Loving

by Henry Green, Roxana Robinson (Introduction)

Loving is set in the vast hereditary house of the Tennants, an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family, but the story mainly involves their servants. The war has led to a scarcity of experienced staff, and when Eldon the butler dies, Raunce the head footman is assigned his job. The other servants are taken aback by this irregular promotion, but lovely young Edith, a recent hire, is quite attracted to the older Raunce and a flirtation begins. And it is Edith who discovers Mrs. Tennant’s daughter-in-law, whose husband is fighting at the front, in bed with a neighbor one morning, scandalizing the whole household.

When the Tennants depart for England, Raunce is left in charge of the house and struggles to control its disputatious inhabitants as well as to secure the love of Edith, especially after a precious family jewel disappears. In Loving, Henry Green explores the deeply precarious nature of ordinary life against the background of the larger world at war.

Genres: Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, Ireland, Novels, Literature, 20th Century

224 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1945

About the author

Henry 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.

Reviews

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

"So, what are you reading now?"

"Just another one of the novels I bought at the airport!"

"Oh dear, are you hating this one as well?"

"What? Hating? I'm LOVING it!"

"What is it about? Not about psychopaths killing off siblings and cousins before adolescence I hope?"

"Well, good question. Not much happens actually, and that is the whole charm of the novel. It's about people talking."

"What are they talking about?"

"Whatever suits them at the moment. The plot consists of a long dialogue between different characters staying at a big mansion in Ireland during World War Two, and they talk, and talk and talk. Ladies talk, servants talk, children talk. The stories shift and change, and quite often, two people talk to each other about different things, much to the delight of the reader, who can catch up on two threads simultaneously."

"Sounds confusing!"

"But it's not. The author is a genius observer. He manages to show what his characters are at by making them frown, laugh, or blush, or lie or tell the truth, all according to their current state of mind."

"Is there a main theme?"

"I suppose it is LOVING. After all, the title indicates it. The cook (don't call her that, it makes her mad!) loves her little Albert, and the big Albert loves Edith, who loves Mr Raunce alias Charley, formerly known as Arthur. Kate doesn't really love Paddy, but she feels lonely. And Mrs Jack, the younger Mrs Tennant, adores her secret lover, while her husband seems to love to go fishing. They all love talking and gossip and a bit of excitement!"

"Sounds like you love them!"

"Oh, I do! How could I not! It is just adorable to be part of the gossip, to live among them and to listen behind the door, smiling at the turns the same old story takes depending on who tells it to whom."

"What was the best thing about it?"

"I couldn't tell, I read it during one long sitting, taking in the dialogues without break. But maybe the bedroom scene, relived (or maybe I should rather say reTALKED) from all possible angles? Or the mystery of the lost ring, unfolding like a round of Cluedo, except that all protagonists seem to talk about a different game, or to remix the cards during the session?"

"So you admit that not all new authors you try out are rubbish?"

"I never said that!"

"I thought I heard..."

"That's what happens when voices play Chinese Whispers in your head!"

"That's what happened while Henry Green wrote "Loving", right?"

"Yes, and those voices were just lovely, and unique, and typical of their time and place!"

"That's enough talking now, I am off to read another novel by Green."

[Vit Babenco · Rating 5 out of 5]

“There were masters and servants, servants and dogs they taught you how to touch your cap.” The Clash – Something about England.
There were also peacocks – those silly birds of vanity.

Both girls giggled. The sky was overcast so that the light was dark as though under water. The afternoon was warm. It was the first afternoon to be warm since autumn. Though they could not see them the peacocks below were beginning to parade.

The masters keep intriguing and the servants have their own intrigues.
And while the masters remain ignorant of their servants’ mysteries the servants know all of their masters’ secrets. And their seemingly uncouth conversations are full of hearsay, gossips, scandalmongering… and of love.

This time she actually got up in haste and did no less than sit on his knee.
‘You don’t love me,’ she murmured. When he kissed her she kissed him back with such passion, all of her hard as a board, that he flopped back flabbergasted, having caught a glimpse of what was in her waiting for him.

And while the masters have their dramas the servants have theirs… Every individual has a right to have one’s own personal drama.

[Jeffrey Keeten · Rating 3 out of 5]

”They were wheeling wheeling in each other’s arms heedless at the far end where they had drawn up one of the white blinds. Above from a rather low ceiling five great chandeliers swept one after the other almost to the waxed parquet floor reflecting in their hundred thousand drops the single sparkle of distant day, again and again red velvet paneled walls, and two girls, minute in purple, dancing multiplied to eternity in these trembling pears of glass.”



