and the lives of two men are torn apart. In Back, Charley, an amputee, returns from a prison camp to his village and the grave of the woman he loved. Concluding was Green's own favourite of his novels and tells the story of a summer's day and a schoolgirl's disappearance. The text of Caught used in this edition is based on Green's original manuscript, which was censored by the publisher on first publication, but can be read now for the first time in unexpurgated form.
656 pages, Paperback
First published April 7, 2016
1 person is currently reading
41 people want to read
About the author
Henry Green
56 books207 followersHenry Green was the nom de plume of Henry Vincent Yorke.
Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family with successful business interests. His father Vincent Wodehouse Yorke, the son of John Reginald Yorke and Sophia Matilda de Tuyll de Serooskerken, was a wealthy landowner and industrialist in Birmingham. His mother, Hon. Maud Evelyn Wyndham, was daughter of the second Baron Leconfield. Green grew up in Gloucestershire and attended Eton College, where he became friends with fellow pupil Anthony Powell and wrote most of his first novel, Blindness. He studied at Oxford University and there began a friendship and literary rivalry with Evelyn Waugh.
Green left Oxford in 1926 without taking a degree and returned to Birmingham to engage in his family business. He started by working with the ordinary workers on the factory floor of his family's factory, which produced beer-bottling machines, and later became the managing director. During this time he gained the experience to write Living, his second novel, which he worked on during 1927 and 1928. In 1929, he married his second cousin, the Hon. Adelaide Biddulph, also known as 'Dig'. They were both great-grandchildren of the 1st Baron Leconfield. Their son Sebastian was born in 1934. In 1940, Green published Pack My Bag, which he regarded as a nearly-accurate autobiography. During World War II Green served as a fireman in the Auxiliary Fire Service and these wartime experiences are echoed in his novel Caught; they were also a strong influence on his subsequent novel, Back.
Green's last published novel was Doting (1952); this was the end of his writing career. In his later years, until his death in 1973, he became increasingly focused on studies of the Ottoman Empire, and became alcoholic and reclusive. Politically, Green was a traditional Tory throughout his life.
Green was born near Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, into an educated family with successful business interests. His father Vincent Wodehouse Yorke, the son of John Reginald Yorke and Sophia Matilda de Tuyll de Serooskerken, was a wealthy landowner and industrialist in Birmingham. His mother, Hon. Maud Evelyn Wyndham, was daughter of the second Baron Leconfield. Green grew up in Gloucestershire and attended Eton College, where he became friends with fellow pupil Anthony Powell and wrote most of his first novel, Blindness. He studied at Oxford University and there began a friendship and literary rivalry with Evelyn Waugh.
Green left Oxford in 1926 without taking a degree and returned to Birmingham to engage in his family business. He started by working with the ordinary workers on the factory floor of his family's factory, which produced beer-bottling machines, and later became the managing director. During this time he gained the experience to write Living, his second novel, which he worked on during 1927 and 1928. In 1929, he married his second cousin, the Hon. Adelaide Biddulph, also known as 'Dig'. They were both great-grandchildren of the 1st Baron Leconfield. Their son Sebastian was born in 1934. In 1940, Green published Pack My Bag, which he regarded as a nearly-accurate autobiography. During World War II Green served as a fireman in the Auxiliary Fire Service and these wartime experiences are echoed in his novel Caught; they were also a strong influence on his subsequent novel, Back.
Green's last published novel was Doting (1952); this was the end of his writing career. In his later years, until his death in 1973, he became increasingly focused on studies of the Ottoman Empire, and became alcoholic and reclusive. Politically, Green was a traditional Tory throughout his life.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 15, 2021
Oh, dear, and there I was after years keeping this in the wishlist, to then pay an overpriced e-book otherwise unavailable and find out this wasn't A G Macdonell. Oh, if I only knew the drag and nightmare this would become. It ended up being so underwhelming that made me write my first review in years.
I'll just say Henry Green is bad, plain bad. He uses an interesting vocabulary, but all the elements that make his works and how he joins everything come out as subpar. His style hurts every salvageable part that could come from these stories, and I got to the end with pain, bearing the same ignorance regarding this collection as I came in.
Caught
I honestly had to look up the synopsis for this one, because by the time I ended the book, I had already forgotten what this was all about. The problem with Green's narrative style is that it is run mainly by "real" dialogue that includes misunderstandings, half-finished sentences and just plain confusion. You don't know who's talking, what they are talking about and what's the purpose of their talk. In addition to that, the complete lack of characterisation and introspection turn every available character in the story the same as the person next to them. There is no development and no interest at all on behalf of the author to paint a mildly interesting setting and give life to their lives.
This shouldn't be the case, since the novel could handle the theme of "heroes that are not in the front" and their relationship to the "society left behind" much better than what was done here. The fact that the supposed "conflict" between the main characters in the novel is actually so meaningless it shouldn't be part of the story at all made my blood boil every time it came up.
