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Back
Back is, according to Jeremy Treglown in his introduction, "Henry Green's most extended attempt to plumb the world of the hunted - and haunted". First published in 1946, it has indeed remained one of Green's most haunting, elegiac novels and one of the most enduring to have focused on the individual human tragedy of the war.
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First published January 1, 1946
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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 - 30 of 61 reviews
January 12, 2020
I’m BACK!
After having been temporarily Caught in the maelstrom of Russian 19th century literature, I am now BACK in the world of Henry Green, the painter of low key, everyday worries of ordinary English people Living and Loving in the extraordinary times before, during and after the Second World War.
Looking BACK on this pearl of a novel, it strikes me that the title Loss, or maybe rather Blindness would have suited the concept well. But then I change my mind, pondering BACK and forth, and finally decide - the characters of the novel at the BACK of my mind - that BACK is the only title that encompasses all facets of the sadness and blindness of the plot.
Superficially straightforward, but subtly touching on the deepest inner fears of humankind, it tells the story of a young man coming BACK from the war, - an amputee. While most people mourn sons and husbands killed in action, he faces the loss of his secret lover Rose, a married woman who died at home while he was taken prisoner in Germany.
So the home he has spent years dreaming of, longing for, wanting to come BACK to, does not exist anymore.
How can we get BACK our past life? How can we go BACK to a place which is full of memories of the identity layers we have lost while we were gone? There is no going BACK if we have changed. But we can’t turn our BACK on our home either? Because where would we go?
Charley Summers tries to BACK out of dealing with the truth. Slipping in and out of an imaginary, alternative reality, he tries to turn BACK time into an earlier status quo, one that is forever lost. At the same time, he tries to suppress the most painful memories and get BACK to normality, only to find the past hitting BACK at him, hard, when he is least prepared to face it. And he is not the only character facing unspeakable past actions. Some people fight BACK, others slip BACK into a state of insanity to avoid confrontation. They BACK each other in their wish to tread carefully on vulnerable reality, resulting in suppressed mourning, and confused feelings which find ways to get BACK to the surface.
“Life has a funny way of getting BACK at us, sometimes”, one character states.
In the end, in order to be able to go on Living, people have to stop looking BACK, and choose to believe in Loving again. That is when they get their identity BACK, changed and mutilated, but not Caught in the past anymore.
Henry Green is a master of quiet truth, hidden underneath words with multiple meanings. When you long for your former lover Rose, you see meaning in any sentence containing flowers, scent, or even just a verb in past tense. Hearing someone say: “The temperature rose”, can make a loving man stumble BACK into the emotional no-man’s-land of irrevocable loss.
Another deeply moving, touching novel by Green. I’ll be BACK with him soon, as I am Doting on his words by now.
After having been temporarily Caught in the maelstrom of Russian 19th century literature, I am now BACK in the world of Henry Green, the painter of low key, everyday worries of ordinary English people Living and Loving in the extraordinary times before, during and after the Second World War.
Looking BACK on this pearl of a novel, it strikes me that the title Loss, or maybe rather Blindness would have suited the concept well. But then I change my mind, pondering BACK and forth, and finally decide - the characters of the novel at the BACK of my mind - that BACK is the only title that encompasses all facets of the sadness and blindness of the plot.
Superficially straightforward, but subtly touching on the deepest inner fears of humankind, it tells the story of a young man coming BACK from the war, - an amputee. While most people mourn sons and husbands killed in action, he faces the loss of his secret lover Rose, a married woman who died at home while he was taken prisoner in Germany.
So the home he has spent years dreaming of, longing for, wanting to come BACK to, does not exist anymore.
How can we get BACK our past life? How can we go BACK to a place which is full of memories of the identity layers we have lost while we were gone? There is no going BACK if we have changed. But we can’t turn our BACK on our home either? Because where would we go?
Charley Summers tries to BACK out of dealing with the truth. Slipping in and out of an imaginary, alternative reality, he tries to turn BACK time into an earlier status quo, one that is forever lost. At the same time, he tries to suppress the most painful memories and get BACK to normality, only to find the past hitting BACK at him, hard, when he is least prepared to face it. And he is not the only character facing unspeakable past actions. Some people fight BACK, others slip BACK into a state of insanity to avoid confrontation. They BACK each other in their wish to tread carefully on vulnerable reality, resulting in suppressed mourning, and confused feelings which find ways to get BACK to the surface.
“Life has a funny way of getting BACK at us, sometimes”, one character states.
In the end, in order to be able to go on Living, people have to stop looking BACK, and choose to believe in Loving again. That is when they get their identity BACK, changed and mutilated, but not Caught in the past anymore.
Henry Green is a master of quiet truth, hidden underneath words with multiple meanings. When you long for your former lover Rose, you see meaning in any sentence containing flowers, scent, or even just a verb in past tense. Hearing someone say: “The temperature rose”, can make a loving man stumble BACK into the emotional no-man’s-land of irrevocable loss.
Another deeply moving, touching novel by Green. I’ll be BACK with him soon, as I am Doting on his words by now.
October 17, 2016
Brilliant. It continued to grow on me for days after I finished it and it ruined anything I tried to read immediately after it.