The serving staff was fortunate to be employed at the Irish Country Estate far from the bombings that were currently leveling London. Charley Raunce is on the verge of a promotion as he waits patiently for the head butler to breath his last. He will not only assume this new job title, but will also finally be called by his real name. Traditionally, in the Tennant household, he has been referred to as Arthur simply because the first young man employed in that position was named Arthur. It is too much to expect for the Aristocratic family to remember new names. Charley is head butler now and Mrs. Tennant, though struggling to remember, is now required to call him Mr. Raunce.

The household is left to their own devices most of the time as the Tennant family moves between their London home and the Irish countryside. One might even say that they have a bit too much time on their hands. Gossip is the best currency and spreading rumors about their employers and each other is the main form of entertainment.

All the servants have their own fiefdoms and protect those areas as if they were Knights of the Templer guarding the walls of a castle. After all what they control about the household is the only justification for their existence.

Charley is enamored with Edith, and spends quite a bit of time planning ways to catch her by herself. Although that is difficult as Edith and Kate are generally paired together. (They are the two girls that are dancing under the chandeliers.) Henry Green has several scenes where the two maids are more intimate than just good friends, but maybe I am reading those passages with modern eyes.

Charley though is always after affection from both girls, ”Here, Give us a kiss.” when an opportune moment presents himself. He is rarely successful, but it is all part of the game between him and the young women.

Peacocks roam the grounds. When one of the birds is strangled by a visiting boy, the body of the peacock continues to appear and disappear from the strangest places. This provides an ongoing bout of speculations about who was behind the now mystical peacock’s movements.


Henry Green

Henry Green is not afraid to repeat words, liking the lyricalness of using them again and again.

”She folded the shutters back into the wall. And Edith looked out on the morning, the soft bright morning that struck her dazzled dazzling eyes.”

Green is well respected by British writers many of them giving him credit for inspiring and improving the dialogue they write for their own novels. There are some interesting interplay with conversations in this novel. The humor is subtle and so is the sexuality that I could feel bubbling beneath the surface. ”Time magazine included this novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005”. This novel also influenced the movie Godsford Park and the hit TV series Downton Abbey.

Green had interesting opinions about writing. "Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations [...] Prose should be a direct intimacy between strangers with no appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to fears unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone."


I had to see what a person named “Dig” looked like. Adelaide Biddulph Yorke.

Green’s real name is Henry Vincent Yorke and he is descended from wealthy landowners. He studied at Oxford University where he developed a friendship and rivalry with Evelyn Waugh. Typing his name just now reminds me how tragically long it has been since I’ve read Waugh. Green married his second cousin the Hon. Adelaide Biddulph in 1929. Her nickname was “Dig” which I find rather charming for someone of her pedigree. Green published his last novel in 1952 and become a scholar of the Ottoman Empire, a recluse, and an alcoholic until his death in 1973. It is tragic how many writers, artists, and movie stars end up in similar circumstances as their creativity turns to dust.

[mark monday · Rating 2 out of 5]

as the song asks, who wrote the book of love? was it a person who emphasizes the mundanity of experience, the pettiness of people, the tedium of life? is this book of love composed mainly of dialogue - the sort of flat, unremarkable dialogue that one tends to tune out while working, waiting in line, on the bus, at the bank, wherever? is love as magical and life-altering as changing the sheets or clearing the dining room table? is life just predictable, humdrum repetition?



I've read comparisons of this book to the BBC series Upstairs, Downstairs & Downton Abbey and to the Altman film Gosford Park. haha, that's hilarious. may as well compare dishwater and champagne! this story of the lives of servants in an Irish estate during world war 2 lacks the depth, richness, and resonance of any of those works. it has much more in common with the films of Chantal Akerman: a microscopic fascination with the drab and the commonplace. characters are supposedly realistic but, to me at least, lifeless does not equal real. every single person in the world has an interior life that is more interesting than the way they would look in a snapshot doing some tedious chore. the book itself was rather a chore.

but there are admirable things about it - Loving is not what I'd call a bad book. there is a purity to it, in the author's driving need to showcase futility and monotony and uninteresting lives. and Green certainly does have an ear for dialogue. the dullest of dialogue, sure, but dialogue that feels very real. although his characters are boring and flat - they don't even have the zest of caricature - there are some comic moments to be found here and there at their inability to understand even simple situations, let alone each other. misunderstandings leading to frayed feelings and the inability of certain people to read a room are an unamusing but regular part of life; in Loving, they were my primary source of amusement. Green also has a deft hand with the occasional surprising juxtaposition: my favorite bit was a scene where a nanny drones on when reading a story about doves and love, while her young charges pay her no mind and instead intently watch a group of actual doves fornicate and bully each other.