Back
This one suffers from the same shallow problems that Back has, but its immediate premise is a significant step up from it. However, its clueless characters, devoid of personality of their own and with no resolve at all in life aside from when they wish to fornicate is just abhorrent. In comparison to Back's protagonist, this one is even more uninteresting, to the point of being irritant. What could have been a novel half-long than it actually is, we are dragged for pages and pages due to a delusion that continues to roll even after factual proof of its farce is brought up by himself.
Oh, and the dialogues going nowhere run afloat in this one. Again, it could have become more than what it is, but Green simply can't make good characters and end up turning them into mindless logs standing outside with no force to move them from position. I get it that it's about war times and how one feels impotent and hesitant to act, but at least make a commitment for me to actually give a damn about what happen to these people.
Concluding
Last but not least, the best of the premises and the least intrusive novel of the bunch. The semi-dystopian setting and underlying mystery still don't have the necessary strength to make this move up from one star as a whole, though. The problem with this one isn't the characters lacking personality, unlike the previous ones, but rather the amount of characters without clear motives to do what they do. Who is the protagonist in this one? Is it the elder? The granddaughter? The two, erm, principals (I honestly didn't care for memorising who was who at this point)? Hey, one could argue it is a story without protagonists, but if you're going this route, do it in the right way.
In the end, even the mystery side of the thing becomes ruined because, at one point, it seems no one actually cares about whatever the hell happened.
Well, I ain't caring for this dumpster fire anymore. At least now I'll be aware to buy Macdonnell's books correctly next time I go shopping.
I'll just say Henry Green is bad, plain bad. He uses an interesting vocabulary, but all the elements that make his works and how he joins everything come out as subpar. His style hurts every salvageable part that could come from these stories, and I got to the end with pain, bearing the same ignorance regarding this collection as I came in.
Caught
I honestly had to look up the synopsis for this one, because by the time I ended the book, I had already forgotten what this was all about. The problem with Green's narrative style is that it is run mainly by "real" dialogue that includes misunderstandings, half-finished sentences and just plain confusion. You don't know who's talking, what they are talking about and what's the purpose of their talk. In addition to that, the complete lack of characterisation and introspection turn every available character in the story the same as the person next to them. There is no development and no interest at all on behalf of the author to paint a mildly interesting setting and give life to their lives.
This shouldn't be the case, since the novel could handle the theme of "heroes that are not in the front" and their relationship to the "society left behind" much better than what was done here. The fact that the supposed "conflict" between the main characters in the novel is actually so meaningless it shouldn't be part of the story at all made my blood boil every time it came up.
Back
This one suffers from the same shallow problems that Back has, but its immediate premise is a significant step up from it. However, its clueless characters, devoid of personality of their own and with no resolve at all in life aside from when they wish to fornicate is just abhorrent. In comparison to Back's protagonist, this one is even more uninteresting, to the point of being irritant. What could have been a novel half-long than it actually is, we are dragged for pages and pages due to a delusion that continues to roll even after factual proof of its farce is brought up by himself.
Oh, and the dialogues going nowhere run afloat in this one. Again, it could have become more than what it is, but Green simply can't make good characters and end up turning them into mindless logs standing outside with no force to move them from position. I get it that it's about war times and how one feels impotent and hesitant to act, but at least make a commitment for me to actually give a damn about what happen to these people.
Concluding
Last but not least, the best of the premises and the least intrusive novel of the bunch. The semi-dystopian setting and underlying mystery still don't have the necessary strength to make this move up from one star as a whole, though. The problem with this one isn't the characters lacking personality, unlike the previous ones, but rather the amount of characters without clear motives to do what they do. Who is the protagonist in this one? Is it the elder? The granddaughter? The two, erm, principals (I honestly didn't care for memorising who was who at this point)? Hey, one could argue it is a story without protagonists, but if you're going this route, do it in the right way.
In the end, even the mystery side of the thing becomes ruined because, at one point, it seems no one actually cares about whatever the hell happened.
Well, I ain't caring for this dumpster fire anymore. At least now I'll be aware to buy Macdonnell's books correctly next time I go shopping.
November 1, 2023
Almost too good to be real...
I discovered Henry Green only two months ago. I read the Vintage omnibus volume that contains Loving, Living, Party Going and thought it was tremendous. Almost immediately I began reading this other omnibus. Sometimes one has to jump headlong into an ouevre.
Caught instantly befuddled my nascent idea of what Henry Green was. The first omnibus had given me the notion that Green was always an experimental writer. But it turns out that Caught and the other novels in this omnibus are much more conventional in terms of structure (but still rather offbeat in some ways).