October 18, 2018
The one word title suggests a lot: what to make of a man who has lost something in war and, back, finds he has lost something at home? The former is his leg; the latter is his girl, Rose. Both gone.
The plot - what happens upon his return - is actually quite interesting. And I won't spoil it here. But that deeper meaning eluded me.
Perhaps that's because I couldn't get into the 18th century story within the story that intrudes just past the midway. That may have explained things. But I glazed over.
I got, though, all the different usages of the word rose: noun, adjective, verb. And, of course, proper name. But that didn't help either.
The plot - what happens upon his return - is actually quite interesting. And I won't spoil it here. But that deeper meaning eluded me.
Perhaps that's because I couldn't get into the 18th century story within the story that intrudes just past the midway. That may have explained things. But I glazed over.
I got, though, all the different usages of the word rose: noun, adjective, verb. And, of course, proper name. But that didn't help either.
i-want-money
May 29, 2016Maybe you're a fan of Henry Green. NYRB is pub'ing three of his this fall ::
Loving
Caught
Back
http://www.nyrb.com/search?q=henry+green
Loving
Caught
Back
http://www.nyrb.com/search?q=henry+green
October 16, 2016
I received an ARC from the publisher via Edelweiss.
The premise of this Green novel is deceptively simple: Charley Summer, recently released from a POW camp in Germany during World War II, is repatriated back into England. Although Charley suffers from a severed leg for which he must wear a prosthesis, his greatest source of pain is the love that he lost while he was in that German prison camp. Rose, a woman with whom he was having a passionate love affair, dies from an illness before Charley is sent home. We first meet Charley when he is trying to find Rose’s grave in an English churchyard and we immediately discover that the plot is much more complicated than we were first led to believe.
Charley is shell-shocked, grief-stricken and disoriented as he tries to settle into a job in London and reconnect with old acquaintances. He visits Rose’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Grant who are also having a hard time dealing with the death of their daughter amidst sirens and bombings. Mrs. Grant is confused and displays signs of dementia; she doesn’t recognize Charley and thinks that he is her long-lost brother John who died in World War I. Her confusion and trauma reflects Charley’s own disoriented state of mind. As Charley is departing from this painful reunion, Mr. Grant gives him the address of a woman named Nance whom Mr. Grant requests that the young man look up while he is in London.
Charley works in the office of a manufacturing firm in London and when they send him a new secretary his emotions become further muddled. Miss Pitter, a rather plain looking woman, attracts Charley’s attention as he likes to start at her arms. Green relates to us bits and pieces of what a character is thinking only through dialogue, which is oftentimes very sparse. Charley in particular is a man of few words so it is difficult to understand what is really going on inside his head. But he seems, at times, attracted to Miss Pitter and unsure of how to proceed with her. Charley’s diffidence and lingering feelings for Rose appear to keep him from acting on a possible relationship with Miss Pitter. His short sentences, which are oftentimes canned answers like “There you have it,” and his inability to stand up for himself whenever someone is taking advantage of him make Charley a character wholly worthy of sympathy. Green is a master at writing tragic characters who are awash in their sad fates.
To complicate matters even further, Charley pays a visit to Nance who was recommended to him by Mr. Grant. When Nance opens the door to greet Charley he faints dead away because Nance looks just like his Rose. The ensuing confusion over the identity of Nance and Rose reads like a bit of a slapstick, “Who’s on First” type of a comedy. Charley is addressing Nance as if she were Rose, but Nance is completely confused and doesn’t understand what he is talking about. Charley comes to the conclusion that Rose never really died but instead changed her hair color and moved to London to become a tart. He spends quite a bit of time thinking of a way to get her to confess that she really is Rose. These scenes are humorous but also have an underlying hint of sadness because it further highlights Charley’s emotional confusion and turmoil.
One more interesting aspect of Green’s writing that must be mentioned is the story he includes in the middle of the narrative. It is Rose’s widower, James who sends Charley a magazine story about the 18th century French court in which a woman mistakes a royal guard for her lost lover. This is what the Roman poet Catullus would call a libellus, a little book, embedded within the story of Charley. I felt that the story was only tangentially related to Charley’s predicament; there is the case of mistaken identity in both narratives but Charley doesn’t appear to learn any type of a lesson after he reads this libellus. He is too involved in his own issues to gain any type of perspective and it is only very slowly and gradually through love, understanding and patience that Charley begins to untangle his confused mind.
This is a brief but very engrossing novel. It took me the better part of a week to read and absorb all that was going on in order to write these few words about it. Green uses the stress of World War II in order to highlight the madness and confusion into which a traumatized mind can so easily descend. This isn’t a pretty love story but it is certainly one that is more true to real, human life.
The premise of this Green novel is deceptively simple: Charley Summer, recently released from a POW camp in Germany during World War II, is repatriated back into England. Although Charley suffers from a severed leg for which he must wear a prosthesis, his greatest source of pain is the love that he lost while he was in that German prison camp. Rose, a woman with whom he was having a passionate love affair, dies from an illness before Charley is sent home. We first meet Charley when he is trying to find Rose’s grave in an English churchyard and we immediately discover that the plot is much more complicated than we were first led to believe.
