Parade's End

 

I have just finished reading all four books of Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End.  The Vintage Classics edition is 906 pages long.  I started losing steam when went off on the tangent of Tietjens' brother and his French mistress in the last book, The Last Post.  But up to then, I simply loved it.  I have read many American and British novels about World War I, even some of the poetry.  In fact, I've read so many I'm not certain how I missed this.   It's better than Siegfried Sassoon's trilogy, or Robert Graves' Good-bye to All That.  Having seen the HBO miniseries, I have renewed respect for Tom Stoppard's adaptation.  Amazingly good, of a totally nonlinear, multiple streams-of-consciousness work.