review for Living here
review for Party Going here

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first Henry Green I have read. It is quite a claustrophobic novel; Updike called Green the “saint of the mundane” and indeed, very little of any significance actually happens. It has been compared to Gosford Park and there are some surface similarities (but rather less action). Loving is set in a rambling country house in Ireland during the early years of the Second World War. The Tennant family move between their Irish country seat and their homes in England (primarily London). The servants are mostly English and remain in Ireland whether the family are in residence or not.
Loving revolves around the daily routines of the servants, their petty squabbles, worries, loves, hates and workaday stresses. The war is at a distance, but there are storm clouds on the horizon. There are clouds closer to home relating to some of the local Irish estate workers who may or may not have links to the IRA (also an offstage presence).
Loving is driven by dialogue; it is almost stream of consciousness in dialogue form, spare in its descriptions. The cut short and tight dialogue feels a little like some of the “kitchen sink dramas” of the early 1960s. Green has a great ear for ordinary speech. There are clever comic elements woven in; the corpse of the throttled peacock turning up in odd places, the missing and reappearing ring, the lisping insurance evaluator, the scene with the drunken cook and the mistress, befuddled Miss Burch (who never really grasps what is going on).
Of course, one cannot escape the sense of this being a fairytale, set outside of time. It starts with “Once upon” (a day rather than a time) and ends with “and lived happily ever after”. Nevertheless the characters are real and realistic, if cut off from the brutalities of war. The entire novel takes place in the house and grounds; those who leave just fall off the end of the world.
This was written in 1945 as the war ended. Green spent the whole war working for the London Fire Brigade and will have seen the height of the blitz and been very much in the centre of some difficult service. Then he writes this, set away from it all in rural Ireland at a time when he was dragging bodies out of burning buildings. Perhaps, like Blake he was looking for a contrast to the “dark satanic mills” of the modern world; but Green insisted on populating it with real and recognisable people.
The ending I found difficult and without the obvious fairytale links it would have been trite. However on the whole it worked and I am interested enough to read more and will read Living next. I think this could be called stream of dialogue rather than stream of consciousness, but I do understand why many writers rate it so highly.

[Jean-Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

At a country house in Ireland we lay our scene. WWII is raging, but within the house the battle lines have long since been drawn. Fear of a German invasion is as great as fear of the IRA (and the Irish in general), yet various domestic crises predominate. Words are weapons among the staff, and they use them often and well.

It is very much a novel-in-dialogue, à la Ivy Compton-Burnett, and the characters are so consumed by their own preoccupations that the gist of a conversation isn't always immediately evident, not to mention the linguistic eccentricities (of author as well as characters). Pretty much Gosford Park in book form. It isn't a book in which this happens, and then that happens, followed by something else--Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3; this and that and something else are happening simultaneously, Chapter 1.2.3.2.1.2.3.2.1, and the author is merely shifting his continually roving focus from one scene to another. Not something to be rushed through in order to round out some reading challenge. Stop, admire the peacocks.

[Marc Lamot · Rating 3 out of 5]

Life as it is
If you start to read this novel without much foreknowledge, then you’re in for a surprise: Green offers an endless stream of dialogues (200 pages on end), and at the end you come to the conclusion that there’s barely a storyline in this book. Place of action is a country estate in Ireland, inhabited by British aristocrats, in the midst of the Second World War. Green mainly focuses on the domestic staff, a motley crew who are more or less left to their own devices by the (usually) absent owners, and do almost nothing but bicker and speak ill of each other. On the surface, the setting seems to have a high “Upstairs, Downstairs” flavor, and “Dowton Abbey” inevitably comes to mind as well.

But as a reader you hardly get a grip on Green's story. He alternates intimate scenes with quarrels, occasionally lets it come to a comedy of errors (about a lost ring, for example), and especially sows confusion with peacocks that appear at the most unexpected moments. The transitions between some scenes are barely noticeable, there's quite some dialect in it, and nothing is as it seems; the scenes between the love couple Edith and Charley, for example, on the surface are charming, but at the same time there appears to be an enormous divide between them. And that title 'Loving', whilst most of the time the characters are bickering with each other...

As a reader you are constantly wrestling with the question of what the actual focus of the story is. But that clearly turns out to be the wrong attitude. I cannot put it better than Sebastian Faulks, who wrote an introduction to this book: “The inner shape of the novel in this way imitates our experience of living: it promises pattern, then withholds it, insisting on a formless banality; it describes intensity, but as part of a grudgingly accepted monotony; it glimpses poetry, but only from the corner of its eye.” In other words: life as it is. Nicely done, indeed, but with this book Green foremost confirms his reputation of being a “writer’s writer”. My rating: 2.5 stars.