Charley is shell-shocked, grief-stricken and disoriented as he tries to settle into a job in London and reconnect with old acquaintances. He visits Rose’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Grant who are also having a hard time dealing with the death of their daughter amidst sirens and bombings. Mrs. Grant is confused and displays signs of dementia; she doesn’t recognize Charley and thinks that he is her long-lost brother John who died in World War I. Her confusion and trauma reflects Charley’s own disoriented state of mind. As Charley is departing from this painful reunion, Mr. Grant gives him the address of a woman named Nance whom Mr. Grant requests that the young man look up while he is in London.
Charley works in the office of a manufacturing firm in London and when they send him a new secretary his emotions become further muddled. Miss Pitter, a rather plain looking woman, attracts Charley’s attention as he likes to start at her arms. Green relates to us bits and pieces of what a character is thinking only through dialogue, which is oftentimes very sparse. Charley in particular is a man of few words so it is difficult to understand what is really going on inside his head. But he seems, at times, attracted to Miss Pitter and unsure of how to proceed with her. Charley’s diffidence and lingering feelings for Rose appear to keep him from acting on a possible relationship with Miss Pitter. His short sentences, which are oftentimes canned answers like “There you have it,” and his inability to stand up for himself whenever someone is taking advantage of him make Charley a character wholly worthy of sympathy. Green is a master at writing tragic characters who are awash in their sad fates.
To complicate matters even further, Charley pays a visit to Nance who was recommended to him by Mr. Grant. When Nance opens the door to greet Charley he faints dead away because Nance looks just like his Rose. The ensuing confusion over the identity of Nance and Rose reads like a bit of a slapstick, “Who’s on First” type of a comedy. Charley is addressing Nance as if she were Rose, but Nance is completely confused and doesn’t understand what he is talking about. Charley comes to the conclusion that Rose never really died but instead changed her hair color and moved to London to become a tart. He spends quite a bit of time thinking of a way to get her to confess that she really is Rose. These scenes are humorous but also have an underlying hint of sadness because it further highlights Charley’s emotional confusion and turmoil.
One more interesting aspect of Green’s writing that must be mentioned is the story he includes in the middle of the narrative. It is Rose’s widower, James who sends Charley a magazine story about the 18th century French court in which a woman mistakes a royal guard for her lost lover. This is what the Roman poet Catullus would call a libellus, a little book, embedded within the story of Charley. I felt that the story was only tangentially related to Charley’s predicament; there is the case of mistaken identity in both narratives but Charley doesn’t appear to learn any type of a lesson after he reads this libellus. He is too involved in his own issues to gain any type of perspective and it is only very slowly and gradually through love, understanding and patience that Charley begins to untangle his confused mind.
This is a brief but very engrossing novel. It took me the better part of a week to read and absorb all that was going on in order to write these few words about it. Green uses the stress of World War II in order to highlight the madness and confusion into which a traumatized mind can so easily descend. This isn’t a pretty love story but it is certainly one that is more true to real, human life.
August 20, 2010
Henry Green's Back belongs with Patrick Hamilton's books and others on the "English boarding-house novels" shelf, though not as bleak as Hamilton or Julian Maclaren-Ross. The "back" of the title is "from the Second World War", to a mid-40s England which is economically and emotionally equally straitened. For all that, this book has a transcendently joyful quality (within a somewhat narrow definition of joy) and I tore through it one day.
The jackets of all recent editions of Green's work are festooned with quotes from John Updike, Anthony Burgess and others of note declaring him the best English writer of his day.
He is also, for those that like connections, grandfather to Matthew Yorke and (once upon a time) father-in-law to Emma Tennant, both writers I admire - quite a dynasty!
The jackets of all recent editions of Green's work are festooned with quotes from John Updike, Anthony Burgess and others of note declaring him the best English writer of his day.
He is also, for those that like connections, grandfather to Matthew Yorke and (once upon a time) father-in-law to Emma Tennant, both writers I admire - quite a dynasty!
February 19, 2016
So poignantly beautiful, so much tragedy so calmly depicted. I found George Toles' critique in the back of the book particularly illuminating, putting into words a few of the novel's sensations that I couldn't place myself.
" Pain insinuates itself into every corner of the unfolding rural landscape, yet it is a soft pain, a pain nestled in softness. It is as though the reader were treading backward through the setting, mildly anxious, trying to be silent, over ground that leaves a squishing imprint with every footfall'.
Would definitely recommend to anyone interested in post-war literature, as well as anyone looking for something that is at once readable and defiant of convention.
" Pain insinuates itself into every corner of the unfolding rural landscape, yet it is a soft pain, a pain nestled in softness. It is as though the reader were treading backward through the setting, mildly anxious, trying to be silent, over ground that leaves a squishing imprint with every footfall'.
Would definitely recommend to anyone interested in post-war literature, as well as anyone looking for something that is at once readable and defiant of convention.
February 17, 2009
Henry Green I love you.
