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A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement

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A Dance to the Music of Time: Second Movement

By: Anthony Powell
Narrated by: Simon Vance
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About this listen

Anthony Powell's universally acclaimed epic encompasses a four-volume panorama of twentieth century London. Hailed by Time as "brilliant literary comedy as well as a brilliant sketch of the times," A Dance to the Music of Time opens just after World War I. Amid the fever of the 1920s and the first chill of the 1930s, Nick Jenkins and his friends confront sex, society, business, and art.

In the second volume they move to London in a whirl of marriage and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures. These books "provide an unsurpassed picture, at once gay and melancholy, of social and artistic life in Britain between the wars" (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.).

The third volume follows Nick into army life and evokes London during the blitz. In the climactic final volume, England has won the war and must now count the losses. In the background of this second volume of A Dance to the Music of Time, the rumble of distant events in Germany and Spain presages the storm of World War II. In England, even as the whirl of marriages and adulteries, fashions and frivolities, personal triumphs and failures gathers speed, men and women find themselves on the brink of fateful choices. Includes the novels: At Lady Molly's, Casanova's Chinese Restaurant, and The Kindly Ones.

As an added bonus, when you purchase our Audible Modern Vanguard production of Anthony Powell's book, you'll also receive an exclusive Jim Atlas interview. This interview – where James Atlas interviews Charles McGrath about the life and work of Anthony Powell – begins as soon as the audiobook ends.

©1962 Anthony Powell (P)2010 Audible, Inc.
Classics Literary Fiction

Critic Reviews

"Anthony Powell is the best living English novelist by far. His admirers are addicts, let us face it, held in thrall by a magician." ( Chicago Tribune)
"A book which creates a world and explores it in depth, which ponders changing relationships and values, which creates brilliantly living and diverse characters and then watches them grow and change in their milieu.... Powell's world is as large and as complex as Proust's." ( New York Times)
"Simon Vance is a master of differentiating characters and conveying a complexity of emotions while allowing listeners room to experience their own reactions. Vance skillfully guides us through Nick's London of artists, musicians, and writers; the several faces of marriage; and the odd mix of hope and fear as the world slips once again into a nightmare." ( AudioFile)

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Smooth and sympathetic

This is the part of the series where the narrator, Nick Jenkins, has a lot more to do with working and lower middle class men. That's because it's World War 2 and the men are serving in the army with him. It's generally an attractive and insightful portrayal and a marvellous insight into the everyday life of military units that are not involved in the fighting and remain in Britain.
Later Nick moves into liaising with the high officers of various continental allies and again there are some very good and sympathetic character portraits.
As with the whole series, I have used the reading to get to sleep and stay asleep (ie I keep the reading going during the night on my ipad). It's not a criticism. It has the right level of interest to avoid boredom and irritation but is not so stimulating that it keeps you awake. Simon Vance's excellent reading is also obviously part of the formula.

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