[Doug H · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've always preferred character-driven novels to plot-driven ones, but I'm not sure what to make of a dialogue-driven novel. Especially one so laden with seemingly purposeful obfuscation. What's going on? Who's zooming who? Who's even who for that matter? Two different Alberts, a Charley who used to be known as Arthur and who is now trying at being a Mr. Raunce? I think this novel is interesting as a literary oddity and I particularly enjoyed the dialogue, but I also found it a royal pain to read. I know I'm a slow reader, but it took me 11 days to get through it and it's only 240 pages long. Green doesn't hand anything to you easily. Or, maybe I'm thick.

This was the second Henry Green novel I've read and I'm glad it wasn't my first, being a bit too obtuse for my liking. Some say it's his best, but I didn't get nearly as much from it as I did from Back. That one also required close (almost investigative) reading, but I got a bigger payoff from it. Will try Caught next.

[Matthew Ted · Rating 2 out of 5]

41st book of 2024.

Once upon a day an old butler called Eldon lay dying in his room attended by the head housemaid, Miss Agatha Burch. From time to time the other servants separately or in chorus gave expression to proper sentiments and then went on with what they had been doing.
One name he uttered over and over, ‘Ellen.’

So starts Loving, a book that has that strange paradox some books can have: being well-loved and, equally, somewhat 'forgotten'. It's a 2.5, really, because I found myself marvelling at certain bits and realising Green is a good writer. It's a shame that this novel is almost entirely made up of dialogue as some of the few bits of writing that aren't dialogue are written like this:

They were wheeling wheeling in each other’s arms heedless at the far end where they had drawn up one of the white blinds. Above from a rather low ceiling five great chandeliers swept one after the other almost to the waxed parquet floor reflecting in their hundred thousand drops the single sparkle of distant day, again and again red velvet paneled walls, and two girls, minute in purple, dancing multiplied to eternity in these trembling pears of glass.

This novel supposedly inspired shows like Downton Abbey, and you can see why; it's mostly comprised of the servants in a big country house in Ireland getting on each other's nerves, gossiping and thinking about their own futures (mostly involving the IRA or the imminent invasion of Germans, which they all feel is coming). Despite all this, I just didn't massively care. A missing ring. A dead peacock. I never found myself fully invested in any of the characters, especially as it's only through dialogue we experience them. Akin to reading a play rather than seeing it performed, in some ways. Without a doubt, masterfully subtle. Maybe when I'm older I'll read it again and see all the nuance in it and love it for it. For now, as an impatient 20-something year old, I wanted a bit more meat on the bone.

[Graychin · Rating 3 out of 5]

‘Loving’ reads like ‘Gosford Park’ (the Altman film) but without the plot, or any plot at all. Green has been called “a writer’s writer’s writer” and praised to kingdom come by everyone that counts. And yes, his dialogue is masterful and there are real moments of light in his prose. His cinematic movement from scene to scene is unusual (one character will look out a window at two others in the distance and the narrative immediately moves to them without a break). Strange too, his habit of this-ing and that-ing everyone after he’s introduced them by name into a scene, so that Edith (for example) walks into a room and we are told that “this woman [Edith] then stepped quickly aside” (not a real quote, but gives you the idea).

In its tightly drawn scenes and play of voices, ‘Loving’ has a way of flickering warmly through the mind after you set it aside. I enjoyed it, and appreciated it. Personally, however, I think Anthony Powell at his best (‘Buyer’s Market,’ ‘The Kindly Ones,’ ‘Books Do Furnish a Room’) is better, and funnier for all his melancholy. Not that comparisons count for anything, but there you go.

UPDATE: In bed before my alarm went off this morning it occurred to me: This book is a fairy tale. There's the standard opening ("once upon") and standard closing ("ever after"), of course. That's an obvious tip off. But there's more too: the star-crossed lovers (sorta), the castle (definitely), the threat from without (IRA, WWII, insurance man), etc... Okay, I get it. Not exactly sure what to do with it.

[Mara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't expecting a stream of consciousness type novel, but this is one my favorite versions of that narrative style that I've encountered! To me, the best stream of consciousness novels end up being more something I experience more than I analyze or get deeply invested in, and I loved just get lost in this crazy Irish castle in the waning days of WWII. The intrigue, the pettiness, the fading days of the British aristocracy... all stuff I loved. I'm looking forward to more from Henry Green

[Lisa (NY) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a while to adjust to the cadence of Loving. The novel is about the daily lives of servants in a large "castle" in Ireland during WWII. It is all dialogue with gossip, scandal, alliances and coupling.