September 6, 2022
Written *so* differently than Caught that I anxiously accused him of being a different author. But no, of course, the indirection or indirectness of plot; the fact that I read suspiciously and the short book didn't sink its hooks in me until 4/5ths through, only to win me over near the end -- these were the same.
It has neither the luscious similes nor the artful dictation of idiom that were features of Caught. It seemed conventional, after that one. But there is Charley's war trauma, understated to devastating effect, and there is Nance who has more agency, for a woman, than seems dreamed of in Caught. So, still four.
It has neither the luscious similes nor the artful dictation of idiom that were features of Caught. It seemed conventional, after that one. But there is Charley's war trauma, understated to devastating effect, and there is Nance who has more agency, for a woman, than seems dreamed of in Caught. So, still four.
December 31, 2022
For the opening chapter, a cubist portrait of grief's dislocations, dappled with roses worthy of Gertrude Stein.
For the devastating penultimate scene when Charley encounters the boy who believes he's seeing the ghost of his mother, a moment that brings together so many of the novel's strands in a single gesture: a finger pressed to the lips.
For the devastating penultimate scene when Charley encounters the boy who believes he's seeing the ghost of his mother, a moment that brings together so many of the novel's strands in a single gesture: a finger pressed to the lips.
October 25, 2023
Between this, Caught, and Loving it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Henry Green was a far greater novelist of the blitz and the British experience of ww2 than Thomas Pynchon.
March 28, 2019
A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME?
"Back" is a testament to the glorious irrationality of the human being, the muddle we make of our lives and yet the hope that these flaws allow us.
The story takes place in the last years of the 2nd WW. Charley Summers has lost a leg and been incarcerated in a German POW camp. He returns to his homeland where his love, Rose, a married woman, is also lost - dead through an illness that is not further elaborated upon.
Charley stumbles back into civilian life with the tragicomic heroism of a steadfast tin soldier, obsessed with his lost love. He literally not just hears, but sees and smells her name wherever he goes.
The writing style is unusual, with a juxtaposition of a dreamlike literary style with very down-to-earth conversation that is completely true to life with its misunderstandings and non-sequiturs.
I wasn't sure about the inclusion of the story-within-a-story, but I suppose it does illustrate the universality of human emotion - from the 18th century French Court to 1940s Essex.
"Back" is something completely different from the retro-fitted modern novels about this period that I've been reading recently.
"Back" is a testament to the glorious irrationality of the human being, the muddle we make of our lives and yet the hope that these flaws allow us.
The story takes place in the last years of the 2nd WW. Charley Summers has lost a leg and been incarcerated in a German POW camp. He returns to his homeland where his love, Rose, a married woman, is also lost - dead through an illness that is not further elaborated upon.
Charley stumbles back into civilian life with the tragicomic heroism of a steadfast tin soldier, obsessed with his lost love. He literally not just hears, but sees and smells her name wherever he goes.
The writing style is unusual, with a juxtaposition of a dreamlike literary style with very down-to-earth conversation that is completely true to life with its misunderstandings and non-sequiturs.
I wasn't sure about the inclusion of the story-within-a-story, but I suppose it does illustrate the universality of human emotion - from the 18th century French Court to 1940s Essex.
"Back" is something completely different from the retro-fitted modern novels about this period that I've been reading recently.
Want to read
December 20, 2008I wrote a commentary about the opening passage of this book and I've been intrigued (read: obsessed) by it ever since. The boy is the pirate's son!
October 21, 2019
Another great book written by Henry Green.
3* Loving
2* Caught
3* Blindness
3.5* Back
TR Living
TR Party Going
3* Loving
2* Caught
3* Blindness
3.5* Back
TR Living
TR Party Going
January 30, 2025
A compassionate novel about the insidious traumas of war. Charley Summers has returned from the war, having lost a leg in France and been held in a German prison camp for four years. He is now tormented by reminders of his lost love, Rose, dead of an illness the same week he was taken prisoner. He is led by Rose’s father to her near-double and half sister, the war widow, Nancy. Charley mistakes Nancy for Rose and takes some persuading, over a period of time, to realize his error. Charley is suffering mentally from his wartime experiences.
A very good novel describing how British civilians coped with injured war personnel. Charley is taken back into the workforce and those managers and employees working with him, provide Charley with understanding and support.
This book was first published in 1946.
A very good novel describing how British civilians coped with injured war personnel. Charley is taken back into the workforce and those managers and employees working with him, provide Charley with understanding and support.
This book was first published in 1946.
December 29, 2024
So weird and original and sensitive. Didn’t think much of it until the ending, which is some of the most moving writing I’ve read recently
May 19, 2018
(Another book Gaddis rated ‘I want my money’, it’s like Gaddis has never heard of a library.)
DEBORAH EISENBERG FANS UNITE
How great is that Deb intro!? Ugh, I just love her writing in any form. I read instruction on how to put to together a deck if the manual were written in Eisenberg. Has everybody signed the petition? I got a petition going on my review of Under the 82nd where we’re going to get a petition to petition Deb to start churning out the work. So be sure to sign it if you're new.
Anyway, back to Back.
