Good Soldier (Ford)

Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, online mainstream press reviews. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

100 Best Novels—Modern Library
100 Greatest Novels of All Time —The Observer (UK)

While readers continue to ignore Ford Madox Ford, one of this century's greatest English novelists, the Ecco Press continues to reissue his books in handsome paperback editions. When Knopf republished his two best novels — The Good Soldier and Parade's End — in 1950 and 1951, their dust jackets were festooned with critics' praises and exhortations in an attempt to bully or seduce the public. Since Ford is not so difficult as to be inaccessible, the source of readers' resistance to him must lie elsewhere. In Seeing Through Everything, the critic William Pritchard suggests that Ford's characters are storybook people, larger than life. But it might be argued that this is often true of characters in very good books. They are larger than life because life is too small. If they're too good to be true, it's partly because the truth isn't good enough.
Anatole Broyard - New York Times (4/14/1985)