Everything is on the surface with flitting dark undertones. The novel moves easily from conversation to conversation - with no inner thoughts, no character history, no plot, no conclusion. The reader has to fill in blanks. I found myself intrigued and involved. Liking this novel, more and more, as it progressed - but not quite loving it.

[مروان البلوشي · Rating 4 out of 5]

تاريخ القراءة الأصلي : 2012

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some say Loving is defined by what it excludes rather than by what it contains. That’s right, though I don’t think the comment is a tribute. As background, Loving is almost totally dialog without much description of setting, character, action, or context. While I’ll applaud the writer for withdrawing his pen when it came time for exposition, the context that is available in the dialog isn’t enough to enjoy this novel as much as one could if Green were to have stirred our five senses with some description, some action.

What I imagine is that Green, either as a challenge to himself, or because he harbored a secret desire to write dramas and not novels, or because he had a disdain for anything that came close to exposition chose to write dialog and little else. Transporting myself back to the landed gentry of 1942 Ireland—a difficult proposition—I try and imagine all that surrounds the statements that come from a newly promoted butler. This is no small task in 2019. Even assuming I can get the context purely from dialog, and that I can fill in my five senses, I don’t think the story is particularly compelling.

And so I understand how writers are duly impressed by Green’s dialog and his ability to create something close to a fully formed world without much description, but impressing the reader and giving them a satisfying experience are not the same. This novel reminds me of some movies I’ve seen with a trick ending. Those movies are often two hours of drudgery. When the curtain falls, and the lights come on, I stand, yawn, head quickly for the exit and think, how clever. Same here. What clever drudgery Loving is.

[Edward · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book I wouldn’t have read without a book group impetus, but worth reading. Written in 1945 well before the hugely popular tv series, UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, and its equally popular successor, DOWNTON ABBEY, it made me think of the dark side of those two series. It, too, has the comings and goings of both the “downstairs” staff and the "upstairs” owners.

In Green’s version, the manor house, Kinalty Castle, is located in Ireland, owned and staffed almost entirely by British who, top to bottom, complain about the barbarities of this backward country, so” backward” that it doesn’t even take sides during World War II, being fought as the novel progresses. The one Irish employee, a stable hand, speaks with such a dreadful accent (according to the British), that no one can understand his utterances.

I say the “dark side” as no one comes across as admirable in this depiction of the cross-section of this manor house, but on the other hand, there are no real villains either, Just a lot of bumbling self-seeking characters all of whom are living under some tension. The tension can be found in the head butler, Charley Raunce and his fear of being sacked for petty embezzlement, of having his affair with a maid twenty years younger found out, or even some odd symptons of ill health. No one quite trusts Charley, including staff members who drink too much or are envious of him. And the upstairs owners have their anxieties as well. Jack Tennant, the dowager owner’s son, is off to the war, leaving behind his wayward wife.

Much of this tension comes to a focus upon a ring which is lost, then found by a staff member but not returned, only to be taken again by one of three children who are staying at the Castle. Eventually, it makes its way back to the owner, but no one is quite sure of where it has been. In a way this is a reflection of the plot which wanders haphazardly with the logic of, or lack of it, a fairy tale. In fact, the story opens like a fairy tale (“once upon a day”) and closes the same way (“happily ever after”).

The strength of the novel lies in the dialogue, what people say, and is amusing. It's inconsistent from day to day. “Oh it’s disgustin’ that’s what this old place is, it’s horrible”, says young Edith to old Charley who is insistent upon her sitting on his lap. The characters talk about going to England, getting involved in the war effort, and at the same the time speak fearfully of the dreaded IRA, or worse, the Germans who migtht actually invade the country. “an’ all on top of all this bombing, not to mention the invasion with Jerry set to cross over with drawn swords, it’s plenty to get anyone down.” And then where would they be? But no one, aside from 18 year old Albert, an underling to Charley, makes any moves to return to England. At the end, Charley and Edith do flee, but that action is undercut by describing them as living “happily ever after.”

Is the novel a comedy or not? The dialogue is genuinely funny, people changing their attitudes toward day-to-day duties and frustrations, mostly petty, except for the missing ring blowup, but you can sense a world that is shifting, one that is going to make this lifestyle obsolete.

World War II will change everything, it’s becoming expensive to maintain this “old place” (suggested by big sections of the castle that are closed off), Charley and Edith’s running off at the end is a recognition that the life of servants is over; the novel opens with the foreshadowing death of the old butler whose place Charley is taking – temporarily. The peacocks represent this castle – beautiful spread tail feathers, but they make horrible screeches that negate their surface beauty.

I’d call it a comedy, then, but one with dark overtones. Those same overtones can be found in the later tv series about the end of the big houses, but they’re generally exercises in serious nostalgia, unlike where LOVING puts its emphasis.

