The Way of All Flesh

by Samuel Butler Narrated by David Timson

Overview

A thinly disguised autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh is a powerful critique of late Victorian beliefs and values. It tells of several generations of the Pontifex family, with Ernest, son of hypocritical and domineering parents, at the centre of its narrative. After a disastrous career in the church, culminating in a spell in prison, Ernest goes on to find his own way in the world, rejecting both Christianity and the strictures imposed by his family.

The book's attack on the domestic, religious and sexual hypocrisy of its time caused the author to delay its publication. However, later authors praised the novel, with George Orwell observing that `He would say things that other people knew but didn't dare to say', and A.A. Milne describing it as the `second- best novel in the English language'.

Editorial Reviews

V.S. Pritchett

One thinks of it lying in Samuel Butler's desk for thirty years, waiting to blow up the Victorian family and with it the whole great pillared and balustraded edifice of the Victorian novel.”

P. N. Furbank

[Butler] uses ordinary conversational English idiom, managing to seem perfectly at ease in it, and continually showing how rich in expressive turns and formulations and apt and vivid words it really is…This is the perfection of what one loosely thinks of as the ‘plain’ style and which of course is not ‘plain’ at all, but fashioned with hard labor and the most sensitive and resourceful skill. In writing Butler attained that ‘grace after the flesh’ for which Ernest pined in vain.”

New Yorker

If the house caught on fire, the Victorian novel I would rescue from the flames would be not Vanity Fair or Bleak House but Samuel Butler’s The Way of All Flesh. It is read, I believe, mostly by the young, bent on making out a case against their elders, but Butler was fifty when he stopped working on it, and no reader much under that age is likely to appreciate the full beauty of its horrors, which are not the horrors of the Gothic novel but of family life.”

George Bernard Shaw

One of the summits of human achievement.”

FEBRUARY 2024 - AudioFile

A.A. Milne called THE WAY OF ALL FLESH the second-best novel in the English language, but it remains one of the least known. In this audio version David Timson brings out all of its wit and charm, although some knowledge of Victorian Britain may be necessary to appreciate the extent of its satire. Among the five generations of the Pontifex family, there are a fair number of important characters, but the book eventually concentrates on Ernest and his immediate family, including his godfather, Edward Overton, the novel's narrator. Through accent, tone, and some modest vocal gymnastics, Timson keeps all the major and a great many minor characters alive and individualized, maintaining listeners' engagement all the way to the end. D.M.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940159365866
Publisher:	Naxos Audiobooks
Publication date:	06/29/2021
Edition description:	Unabridged

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