When I picked this book up, my expectation was to find
another character along the lines of Reginald or Clovis, another character to
love for his witticism and stinging rejoinders, another character to admire for
his dandiness, another character to take me through tales of the British drawing
room. The obvious suspect for such a character was Ronnie Storr, a regular
dandy like Reginald and Clovis, introduced as a charming young thing with a
penchant for traipsing among British aristocrats. I waited for him to
demonstrate his Reggie-like subtle, wry humor or his Clovis-like delectable mischief
but I kept waiting in vain. For this book, as I later learned, was not intended
to be a funny, satirical take on British aristocracy but a commentary on compulsory
military service.
The book is futuristic saga chronicling life in England
under a German rule. If Oscar Wilde had been the original author of A Brave New World, this is what he would
have produced. A futuristic tale is not what I would pick up a Saki for (we
have enough of those anyway) and, hence, the plot was jarring at first. But if
you let go of that initial note of discomfort, the rest of the melody is easy
to get through, for the first half anyway. It is peppered with jocular and sardonic
analogies in a style that is intrinsically Saki. But even that wasn’t enough to
save the lackluster plot and I was left wanting by the end of it. The first
half was breezy enough but I kept hoping for the humor to improve, as it usually
does in his short stories, or for things to take a macabre turn (like what
happened in The Unbearable Bassington) but the novel became a drag with time.
Sentences were long and lacked the Saki humor to carry you through their length
and I was drifting in and out on multiple occasions.
P.S. Plus one to Saki for his cognizance of a tiny town in
India called Allahabad. My judgment is not biased here, I swear.