[Elizabeth Urello · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henry Green’s most beloved novel focuses on the complicated relationships between the servants of an Irish country house during World War II. At the time of the novel, Ireland is neutral territory, remote from the escalating conflict and mostly abandoned by the English gentry who own homes there. The servants are left alone with their employers’ children, and thus free, they fight, love, ally, steal and work.

Green is a master at painting beautiful pastoral settings and then focusing on the myriad, nagging daily stresses of the people living in them - both in this novel, and in my personal favorite of his novels, Concluding. While the servants at the Tennants’ manor are removed from the horrible war and mostly left alone to do their chores and mind their own affairs, every character in Loving is plagued by innumerable stresses. These are not carefree people. They worry about putting away enough for retirement, they worry about their families back in England, they throw themselves into power struggles, they lie, they steal, they torment each other. They fall ill, they throw tantrums, they emotionally blackmail each other. They deliberate about enlisting, moving, staying put, escaping. They fear the Germans, they fear the IRA.

The best scenes in the novel are those which Green describes carefully in close focus, and where the events occurring are so closely wedded to the setting that one relies entirely on the other - the dovecoat where the children play and the lovers meet, the cavernous gallery where Edith and her charges play a game of blind man’s buff, the eccentric lampman’s saddleroom with the window into the peacocks’ shed where the maids are caught snooping by the butler. The central figures of the novel - the butler, Charley Raunce, and the housemaid, Edith - are clearly made for each other. Both dim and conniving, they negotiate an ever-changing workaday morality all their own - skimming off the top of the house’s finances is only smart, but stealing property is over the line...mostly. Raunce is constant in his affections, but produces a never-ending torrent of unnecessary falsehoods whenever he feels himself cornered or disrespected, and is often suspected of more cunning than he possesses. Edith is ever careful of the feelings of the staff, but tucks away information on them for when she might need it. Innocent and easily scandalized on the surface, she is in fact a master of manipulation, sexual and otherwise. Loving is a novel overshadowed by a great war and made up of many small ones, and in the end, we know that Edith, at any rate, will be among the survivors. And that is as it should be, because in Green’s Britain, the manor is but the playground of the servants.

[Charlie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have never taken so long to finish such a short book. I blame myself for not appreciating the humor, dialogue, or story. During the three months it took for me to finish this 200 page book, I never grew to know, like or care about the characters. If you are looking to experience what it is like as a servant in war time Ireland watch Downton Abby.

All and all, not Loving it.

[Grant Faulkner · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s always fascinating to read a book and be at odds with other critics. The questions span from “Am I simply the wrong reader for this book?” to “Do I have too many kids and soccer games going on to thoughtfully assess this book?” to “Did these critics have too many damn kids and activities to decently evaluate the book?”

Elizabeth Bowen said that Henry Green’s novels “reproduce, as few English novels do, the actual sensations of living.”

W.H. Auden called him the finest living English novelist.

Francine Prose put Loving on her list of “Books to Be Read Immediately.”

John Updike praises Green for “this surrender of self, this submersion of opinions and personality in the intensity of witnessing ‘life itself.’”

It’s this consistent emphasis on “reproduction” and “objectivity” that troubles me. Green is too frequently a stenographer when I want him to be an author.

Sure the dialogue is, well, realistic, true to life, etc., but it doesn’t hold nearly the same subtext as, say, Hemingway, who also privileged the author as an objective witness. In fact, the reason Hemingway reads better than Green, and is more illuminating, is because he never truly dared to actually surrender himself (thank God!).

Henry Green said that he aimed to “create ‘life’ which does not eat, procreate, or drink, but which can live in people who are alive.” Updike praises Green as a “saint of the mundane,” which is unfortunately accurate: Green bathes in the mundane, breathes the mundane, eats the mundane—and procreates in the mundane. In fact, my reading experience was so mundane that I kept getting distracted by the dishes, the laundry, and the bills, but not by any of the big life questions and thoughts I like to read for.

Updike writes that Green’s “observations of the world appear as devoid of prejudice and preconception as a child’s.” I only wish he could have presented a scene from a child’s point of view, with the jarring perspective that children so often provide simply because they are not “saints of mundane,” but steeped in the kind of authorial personality that continually demands interpretation and reinterpretation.

I do agree with one of Updike’s comments. He calls Green’s novels “photographs of a vanished England,” which is my overwhelming response to Loving. I felt as if I were walking through an odd sort of literary museum, observing some of the interesting details of class differences in England, eavesdropping, but never quite experiencing the high points of dramatic intrigue, a story that is shaped with a point of view—the fundamental characteristics of a meaningful narrative.

I’m sure that Green’s novels served a more forceful and urgent purpose in the era he wrote them (from approximately 1920 to 1950), and he’s a capable author in certain ways. He does create a polyphony of voices in the novel, so that life sounds like a hammering dialogue of competing needs. He’s just not the stylist I desire—or more accurately, he doesn’t convey the necessary transmutation that defines art. I don’t want novelists to just be witnesses, after all—the idea of aspiring to pure and faithful mimesis in a literal sense was essentially exhausted by Zola. Novelists need personality because they need a point of view.

But then again, I might be the wrong reader for Henry Green. Or I was too distracted by things like school auctions to give him his proper due.

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a must-read and I owe it to that great James Wood for pointing me to it (in a lecture and an essay [In The Irresponsible Self...]). Green another of the British Modernists who makes me wonder how it is that I never knew. Do they teach him in America? Wood acts like everybody knows him. Green's style, like Joyce's, Forster's and Virginia Woolf's, is intensely subjective and tricky with point of view shifts and heightened interiority, but takes you off guard due to the ostensible linearity of the narrative. The language is dense and crafted but seems honest to me and not overly self-consicus, capturing in some kind of amazing pitch (I can't say it's perfect because it's foreign to me) working class rural Britain during wartime. The turns of phrase will make you want to commit THEFT. A historic context of IRA incursions and war-dead, and splits between dialect speakers and those who can inhabit highbrow manners and linguistics, makes it layered and complicated. And yet the plot is simple and slight, but it's there, and gives the book a straightforward momentum. It took me a long time to read this book but it was worth every second. It might have been worth it just for the presence of a Vardamon-like character who is never reported communicating in words but can be understood through the one character who is bilingual in both dialect and Queen's English. (He says something the narrator can't understand, she responds to him in English). It's bizarre and makes you wonder how one can be so crafty writing in a kind of omniscient (or pseudo-omniscient) third in which even the narrator has limits of comprehension.

[Mary · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'd never heard of Henry Green or this novel until I ran across it on the list of the top 100 novels in English of the 20th century as chosen by the Modern Library's editorial board. (Re: the reader's list? Step away from the Ayn Rand -- she's a crazy lady!) I decided a few years ago that I was going to try and read all 100. This one obviously deserves to on be the list. It's a story about English people living in a mansion in Ireland during World War II. Most of the story is about the servants' lives and loves, and the tension between them and their employer. It's a visual book, almost cinematic. The action moves smoothly from one place to another -- you can almost see how it would be framed on screen. The characters have depth. So I don't know why I didn't enjoy it more. It is only 200 pages, but it took me forever to read. I kept looking to see what page I was on. I do believe that you have to be in the mood for books, and often when I really enjoy one, I think it's because it happened along at the right time. Your timing must be off, Mr. Green.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a novel from which it is easy to quote. And it is not a novel that is widely known. Reading Henry Green is like a guilty pleasure, one that separates you from the unwashed masses. Here is an industrialist who not only knows how to write, but who feels intensely. His characters come to life -- not from saying things that are significant, but for living their life intensely.

Loving is set at Kinalty Castle in Ireland during the early days of the bombardment of London. Both the owners and the serving staff are English, so English that they are reluctant to deal with the Irish that surround them. We begin with the death of the old butler, Eldon, who dies with a woman's name on her lips. He is replaced by the footman, Charley Rauce, who falls deeply in love with one of the housemaids, Edith.

The owners, the Tenant family -- or what's left of them -- are distrustful of the servants, who in turn are distrustful of the blue-haired Mrs Tennant and her philandering daughter, Mrs Jack. It seems that the life of a grand manorial estate hangs in the balance. Many of the servants are old and sickly, and there are divisions between the different "fiefs" that constitute the Kinalty.

It's hard to put one's finger on why Green is such a great writer. He is so even-handed in his dealings with both the upstairs and downstairs contingents that it seems we are watching the situation evolve before our eyes. I will have to read more of his work before being able to pass more articulate judgment on his work.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this yesterday starting from my flight in Columbus, Ohio to Los Angeles via Memphis. I began reading page 1 while in the toilet in the morning at 5:00 a.m. and finished while waiting for my nephew in LAX at around 2:00 p.m. I will always remember this book that I tried to understand while standing and waiting for him.

Once again, I had a bit of trouble understanding the British-specific terms, phases and stuff. However, the beauty of this novel is in the interaction of the characters who are mostly the servants in the Irish castle during the World War II. A couple of months back, I read Ishiguro's REMAINS OF THE DAY that got a full 5-star rating from me. However, even if it is also a British novel, Ishiguro made sure that the non-British readers would not feel left out.