It’s so good. It’s like, amazing. Very Guy de Maupassant with the colloquialisms of a James M. Cain. That kind of clean, minimal style, I know it’s not very fashionable d’ese days—specially for fans of literary spectacle--but whooda!-wooda!, those of us who like it, really like it.
It’s crushing. All those simple words, those simple motifs, its positively crushing.
DEBORAH EISENBERG FANS UNITE
How great is that Deb intro!? Ugh, I just love her writing in any form. I read instruction on how to put to together a deck if the manual were written in Eisenberg. Has everybody signed the petition? I got a petition going on my review of Under the 82nd where we’re going to get a petition to petition Deb to start churning out the work. So be sure to sign it if you're new.
Anyway, back to Back.
It’s so good. It’s like, amazing. Very Guy de Maupassant with the colloquialisms of a James M. Cain. That kind of clean, minimal style, I know it’s not very fashionable d’ese days—specially for fans of literary spectacle--but whooda!-wooda!, those of us who like it, really like it.
It’s crushing. All those simple words, those simple motifs, its positively crushing.
September 1, 2011
Great novel that disorients the reader because he or she is given as much (or as little) information as the rest of the characters. All motivations are unclear because much of the text is left to dialog without any cues as to what the characters are thinking. Also, I love that the main character's deepest source of loss is the one thing he can't legitimately claim as his: another man's deceased wife.
Read
September 14, 2018A soldier returns from WWII, becomes obsessed with the half-sister of his dead wife, sort of loses his mind, sort of gets it back. I complained that the other two novels I read by Green – Loving and Doting – were masterfully written but too narrow. Here I couldn’t help but feel the opposite. There is some fabulous language – the first few chapters, which are more impressionistic, even experimental, are very strong – but the narrative is rather shaggy, and didn’t exactly pull together for me.
May 20, 2019
I picked up this book because it is one of the NYRB Classics series, which has never let me down. Nor did this one. The book is a unique novel about a man who comes back from the war (which is still on-going), having lost a leg and the love of his life, who died while he was at the front. However, he seems rather confused about things, and one wonders if he lost his leg through inattention. Indeed, much of the action seems to happen through inattention or incomprehension.
The writing is quite dense and interesting. You can’t read it without paying a good deal of attention. However, the story is humorous and the characters engaging. The author has a real flair for dialog, especially dialogs in which people talk past one another.
One of the themes of the book is that Charley, the protagonist, misunderstands almost everything. And people misunderstand him most of the time as well. He gets deeply into a case of mistaken identity, and no matter how many people tell him that he is wrong, it never occurs to him that he is wrong. They never really get him any more than he gets them. There is much uncertainty about characters’ motives and even basic facts such as whether a young child on the scene is in fact Charley’s son. Everyone muddles through these confusions just as they muddle through the wartime exigencies and chaos. Charley’s work is equally a set of failed communications and suspicions between his company and its suppliers. Yet the characters (and, as we know, the country) somehow managed to get through it all.
All this does not communicate the brilliance of the writing and the fun of the novel, in spite of the setting of wartime England. One of the reviews blurbed on the book cover refers to the “peculiar quality of hallucination” in the book. That is accurate. Also, at just under 200 pages, it is not a major life commitment to read. Highly recommended.
The writing is quite dense and interesting. You can’t read it without paying a good deal of attention. However, the story is humorous and the characters engaging. The author has a real flair for dialog, especially dialogs in which people talk past one another.
One of the themes of the book is that Charley, the protagonist, misunderstands almost everything. And people misunderstand him most of the time as well. He gets deeply into a case of mistaken identity, and no matter how many people tell him that he is wrong, it never occurs to him that he is wrong. They never really get him any more than he gets them. There is much uncertainty about characters’ motives and even basic facts such as whether a young child on the scene is in fact Charley’s son. Everyone muddles through these confusions just as they muddle through the wartime exigencies and chaos. Charley’s work is equally a set of failed communications and suspicions between his company and its suppliers. Yet the characters (and, as we know, the country) somehow managed to get through it all.
All this does not communicate the brilliance of the writing and the fun of the novel, in spite of the setting of wartime England. One of the reviews blurbed on the book cover refers to the “peculiar quality of hallucination” in the book. That is accurate. Also, at just under 200 pages, it is not a major life commitment to read. Highly recommended.
May 3, 2016
Fate is fickle. From all accounts Henry Green should be a name as well-known as George Orwell and yet, yesterday, when my wife asked me what I was reading and I said, “Back by Henry Green,” her response was, “Never heard of him,” but then neither had I a few days earlier. If you’ve also never heard of him then you might want to peruse this article in The Atlantic; it would’ve piqued my curiosity if I hadn’t stumbled across Back by other means.
The story here is straightforward enough. Charley Summers returns to England at the end of World War II where he’s spent four years in a POW camp. He’s lost a leg and, we learn in the opening chapter, the love of his life, a woman called Rose. Rose was married to a man called James Phillips who was well aware Rose and Charley were friends but not of any affair. Rose left a child who’s about six now, Ridley, who Charley suspects might actually be his. Rose’s parents are a Mr and Mrs Grant, Gerald and Amy, who Charley visits. Amy’s in a bad way—mixes Charley up with her brother who was killed in 1917—but before he leaves Mr Grant has something for him:
In modern parlance Charley’s clearly suffering from PTSD but in 1946 when the novel was published, despite banned by the British Army (who preferred the term “postconcussional syndrome”), the term “shell shock” is how the man in the street would’ve explained Charley’s behaviour:
There’s a huge amount of dialogue in the book which I generally approve of but it’s not always the easiest to follow. For example:
I was particularly struck by the book’s ending which feels like it ought to be a happy ending—it’s not an unhappy ending—but right at the very end Green kicks his readers’ feet from under them. He’s not saying that Charley will never recover completely but what he is saying that he still has a way to go.
On the whole I enjoyed the novel. One thing I didn’t like—although Green being Green, from what I’ve read about him, I’m sure this was intentional—he has a habit of changing how he refers to characters; one minute he’s talking about Nancy or Nance, the next she’s become Miss Whitmore. I found that a bit confusing but then I suspect that what he wanted; everybody’s two people. In The Idiom of the Time: The Writings of Henry Green Rod Mengham writes, “[I]n order to be accurate about what it means to read Henry Green, there must be a strong sense of giddiness of interpretation..." The word crops up more times than you’d expect in articles about him and I suspect the source is a quote from John Updike talking about Green’s novel Loving which he called “a cosy anarchy of pilfering, gossip, giddiness and love.”
Green clearly has his fans and Back is a perfectly decent book with lots of stuff going on—watch out for how often the word ‘rose’ appears or the number three—but I can maybe see why he’s not as well-known now as he might’ve been. Had Orwell stopped writing before he got to Nineteen Eighty-Four you have to wonder just how well-known he would be now.
The story here is straightforward enough. Charley Summers returns to England at the end of World War II where he’s spent four years in a POW camp. He’s lost a leg and, we learn in the opening chapter, the love of his life, a woman called Rose. Rose was married to a man called James Phillips who was well aware Rose and Charley were friends but not of any affair. Rose left a child who’s about six now, Ridley, who Charley suspects might actually be his. Rose’s parents are a Mr and Mrs Grant, Gerald and Amy, who Charley visits. Amy’s in a bad way—mixes Charley up with her brother who was killed in 1917—but before he leaves Mr Grant has something for him:
“I’ve a surprise for you. Go to this address,” and he gave Charley a number in a street, “and you’ll find someone who knew Rose. She’s just the age Rose was, maybe a month or two younger. She wants to meet you. She’s a widow.”Eventually he goes and a woman opens the door:
He looked. He sagged. Then something went inside. It was as though the frightful starts his heart was giving had burst a vein. He pitched forward, in a dead faint, because there she stood alive, so close that he could touch, and breathing, the dead spit, the living image, herself, Rose in person.The woman calls herself Nancy Whitmore and maintains she was married to an RAF pilot named Phil White who died at Alamein but Charley’s convinced she’s his Rose who’s now working as a prostitute and is possibly even a bigamist. He even suspects her dad of being her pimp.
In modern parlance Charley’s clearly suffering from PTSD but in 1946 when the novel was published, despite banned by the British Army (who preferred the term “postconcussional syndrome”), the term “shell shock” is how the man in the street would’ve explained Charley’s behaviour:
He went. It was not until the room was empty of him that she remembered to be afraid. For she saw he must be a shell shock case, and dangerous.This is how Nancy feels after her first encounter with Charley and the book follows their relationship as Charley gets to know her and discovers who she really is, what she actually does for a living and why Rose’s dad sent him to her. Had the book been filmed at the time I’m sure it would’ve been turned into a romance (especially since the book ends at Christmas 1944) but Green, wisely, avoids a conventional narrative although it masquerades as one. Yes, by the end of the book Charley’s better (in that he’s improved) but he’s not better (by which I mean cured).
There’s a huge amount of dialogue in the book which I generally approve of but it’s not always the easiest to follow. For example:
“Of course I haven’t known her long,” he said at last. “Only since I was felt hatted, and went to live in digs. Now Rose, darling, don’t say it has to be bunny again. We’ve had a proper dose of that this week.”It’s a foreign language, isn’t it? The same with all the abbreviations (“everything’s initials these days”): S.E.C.O., E.N.Y.S., B.R.N.Q., V.B.S., P.M.V.O., C.E.C., P.B.H.R., virtually none of which are clarified—it’s something of a running gag throughout the book—in fact when C.A.B. is defined— “‘Citizens’ Advice Bureau,’ she explained”—I nearly fell off my seat. For all it’s only been a relatively short time since he went to war the England Charley’s returned to is a very different place and he’s constantly being reminded of the fact that he’s different:
“D’you know what they call you here?” she went on. “‘Shoot me’ that’s the name they have for you.” It was a pure invention, which in no way upset him.This is a book very much about loss. Charley has lost Rose (although one could argue he never really had Rose) but that loss wasn’t real because he was five or six hundred miles away when that happened; he didn’t see her go and so, in some respects, she’s still with him. With the appearance of her doppelganger Charley gets the opportunity to lose her in person as the woman he calls Rose becomes Nancy and he starts to see Nancy as an individual in her own right.
