Rating: 
Summary: Blend of psychological insights and caricatures
Review: This book seemed like "A Tale of Passivity" or "The Most Pathetic Story." Engagingly written, with tawdry doings progressively exposed by the wimpish narrator, the reader is drawn along to find out "How low will they go?" Well, they get about as lowdown as characters could be expected to get in early 20th century fiction. While something of a potboiler, this book does raise some interesting questions and views regarding male/female relationships, particularly where the characters veer between their urges to repress or to express their emotions. Only voracious Florence, under license from her "weak" heart, pursues her desires with relative abandon. The other three characters (four, if you count "the girl") seem unable to do much of anything but follow along. They are either "strongly weak" or "weakly strong", evoking little interest in their fates.There's just not enough oxygen left in the room for them to live when Florence is around. And yet, nothing gets better, in any real sense, after she's gone and the others could get on with their lives. The fact that they don't lays bare their fundamental emptiness. In every meaningful sense, Florence, whether alive or dead, is the driving force of the story. Indeed, the "good soldier" comes across as a vulnerable, sympathetic fellow, rather than as a lothario. I found some aspects of the book decidedly shallow, particularly the author's depictions of Americans (especially Henry James-style expatriates) and Anglo-Irish Roman Catholics. There were a few good digs but too much stereotyping and not enough understanding. Overall, an enjoyable read, but more in the way of a tastefully spun out melodrama than as trenchant psychological portraiture.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent
Review: this has to be the most well strctured book i've ever read. the way it folds out as he is telling it is superb. it gets to the point where you're expecting a terrible thing to happen on every page... very good style of writing; perfectly arranged.
Rating:
Summary: Breaking with his times
Review: This is a great novel, and I'm sad that I had not read it sooner. Ford shows his strange position in the history of literature: this novel has traces of Henry James and Joe Conrad (both who tutored Ford) but also has an innovative narration that makes it seem very modern and readable. It also has a tragic, haunting story powering the interesting style. It's a good read, and makes us wish Ford was known for more than inspiring and helping later writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Many reviewers find fault with the narrator, but I can't see how anyone can but help but feel sorry for this poor man. His tale is indeed worth hearing.
Rating:
Summary: Breaking with his times
Review: This is a great novel, and I'm sad that I had not read it sooner. Ford shows his strange position in the history of literature: this novel has traces of Henry James and Joe Conrad (both who tutored Ford) but also has an innovative narration that makes it seem very modern and readable. It also has a tragic, haunting story powering the interesting style. It's a good read, and makes us wish Ford was known for more than inspiring and helping later writers such as Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Many reviewers find fault with the narrator, but I can't see how anyone can but help but feel sorry for this poor man. His tale is indeed worth hearing.
Rating: 
Summary: saddest narrator ever
Review: This is not war fiction. It is a soap opera, of rich people who subsume their longing, fear, religion, everything, to decorum. Narrated by a hollow man -- Holden Caulfield of the upper-crust, minus the sharp wit. It's all bitterness and sigh-heaving -- a man sits next to you at a bar and starts talking, with the following first sentence, "This is the saddest story I have ever heard." He talks and talks, he's not a slick storyteller but you listen -- it's a sad story largely because the storyteller is sad, as in pathetic, and you become more fascinated in him than in his story (which you suspect is grotesquely slanted to his point of view anyway). There's a British couple and a British-like American couple. There's an affair, there's a suicide, there is lots of falsity. Only main events are narrated, and the narrator digresses, digresses and describes the mental states of his characters: so you're left with thin characterization but vivid impressions. I could not relate to the rich, British ways of the characters; and there are subtleties of religion -- Catholic vs. Protestant -- which are over my athiest head. It is Henry James-like, in its abstruseness as to what the heck is at stake for the characters, but witten in a looser style at least. The novel was written in 1913. Ford wanted "to show what I could do" -- because -- "I had never really tried to put into any novel of mine all that I knew about writing." But he goes on to say (in a preface), "the story is a true story...I could not write it till all the others were dead."
Rating:
Summary: Master Craftsman at Work
Review: This novel broke new ground when it was written, something in these jaded days that is almost impossible to do. Ford created an unreliable narrator and also wrote about the complex inner workings of relationships, an area of darkness that will always be immune from full enlightenment. His characters also deceive themselves as well as significant others, and yet are always in pursuit of the perfect appearance. The subtlety with which Ford has woven this tapestry makes you think twice and then three times about who his people are and what they want. Unbridled lust also rides through the book, but is forever reigned in by double standards and self-torturing conscience. Although the book requires a patient reader so that it can bloom, its payoff stays with you, and its sharp observations and lack of sentiment make you realize what a brilliant piece of art it is. As such it is not subject to becoming dated or stale, a true test of its merit. I recommend it to anyone looking for a great work.
Rating:
Summary: Early 1900s book is bang up to date on human nature
Review: This shocking and wrenching book stands as a warning of the destructive power of illicit love when combined with social and religious taboos. I found it hard to read at times because it spoke so directly to my own experience across a gulf of 80 years. You feel deeply sad for the characters, but their actions are always believeable, even unavoidable. Not one for the romantics. P.S. Sorry, this doesn't sound like a recommendation, but it is (realistic romantics should be fine!)
Rating:
Summary: Who would put up with that?
Review: Well, maybe if your name is Hillary! I liked the book because a story was being told as opposed to unfolding. It was a nice change. I also thought that reactions of the affairs was also a topic that was explored well.
Rating:
Summary: Like it more and more as it settles.
Review: While reading this book, I was intrigued but not blown away. Nothing in the story moved me one way or the other. I was pretty indifferent. However, after finishing it and letting it settle, I found that I liked it more and more, mainly because of the unsettling ending which was both jolting and wonderful.
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