Rating: 
Summary: Style and tone
Review: The essense of this outstanding novel is its style and tone. The plot is simple, almost mundane, a story of betrayal and infidelity. But the narrator, John Dowell, tells his story uncertainly, wistfully, mixing exquisite, almost visual, detail with large swatches of ambiguity and irony. The telling of the story represents true creativity and art.
Rating:
Summary: The most perfectly structured novel ever written
Review: The Good Soldier has all the tension and fragility of a
balloon filled with twice the amount of air it's supposed to hold. It is a howling, subversive, gut-bustingly funny
piece of bathroom graffiti masquerading as a quaint book of
manners. Do yourself a favor and read it immediately!
Rating: 
Summary: Tangled Up In Deceit
Review: The Good Soldier is a story of the bizarre relationship between two couples seen through the eyes of an aggrieved husband. Captain Ashburnham's wife seems to control him by enabling his sexual affairs with various younger women. The narrator seems quite naive as he untangeles the deciept of all the parties involved. He seems to respect every one except his own wife. I would recommend taking notes as you read this. The story does notunfold in a chronilogical manner, a fact thenarrator apoligizes for throughout the story. A study in charactor motivation that may leave you scratching your head.This is not an easy read but if you are a Henry James or Grahme Greene fan you will probably like this book.
Rating:
Summary: achingly beautiful
Review: The Good Soldier is woefully underread, and it fully deserves its somewhat belatedly-restored status as a true classic of 20th c. English literature. Ford Madox Ford, a friend and collaborator of Joseph Conrad, lays out a deceptively simple, almost trite, plot, one which we first think we've heard a dozen times before. But the beauty of this book is in the telling. Ford's narrator is piecing together the events of the past decade as he tells the story, and as such he jumps back and forth over the course of the last ten years, offering glimpses of events yet to come, going back and re-telling accounts of events he's already shared (though always with a new twist and revelation). In essence, the narrator is "learning" the story along with the reader, and he never (if ever) truly "understands" what's happened till the very end. Ford shatters forever the old 19th c. English novel where good and evil are absolute polar opposites, where characters unfailingly embrace either one or the other pole, where decency and "good" almost always prevail in the end, and where characters are immediately transparent (take Dickens, for example: a paragraph or two and you know all you need to know about each and every character he introduces; whether they're "good" or "bad," etc.) Ford uses the genre of the novel to create a work of literature where art mirrors real life. His characters are never what they seem at first meeting, events are fraught with deep hidden meanings that bubble beneath the surface, and there are three sides to every story. Beautifully written with moments of sparkling wit and levity, it is also an emotionally draining work that tackles love (versus what simply goes by the name) and propriety (versus what society says is proper). You'll want to flip back to the first chapter and re-read it from page one, knowing then what you know by book's end. A true masterpiece which I cannot recommend highly enough. This particular edition from Everymans Library is particularly handsome and well-bound, with insightful introductory essays by thoughtful critics (which, needless to say, should be read after the novel itself).
Rating:
Summary: achingly beautiful
Review: The Good Soldier is woefully underread, and it fully deserves its somewhat belatedly-restored status as a true classic of 20th c. English literature. Ford Madox Ford, a friend and collaborator of Joseph Conrad, lays out a deceptively simple, almost trite, plot, one which we first think we've heard a dozen times before. But the beauty of this book is in the telling. Ford's narrator is piecing together the events of the past decade as he tells the story, and as such he jumps back and forth over the course of the last ten years, offering glimpses of events yet to come, going back and re-telling accounts of events he's already shared (though always with a new twist and revelation). In essence, the narrator is "learning" the story along with the reader, and he never (if ever) truly "understands" what's happened till the very end. Ford shatters forever the old 19th c. English novel where good and evil are absolute polar opposites, where characters unfailingly embrace either one or the other pole, where decency and "good" almost always prevail in the end, and where characters are immediately transparent (take Dickens, for example: a paragraph or two and you know all you need to know about each and every character he introduces; whether they're "good" or "bad," etc.) Ford uses the genre of the novel to create a work of literature where art mirrors real life. His characters are never what they seem at first meeting, events are fraught with deep hidden meanings that bubble beneath the surface, and there are three sides to every story. Beautifully written with moments of sparkling wit and levity, it is also an emotionally draining work that tackles love (versus what simply goes by the name) and propriety (versus what society says is proper). You'll want to flip back to the first chapter and re-read it from page one, knowing then what you know by book's end. A true masterpiece which I cannot recommend highly enough. This particular edition from Everymans Library is particularly handsome and well-bound, with insightful introductory essays by thoughtful critics (which, needless to say, should be read after the novel itself).