Caught, which is about the Auxillary Fire Service in London during WW2, reminded me a lot of William Sansom's Fireman Flower, an unjustly neglected short-story collection from 1944 (published one year after Caught). Both are realistic portrayals of extreme times, but their realism is highly surreal. Both authors have prose styles that are richer than those of most of their contemporaries. It's a shame they are half-forgotten now. But I suppose it's better to be half-forgotten than totally forgotten. Having said that, I recently watched an interview with Frank Zappa and when he was asked how he wanted to be remembered, he replied, "It's not at all important to be remembered," and I thought that was rather an excellent Stoical answer.
Back was an even better novel. Or so I decided while I was reading it. It faltered halfway through when Green went off on a curious tangent, introducing another story, a period piece that parallels the novel's main action (or what there is of it) but unfortunately the outtake feels only like a distraction, even though I know it isn't. It took me out of the claustrophobic and intense context of the novel and when I re-entered the book, some momentum had been lost. If it wasn't for this single flaw, which I guess can be regarded as very minor, I think I might rate Back as my favourite Green novel so far...
Then I reached Concluding, which apparently was Green's own favourite among his books. My biggest surprise while reading this novel was that it turned out to be a sort of SF novel set in a near-future dystopia. But that aspect is never openly stated, it just becomes the most likely solution the more you read of the book. At first I thought it was set in the 1940s. One of the main characters is a retired scientist whose work when he was younger had a powerful effect on the world, but no clue is ever given as to what his work was. Idly, I have been toying with the idea that perhaps it changed the outcome of history and diverted the Earth into an alternative time stream. It's hard to say really.
The narrative of Concluding is borderline kafkaesque and because it's only borderline kafkaesque and not full-blown kafkaesque, this somehow makes the whole thing more kafkaesque, because you are never sure if it really is kafkaesque or not, and that uncertainty is kafkaesque by definition... I get the feeling that other people who have read it might think it isn't kafkaesque and I would thus become the only person who does think it is kafkaesque, rendering me a kafkaesque outsider like Josef K.
Henry Green has revitalised my enthusiasm for literature in a way that I hadn't suspected was possible. Terry Southern said something that I think is interesting: Henry Green wasn't just a writer's writer, but a writer's writer's writer.
I discovered Henry Green only two months ago. I read the Vintage omnibus volume that contains Loving, Living, Party Going and thought it was tremendous. Almost immediately I began reading this other omnibus. Sometimes one has to jump headlong into an ouevre.
Caught instantly befuddled my nascent idea of what Henry Green was. The first omnibus had given me the notion that Green was always an experimental writer. But it turns out that Caught and the other novels in this omnibus are much more conventional in terms of structure (but still rather offbeat in some ways).
Caught, which is about the Auxillary Fire Service in London during WW2, reminded me a lot of William Sansom's Fireman Flower, an unjustly neglected short-story collection from 1944 (published one year after Caught). Both are realistic portrayals of extreme times, but their realism is highly surreal. Both authors have prose styles that are richer than those of most of their contemporaries. It's a shame they are half-forgotten now. But I suppose it's better to be half-forgotten than totally forgotten. Having said that, I recently watched an interview with Frank Zappa and when he was asked how he wanted to be remembered, he replied, "It's not at all important to be remembered," and I thought that was rather an excellent Stoical answer.
Back was an even better novel. Or so I decided while I was reading it. It faltered halfway through when Green went off on a curious tangent, introducing another story, a period piece that parallels the novel's main action (or what there is of it) but unfortunately the outtake feels only like a distraction, even though I know it isn't. It took me out of the claustrophobic and intense context of the novel and when I re-entered the book, some momentum had been lost. If it wasn't for this single flaw, which I guess can be regarded as very minor, I think I might rate Back as my favourite Green novel so far...
Then I reached Concluding, which apparently was Green's own favourite among his books. My biggest surprise while reading this novel was that it turned out to be a sort of SF novel set in a near-future dystopia. But that aspect is never openly stated, it just becomes the most likely solution the more you read of the book. At first I thought it was set in the 1940s. One of the main characters is a retired scientist whose work when he was younger had a powerful effect on the world, but no clue is ever given as to what his work was. Idly, I have been toying with the idea that perhaps it changed the outcome of history and diverted the Earth into an alternative time stream. It's hard to say really.
The narrative of Concluding is borderline kafkaesque and because it's only borderline kafkaesque and not full-blown kafkaesque, this somehow makes the whole thing more kafkaesque, because you are never sure if it really is kafkaesque or not, and that uncertainty is kafkaesque by definition... I get the feeling that other people who have read it might think it isn't kafkaesque and I would thus become the only person who does think it is kafkaesque, rendering me a kafkaesque outsider like Josef K.
Henry Green has revitalised my enthusiasm for literature in a way that I hadn't suspected was possible. Terry Southern said something that I think is interesting: Henry Green wasn't just a writer's writer, but a writer's writer's writer.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews