Rating: 
Summary: Boring, bland and absurd
Review: It is understood that The Good Soldier is a piece of modernism. I have no problem with that. However, this book did not touch me. It's supposed to be "the saddest story" but the characters in it were so indifferent that I could not care enough about them to find the novel to be tragic. The story is about the wasteland of the 20th century when seemingly all of our human passions have been sapped by a general feeling of apathy and disinterest. Gone are the days of the heroic warrior who leaves his Spartan wife, hearing her whisper in his ear "Return either with your shield or on it." Instead, we get a soap opera where all of man's sacred virtues have been trivialized. For instance, the chap in the book says "If I could not have her, I felt that I must at least marry her." The book is filled with ironic little twists like that. Supposedly, Ford subscribed to the "most perfect word for each sentence" school that Gustav Flaubert was the master of. I don't see it. I found his analogies so absurd that they made me break out laughing when they were intended to make me sad. For instance, he compares a woman sticking out the trunk of a car to being eaten by an alligator. Sorry, but I don't find that very thoughtful. I am not going to say this is a bad book. It has received too much critical acclaim to be dismissed as such. Although I like Hemmingway, I did not like his The Sun Also Rises for much the same reason as I hated Ford's work. However, if you like a book where at least SOME action takes place (and by action I do NOT mean violence), I would not recommend this book. Nor would I admonish anyone who likes wonderful characterization & personas to read it. As a testament to 20th century nihilism, however, I suppose it's worth someone's while.
Rating: 
Summary: the essence of natural story-telling
Review: It's like hearing a story from someone still workin' out the details, ya know? Something happened and so-and-so said or did what and all of the sudden . . . wait, let me think about this . . . okay--No! It went like this!--this is the start of this marvelous, tragic novel, certainly more elegent in language, but the innovative narrative style gives a similar emphasis on someone figuring out the past through relfection. It tells a consistantly mournful story, the doom not so much shadowing the action as we are given the details of the outcomes pretty early on. But the narrator's efforts at understanding interfere with a course of events and sometimes forces him to rearrange them to capture the ideas he's sudden had. This book has just about everything that I like: a unique perspective, a dark sense of humor, extraordinarily well-developed characters and an inescapable misery percolating the text throughout, keeping emotions on edge and perception fragile. It is a glorous masterpiece . . .
Rating: 
Summary: Clever and compelling narrative
Review: Like another reviewer I too bought this book because it was on a list of the top 100 books of the twentieth century. But it sat on the shelf for a while because I didn't like the look of it from an instinctive perspective. Being from a different time and by an English author, I was intimidated. I thought I would have a hard time getting past the language of the book, and I thought I would be bored. I mean come on, how many times have we heard about an English restoration piece in which there is some deep and horrible scandal amongst the English well-to-do in the late nineteenth century, and it turns out pretty mundane by modern standards.
But in The Good Soldier it isn't the scandalous behavior of the characters that makes this a fascinating read, it is the amazing narrative voice of John Dowell. Ford's accomplishment with The Good Soldier is not in the creation of an incredible story. The story to me seems more like garnish to the main attraction. What makes this a masterful work is Ford's creation of a storyteller. John Dowell as a storyteller is so complete and real. Oh I don't mean the details of his life or the veracity of his character or morals. It is John Dowell's voice that makes this book a classic.
After reading different reviews and analysis of the book after I read it I noticed how many people seem concerned with the trustworthiness of Dowell's story. Personally I don't understand why it's important. If I were indeed sitting beside him in a country inn in front of a roaring hearth, trying to pass the night while the weather had its way with the night outside - a scene Dowell suggests and I found myself in quite easily while reading - my concern would be for the method and the gripping nature of his storytelling. I would not only accept, but also expect embellishments, exaggerations and one-sidedness. But of course unless he were a mad sea captain I would also expect him to admonish himself for doing these things and to seem sincere and to seem to consciously be making an effort to tell the whole story, even when it embarrassed himself. People have mentioned the way Dowell says that "this is the saddest story I've ever heard" and how it seems an odd thing to say if one is in the story and not hearing it. I however like to imagine him saying this in front of the aforementioned fire (after dinner when all the other guests have already turned in for the night) as a beginning to the story he's about to tell, placing himself in the roll of one of the characters (perhaps to make the story more interesting, and perhaps because it really did happen to him). Ford's magic is in making a man who tells a story in a book, exactly as you would expect him to tell you in person. You can't tell for sure what's true or not; when you've caught him in a lie and when he's just made a mistake because he's tired.
The Good Soldier succeeds because a not very interesting man tells a not very interesting story in a truly real and interesting way.
Rating:
Summary: could john dowell come up with a title?
Review: My original reading of The Good Soldier seemed a soul-crushing experience at the time. I can remember sitting at my desk copying page-long passages onto looseleaf paper so that they would be all the more tangible--so that somehow I could seem to touch the essence of what Ford was writing. At the time, it truly felt that dramatic. I suppose that, in some capacity, that's the point of The Good Soldier--the crushing of souls through the subsitution of words for life. The subsitution of habitual action for passionate action.
And in the end, it is the words, and Ford's phenomenal control over them, that register most powerfully--the machinations and manuverings of Dowell's brain move back and forth through time and space and levels of emotion. The confusion is piercing. The shell of his life is haunting. Yet Ford always knows just what confusion he is rendering... And in acheiving that balance he exhibits perfect literary grace.
Chill-inducing literary grace.
Rating:
Summary: The end of the affair
Review: No sooner had I started reading Ford Madox Ford's "The Good Soldier" that it reminded me of one of my favorite novels ever: Graham Greene's "The End of the Affair". Not because the books are similar, but I think they bear much resemblance. Both novels are narrated by a character that is one of the protagonists of the love affair, and, in both cases, he is very sad and jealous.
If "The end of the Affair" is a "diary of hate", "The Good Soldier" is "the saddest story [the narrator] ever heard", is what John Dowel tells in the beginning of the book. Set in a period from 1904 to 1913, the narrative tells the story of two couples -- one American and another one British --that meet in Germany and become friends. Some time later, Dowel discoveries that his wife had a love affair with his friend.
This novel is considered a Pre-Modernist work, Ford wrote the book in 1914, immediate before the First World War started --however, the book has some modernists elements, like a break from the Edwardian and Victorian novels, more traditional novels that preceded it. Ford employs innovations: the plot is disjointed, non-chronological, and infused with reflective commentary from the narrator.
The feeling we have is that we are unveiling the story at the same time of Dowel. He never seems to know more than we do. His tone of narrative is, above all, confuse and angry, but sometimes he is also very naïve. But, at the end, what is left is the impression that he is/was a man seeking for the truth, for some console, and coming to terms with his wife betrayal.
Although it is a novel that discusses the moral of the adultery, "The Good Soldier" is not a book that preaches any kind of moral. Sometimes, the major theme in this book is the difference between reality and appearance.
Many consider "The Good Soldier" the best book of the pre-war period, mostly because of the issues it touched upon. By that time, the so-called polite society didn't use to mention subjects like adultery, betrayal and moral confusion. Today we may be tired of discussing these issues, but they still make an interesting book.
Rating:
Summary: A Little Masterpiece
Review: One of the greatest examples of the spoken-word novel, The Good Soldier succeeds where authors as great as Conrad have failed. Our narrator does not tell a straight, linear story. No. He forgets things, comes back to them later, revives a subject you thought dead and meaningless only to shed new light on it and make it important. Perhaps the greatest effect the book has is the after-taste. When reading the book, I found it slow and boring. Once I set it down, though, I couldn't stop thinking about it. I had to read it again. And once I began again, I found myself reading it slowly once more, though not from boredom, but rather because I wanted to savor it and take it all in. I encourage anyone who has begun this book only to find themselves tired of it rather quickly to stick with it. You'll be glad you did. You'll find yourself buying copies for friends to read, as I do. This book truly gets under your skin.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Perfectly structured, perfectly told. Must be read by anyone with an interest in fiction writing. Oh, and I don't think it spoils anything to point out what I'm afraid many might miss or overlook - the fact that the unreliability of the narrator is the absolute key to understanding this novel.
Rating:
Summary: An early novel examining marital discord
Review: Summarily, "The Good Soldier" is about domestic turmoil and cheating spouses, but it's all the more interesting because it was written at a time, not long after the Victorian era, when marriage was still considered an institution of the utmost sanctity. The story concerns two couples: John and Florence Dowell, who are American, and Captain Edward and Leonora Ashburnham, who are English. One of the first things we learn at the beginning of the book, of which John is the narrator, is that Florence and Edward are presently dead. The two couples met nine years ago at a resort in the Hessian town of Nauheim, noted for its salt springs which are used to treat heart and nerve diseases; Florence, who indeed has a bad heart condition, is there to convalesce. Over the years Florence and Edward fall in love, unbeknownst to John but not to Leonora. Both marriages were built on shaky foundations. John's and Florence's backgrounds are differentiated financially (she is from an extremely wealthy family; he isn't) and the Ashburnhams religiously (Edward is Protestant; Leonora is Catholic). But the roots of their marital problems are more personal. Florence is a social climber and aspires to associate with English nobility, while John is ingenuous, naive in practical matters, and not very interested in money. Edward has a history of indiscriminate love affairs (initiated by a misunderstood sexual advance), immoderate gambling, and imprudent spending. His and Leonora's marriage has grown cool and passionless and is gradually turning into a state of mutual hatred, exacerbated by the presence of a girl named Nancy Rufford whom both Edward and John love. John is not the best of narrators; he tends to ramble and comes off as high-strung and jittery, like he's had too much caffeine. The reader gets the impression this personality trait of his may have been one of the reasons his wife sought an extramarital affair. It is easy to symphathize with this confused man for his misfortune but not for his gullibility. As he points out at the end of the book, everything everybody wanted was available to each, but eventually nobody got what he or she wanted. It is this conclusion that makes this "the saddest story" John had ever heard. This is the kind of story that F. Scott Fitzgerald could have written, only he would have let the scenes develop with more dialogue, and I think he would have focused more on the class distinction aspect. "The Good Soldier" is nowhere near the saddest story *I* have ever heard, but it does invoke a fair amount of emphathy for these people who only wanted to be happy but ended up in undesirable situations they were unable or unlikely to avoid or foresee.
Rating: 
Summary: Original but sentimental.
Review: The author of this novel written in the first person, discovers behind the perfect outward appearances of two upper class families, lechery, squandering, assailed purity, violent emotional conflicts and infighting, cuckoldry.
This is certainly not a new theme, but the originality here lays in the treatment: the first-person narrator tells the story as a calm and distant observer, although he is directly implicated in the venomous conflicts.
He discovers and reveals the facts little by little to the reader and gives his comments on the motivations and actions of the different characters as a 'good soldier'.
The confusion of sentiments is well rendered, but I found the main characters not so interesting. Out of date are also the religious motives: the impact of religion on the protagonists and the distinction between catholic and protestant characters.
The outcome is particularly sentimental and melodramatic. The reaction of an older man on the loss of a young girl, as well as the rest of the young girl's life are highly improbable.
There are better books on the same theme. To name a few classics: 'Dangerous Liaisons' by Choderlos de Laclos, 'Elective Affinities' by J.W. von Goethe or the more vulgar 'A Life' by Guy de Maupassant.
Rating:
Summary: Much misunderstood and misread
Review: The book appears to be about the destruction of five people's lives by the illicit passion of two of them for each other, and about the diabolical deceitfulness which they use to conceal their relationship from those around them. It seems to center on the narrator's process of discovery of this, and his outrage. In fact, and buried with great subtlety, it is really intended to be a condemnation of the closed sexual morality of the time, and the person of the narrator is used to bring the reader to the conclusion, through the most unlikely of people to become convinced of it, that the total removal of moral restraints in these matters will be life enhancing and morally right, given human nature as it is. It was a brave book to write when he did, and perhaps a brave point of view to take before penicillin and in the middle of a syphilis epidemic - we are speaking of the time period of Ibsen's Ghosts - it isn't surprising he so disguised it. What is a little surprising is that modern readers seem not to have understood it - the clues are pretty obvious once you know what you are looking for. How good is it? Well, it is a craftsmanlike lesson in how to do certain things, but his inability to get away from caricature stops it from being really moving. It is a bit like Flaubert, you feel he has envisaged the characters as ideas, but does not really feel with and for them, so in the end there is a curious coldness and want of moral feeling. But worth reading: it will make you think.
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