Rating:
Summary: This novel is more about the narrator than other characters
Review: The most fascinating aspect of this novel is that it is more about the narrator than the other characters. Throughout the novel the narrator attempts to justify his decisions and actions. His lack of judgement on the final pages is appalling. "The Good Soldier" is an enthralling character study that, at times, seems all too real.
Rating:
Summary: hard to care
Review: The novel tells the story of the 9 year friendship between two couples. The Good Soldier of the title has a "bad heart" and a wife he doesn't love. The narrator's wife has a "bad heart" also and when the two couples meet in Europe they seem to form an ideal foursome. However, as the story unfolds, the narrator reveals that none of these people are who they seem to be on the surface. The writing is very witty & the novel is structured almost like a mystery. But as with a number of other books on this list, it is hard to like any of the characters &, therefore, hard to care what happens to them. GRADE: B-
Rating:
Summary: Story of the destructiveness of realtionships.
Review: The sad story of a couple who failed to staisfy each others loves and passions. Edward, a passionate womanizer, spends his adult life trying to find sexual and emotional satisfaction while his wife, Lenora, trys to "fix" Edward and his indiscretions. Narrated by Dowell, a friend whose emotionless wife is interlocked in a tryst with Edward. Fascinating story of how people can destroy each other trying to get someone to love them on their terms. Sometimes I was not sure whether to laugh or cry. Ford uses his words eloquently so that you can understand the emotions of the characters. I was dissapointed in the character development of Dowell. Although he was a brilliant storyteller, Ford does not let us into the depths of his heart as he did with the other characters.
Rating: 
Summary: A forgotten, and forgettable, classic
Review: The saddest story in the world it is not. Nor the most interesting, for that matter. For my money, the authors who came after Ford Madox Ford and who imitated or borrowed from him
did so much better than he himself. I suppose, then, that at least credit is due to him for having inspired better authors after him. Where would world literature be, for instance, without the likes of Graham Greene?
The Good Soldier is not a bad novel, necessarily. It's actually quite good. But it simply isn't memorable. It's not one of those novels from which you could drop the name of the main character at a cocktail party of pseudo-intellectuals and have it be instantly recognizable. That is to say that Edward Ashburnham, the soldier to whom the title refers, is certainly no Heathcliff or Darcy or some such character from British literature whose fame is known and remembered by most anyone who stayed awake through their high school English classes. There is something about Ashburnham that is not fully engaged, or perhaps not fully drawn. He never seems to step forward to the front of the stage, but he doesn't exactly lurk beneath a shroud of mystery either. He just isn't all that interesting.
The narrator, on the other hand, is quite interesting, and quite likeable. But we never get the sense that the book is really about him. He's an innocent bystander, a passive observer, a set of eyes that does its best to stay out of the way and not pass judgment. And because the novel is focused through him rather than on him, we are forced to engage with a set of characters with whom we would dread spending an evening, and whose names we would always have trouble recalling.
Rating: 
Summary: Uninteresting.
Review: There is no other way to say it, and I find this kind of thing hard to do (I know I'll receive a lot of negative votes from those who beam in because they like the book), but I'm sorry, I found it boring. Barely got through it all, but I ENDURED. With the enthusiasm of a kid who nibbles at the broccoli but can't wait to stuff the potatoes and gravy into his mouth. With this in mind, if you want to look at a similar book (that is much better) I would point you towards the rare "King, Queen, Knave" by Vladimir Nabokov, or the equally rare, "The Temptation Of Eileen Hughes" by Brain Moore: both available at amazon.com .... The only "good" thing about The Good Soldier is that he only blabs on for a little over 200 pages. Go ahead, kill me on your votes now...... honesty on my part is worth it. I want to spare you!
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