“Shoot me?” he mildly repeated.
“Because of your martyr ways, with what you’ve had in the war, and your Rose,” she said.
I was particularly struck by the book’s ending which feels like it ought to be a happy ending—it’s not an unhappy ending—but right at the very end Green kicks his readers’ feet from under them. He’s not saying that Charley will never recover completely but what he is saying that he still has a way to go.
On the whole I enjoyed the novel. One thing I didn’t like—although Green being Green, from what I’ve read about him, I’m sure this was intentional—he has a habit of changing how he refers to characters; one minute he’s talking about Nancy or Nance, the next she’s become Miss Whitmore. I found that a bit confusing but then I suspect that what he wanted; everybody’s two people. In The Idiom of the Time: The Writings of Henry Green Rod Mengham writes, “[I]n order to be accurate about what it means to read Henry Green, there must be a strong sense of giddiness of interpretation..." The word crops up more times than you’d expect in articles about him and I suspect the source is a quote from John Updike talking about Green’s novel Loving which he called “a cosy anarchy of pilfering, gossip, giddiness and love.”
Green clearly has his fans and Back is a perfectly decent book with lots of stuff going on—watch out for how often the word ‘rose’ appears or the number three—but I can maybe see why he’s not as well-known now as he might’ve been. Had Orwell stopped writing before he got to Nineteen Eighty-Four you have to wonder just how well-known he would be now.
December 16, 2025
This is a beautiful and moving book about subjectivity cast against the backdrop of the trauma of the Second World War and the death of loved ones. It is supremely moving in its restraint. The figures are overwhelmingly realistic precisely because of how restrained Green is in his depiction of them and how limited their subjectivity feels. The ethical core of the book is a moving portrait of the power of love, where love is configured not as an overwhelming transcendent romantic force but an acceptance of the sort of limited, sad, pathetic beings we are. There's a blurry quality to the prose here that rhymes with the traumatized subject at the heart of it; his view of the world cannot become fully self-aware, and neither can the reader's. This book is also structured formally like a Shakespearean comedy. Doubles proliferate, identities become confused, it's comedic even as it remains drenched in sadness. And it ends with a happy wedding.
The book plays one sort of trick on the reader. Initially, we are led to believe the protagonist, Charley Summers, is traumatized by the death of his lover. As the book continues, though, it becomes increasingly obvious that was has really traumatized him is his experience in a German POW camp. But it is not clear — he is 'back' and what happened in the war is left unsaid. It is almost as though the whole background of Charley's life is blurred out and inarticulable. It is this relationship to history that is maybe the real trauma — that there is something like a background which we are caught up in but can never fully articulate or articulate our relationship to; that we are left with just this classically 20th century British ethic and aesthetic of muddling through — this is trauma and trauma response. Love conquers it here not by beating it but just by accepting it, by eroticizing the blurriness of life.
The book plays one sort of trick on the reader. Initially, we are led to believe the protagonist, Charley Summers, is traumatized by the death of his lover. As the book continues, though, it becomes increasingly obvious that was has really traumatized him is his experience in a German POW camp. But it is not clear — he is 'back' and what happened in the war is left unsaid. It is almost as though the whole background of Charley's life is blurred out and inarticulable. It is this relationship to history that is maybe the real trauma — that there is something like a background which we are caught up in but can never fully articulate or articulate our relationship to; that we are left with just this classically 20th century British ethic and aesthetic of muddling through — this is trauma and trauma response. Love conquers it here not by beating it but just by accepting it, by eroticizing the blurriness of life.
October 22, 2025
Green's elliptical style is really quite perfect for this disconnected, shell shocked soul we have joined, back from front and returned to nothing; although its not clear, as we learn more about him over time that he really had anything solid before he went either. He had anchored his psyche in the past at home while at war, while the war changes everything at home too. For Charley its just more obvious than others, but this idea seems fundamental to the problem return and reintegration - if the thing he was out there losing limb and mind over is no longer real, then the anchor is lost. In addition to dropping us from scene to scene without transitions, experiencing the fugue state as a reader, I liked the recurrences of words, of things being back, having backs, coming back, of rose as flowers and action. This created an echoing that felt like memory, like being inside Charley's memory just that much more.
December 14, 2022
After years of virtual nudging by the writer Alan Beard, I finally got round to finishing my first Henry Green. It’s compelling.
Like all great writers, Green is capable of wondrous sentences. The way he buries metaphors in the text demonstrates what might be said to be a truly poetic sensibility. For me though, there are two elements of his work that set him apart. The first is his dialogue which, unlike the effortlessly smooth exchanges of those often considered to be masters of the art, comes with all of the gaps and mis-hearings and non sequiturs that are typical of actual conversation. The second is the way he uses his supporting characters. Rather than function as fulcrums on which the plot can pivot, or catalysts for the development of the hero, their principal contribution seems to be to keep the reader off-balance, in the best traditions of Modernist mischief.