I picked this book because it is among 100 All-TIME Magazine Best Novels. It has all the funny and witty lines but seemed to have been ignored by most of the publications. In fact, I was only able to got my copy from the inner sanctum of Booksale Waltermart and I wondered how come most big publishers have not been reprinting this novel.

[Elaine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a somewhat slight book, both in length and in heft, but its pleasures are none the less memorable. An Upstairs Downstairs-ish (am I dating myself? should I instead make reference to the execrable Downton Abbey?) look at life in an Anglo-Irish country house during World War II, Loving stands out for having very little upstairs, and a quite microscopic view of the downstairs. Each of the many servants has a distinct character and personality. The book is also noteworthy for what is taking place offstage - the house is an island of Englishness in a purportedly hostile sea of Papish Irish (any of whom could be a bandit or the dreaded IRA), even while each of our characters has made a choice to avoid England and the brutal war being waged there. The whole take is refreshingly unsentimental and often quite funny.

Worth the not very long it will take you to read this.

[iana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read this in one sitting, because I knew if I stopped I’d never go back to this book.
It was boring and absolutely flat. The setting might be descriptive and enchanting - an Irish castle. But, sadly, there wasn’t one word about the beauties of the castle and its interiors or its grounds. The weather, which is an important part of the British atmosphere, is also absent. No views, no smells. Reading it felt like eating a piece of paper. Maybe this book was published for this purpose?
The whole story was an endless dull dialogue between the servants, no intrigue, no action, nothing. All the characters are petty and unpleasant, some are just straight stupid.
If you want to read about domestic servants in a beautiful declining British estate at war/midwar times, I strongly recommend “Easterleigh Hall” by Margaret Graham. Or just rewatch “Downtown Abbey” for the 5th time.

[Fionnuala]

I was very thrown by the time this novel is set in—during WWII—because the attitudes of all the characters made me convinced it was set during WWI. It's a puzzle.

[K.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loving was an enjoyable, layered read; I have already recommended it to friends. It reads like a vignette or play. Green exercises so much restraint; I was baffled but delighted by how much was left unsaid, yet could still be so readily understood.

If I am being honest, I am not the most literary by nature, so I was a tad thrown by the book being a single chapter, but by the end, I was sold on the merits of what felt like a very deliberate choice.

Even the dialogue I didn’t necessarily like per se, I loved how rich it was with subtext and how effectively it aided the characterization of characters.

[Francis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Favourite quote: ‘“No Roman Catholics thank you,” Miss Swift said sharp. “Yes,” Miss Burch agreed, “we don’t want those fat priests about confessin’ people or taking snuff.”’

[Eric Wojcik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always feel compelled to explain when a rating should rest between stars, as if it really matters. I find some books (and their rankings) decay shortly after reading.

But Loving... It should be a 4-star, a very good novel, but it is so very sui generis - if one can say 'so very' in the case of uniqueness - and is so vibrant in the mind a couple weeks after reading that it really deserves to be spoken of.

I've read this in the Loving/Living/Party Going omnibus from Penguin, having had it on my shelf for some time. It will take some time to get to the others, as I dislike reading multiples by the same author in any span, but if Loving is any indication, this is an author that deserves to be had and read.

It's strange to read this while Downton Abbey is popular, and to think of it as, perhaps (probably) inspiration for Ishiguro's Remains of the Day, as it feels completely within its own universe. Green's style is incredibly supple, incredibly its own, and the contents of the story dreamlike, a combination of the mythic and the mundane. So very gently charged, lasting, yet resolutely minor, aided by the gerund of the title and the milieu -- a neutral Ireland early during World War II.

I think this is not for everyone. I accept that Henry Green will never be exhumed to major aplomb, but this is almost a comfort, and shadows the gift of the thing itself.

So, others have described the 'plot' of the book, or its concerns. It can be a difficult read, insofar as who is spoken of, and their relationships, are not initially clear. And, provided its elliptical conduct of time, placement and situation are not always remotely piercing, but there are peacocks shrieking in the distance, there is a strange temple young girls walk to, there is the oddity of a household of servants going on, and then Raunce and his romance. Much of this is dialogue, but what an ear.

The first and last sentences spell this as a fairy tale; I dislike the last sentence, as it takes on the power of authorial irony that had not previous existed. Yet, still. This book is quietly tremendous.

[W.B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This would make my top twenty list of the best novels written in the 20th century. A very spooky novel. Think of how Aeschylus's strange play with the 20th century almost Beckettian demarche (in which everything happens somewhere else), The Persians, works. This novel uses a comparable strategy. So subtle. So smart. So memorable. Green is a largely unacknowledged master.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fucking great book, funny and sad and who writes dialogue like Green, people spark off each other like and that'not what I meant that's not it all....