Henry Green - Novels

Novels

Green's novels are often described as being among the most important works of English modernist literature, along with those of Virginia Woolf. His best-regarded novels are Living (1929), Loving (1945) and Party Going (1939) (now often published together).

Living documents the lives of Birmingham factory workers in the interwar boom years. The main plot concerns Lily Gates and her courting with Bert Jones, one of the factory workers. They seek an opportunity to escape the British working-class existence by travelling abroad. Crucial to their attempted elopement is Lily's desire to work. She is constantly stifled in this venture by the man she calls 'Grandad', Craigan, who is her father's best friend and with whom she lives. Another plotline concerns 'Dick' Dupret, the son of the factory owner. His father dies, leaving the business to his son. There are many disputes between Dupret and Mr Tarver, the factory forman. Mr Tarver fears for his job as Dupret seeks to renovate the factory and its workers. The language of the novel is notable for its deliberate lack of conjunctives to reflect a Birmingham accent. In addition, very few articles are used: "Noise of lathes working began again in this factory. Hundreds went along road outside, men and girls. Some turned into Dupret factory". Green later explained his reasons for using this technique: "I wanted to make that book as taut and spare as possible, to fit the proletarian life I was leading. So I hit on leaving out the articles."

Party Going tells the story of a group of wealthy people travelling by train to a house party. Due to fog, however, the train is much delayed and the group takes rooms in the adjacent large railway hotel. All the action of the story takes place in the hotel.

Loving describes life above and below stairs in an Irish country house during the Second World War. In the absence of their employers the Tennants, the servants enact their own battles and conflict amid rumours about the war in Europe. In a 1958 interview inThe Paris Review, Terry Southern asked Green about his inspiration for Loving. Green replied, "I got the idea of Loving from a manservant in the Fire Service during the war. He was serving with me in the ranks, and he told me he had once asked the elderly butler who was over him what the old boy most liked in the world. The reply was: 'Lying in bed on a summer morning, with the window open, listening to the church bells, eating buttered toast with cunty fingers.' I saw the book in a flash."

Back (1946) tells the story of Charley Summers, a young Englishman who comes back from Germany, where he was detained as a POW for three years after having been wounded in combat in France. Due to his wound, Charley's leg had to be amputated. While he was prisoner, Rose, the woman he loved, died; moreover, Rose was married to another man, so Charley cannot even express his bereavement for fear of scandal. Charley calls on Rose's father, Mr Grant, who encourages him to make acquantance with a young widow. When he does, he is astonished at the uncanny resemblance between the woman, whose name is Nancy Whitmore, and Rose. He discovers that Nancy is the illegitimate daughter of Mr Grant, who sent Charley to her thinking he might console her for the death of her husband, an RAF pilot killed in action. The rest of the novel describes the complex and troubled relation between Charley and Nancy, as it unfolds against the background of a war-torn Britain.

Green had his own opinion of what writing should be: "Prose is not to be read aloud but to oneself alone at night, and it is not quick as poetry but rather a gathering web of insinuations Prose should be a direct intimacy between strangers with no appeal to what both may have known. It should slowly appeal to fears unexpressed, it should in the end draw tears out of the stone."