Like all great writers, Green is capable of wondrous sentences. The way he buries metaphors in the text demonstrates what might be said to be a truly poetic sensibility. For me though, there are two elements of his work that set him apart. The first is his dialogue which, unlike the effortlessly smooth exchanges of those often considered to be masters of the art, comes with all of the gaps and mis-hearings and non sequiturs that are typical of actual conversation. The second is the way he uses his supporting characters. Rather than function as fulcrums on which the plot can pivot, or catalysts for the development of the hero, their principal contribution seems to be to keep the reader off-balance, in the best traditions of Modernist mischief.
March 26, 2020
Charley Summers is a guy who fought in the war and spent 3 years in a POW camp. He lost his leg there, so now he has a peg leg. When he gets "back," he sees that what he comes "back" to is not the same. Rose, the woman he loved, is dead. Luckily, she had a half sister who looks a lot like her. So much so that Charley, in his traumatized mind, believes she is Rose. It takes him about 3/4 of the book to accept that she's someone else.
The woman is named Nancy. She lost her husband in the war and like Charley, is a very wounded person. And the world they live in is fucked up. People have died. People have lost spouses. People have come "back" to the world while the world is trying to get itself "back" to normal. And Charley just wants to leave his inhuman experiences "back" there.
What makes this book relevant, at least to me, has nothing to do with a war. I've never been in one. I haven't lost someone to one. I have all my limbs. But the world Charley is living in, where people carry on with their lives no matter what kind of bullshit unfolds across the earth... That makes sense to me.
While I read this, the country I live in, the US, has begun to experience the beginning of a pandemic. The coronavirus has spread across our borders and people have died. This will continue. And people I know will try to keep living as they always have. And they will probably succeed in doing that, to some degree.
I loved the way Charley and Nancy found themselves in the worst of circumstances and still found a way to see each other, to varying degrees. This book is sad as fuck. But in that way, it's also hopeful, because that seems to be another hallmark of great novels: that they tell us true things. Henry Green shows us that you can't go "back" but you can try to go forward, with the people around you. He doesn't promise you won't be traumatized, wounded, betrayed. He doesn't promise you will be happy. But there is something there, between the wreckage, if you go looking for it.
The woman is named Nancy. She lost her husband in the war and like Charley, is a very wounded person. And the world they live in is fucked up. People have died. People have lost spouses. People have come "back" to the world while the world is trying to get itself "back" to normal. And Charley just wants to leave his inhuman experiences "back" there.
What makes this book relevant, at least to me, has nothing to do with a war. I've never been in one. I haven't lost someone to one. I have all my limbs. But the world Charley is living in, where people carry on with their lives no matter what kind of bullshit unfolds across the earth... That makes sense to me.
While I read this, the country I live in, the US, has begun to experience the beginning of a pandemic. The coronavirus has spread across our borders and people have died. This will continue. And people I know will try to keep living as they always have. And they will probably succeed in doing that, to some degree.
I loved the way Charley and Nancy found themselves in the worst of circumstances and still found a way to see each other, to varying degrees. This book is sad as fuck. But in that way, it's also hopeful, because that seems to be another hallmark of great novels: that they tell us true things. Henry Green shows us that you can't go "back" but you can try to go forward, with the people around you. He doesn't promise you won't be traumatized, wounded, betrayed. He doesn't promise you will be happy. But there is something there, between the wreckage, if you go looking for it.
August 2, 2019
This book was enjoyable, but it was not exceptional. There is something quaint and predictable about the story, which made me a little impatient. I expected Green's writing to feel more modern. The dialog in this book carried the story for me. Green meditates on various types of misconceptions and misperception. He uses carefully crafted dialog to expose the subtle misunderstandings and missed connections which exist in everyday conversations.
September 29, 2021
This was an interesting read...not at all what I was expecting. Charley Summers is back from a prisoner of war camp and missing one leg. His love, Rose, died while he was gone to war and now he has to contend with her widow and their child (which might actually be his). Rose's father points Charley in the direction of someone he hopes may help him with his struggles but when Charley goes to see her, she is such a duplicate of Rose that he doesn't know quite what to do. I couldn't decide if I thought the story was funny or depressing. The situation really messed with Charley's head.
April 30, 2018
This is a strange book about coming home from the war, but then again any book about how it is like to do that would have it's strange aspects. I had to keep reminding myself it was written recently because it had a feel like current trends in writing. It did bother me that the main character was so slow in his ability to know what is going on, -but that is the real aspect.
September 2, 2018
I almost gave up on this one but I'm glad I didn't.
Starts off a little dijointed and unsure, although I suppose that was probably Green's intent.
'Back' really started to pull things together just past the halfway mark, at which point I couldnt put it down. Mr Green's writing is beautifully poetic and feather light; the story had me hopelessly smiling to the end, smitten and dreamy.
Starts off a little dijointed and unsure, although I suppose that was probably Green's intent.
'Back' really started to pull things together just past the halfway mark, at which point I couldnt put it down. Mr Green's writing is beautifully poetic and feather light; the story had me hopelessly smiling to the end, smitten and dreamy.
May 12, 2017
I really don't know what to make of this book (really a novella). My dad bought it for me as a Christmas gift and I just got around to reading it. I'll have to ask him why he picked it out for me. Strange little story that kept me reading till the end. Looking back on it, I think I liked it?
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