At Lady Molly’s by Anthony Powell is the fourth volume of A Dance To The Music of Time which is 43rd on The Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels list, also one of the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, ranked 339th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and more importantly for this space, it is one of my Top 50 Favorites – you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel

 

At Lady Molly’s by Anthony Powell is the fourth volume of A Dance To The Music of Time which is 43rd on The Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels list, also one of the 1,000 Novels Everyone Must Read, ranked 339th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, and more importantly for this space, it is one of my Top 50 Favorites – you find thousands of reviews of magnum opera from the aforementioned and other pages on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html and YouTube channel

 

10 out of 10

 

At Lady Molly’s was enchanting the second time https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-acceptance-world-by-anthony-powell.html A Dance To The Music of Time will surely be mesmerizing when I get to it for the third time, in a few years’ time…the plan is to put in between Kingsley Amis’ magnum opera for the second time as well

 

One of the very interesting characters in this fourth volume is the butler- Smith moves between employers, within the Tolland family and he is hilarious on a few occasions, when he answers the door - ‘Is her Ladyship upstairs? ’Where do you think she’d be—in the basement?’ is what he retorts and then there is more

For he has a habit of imbibing, though Lady Molly is tolerant, up a point – which reminds me of Scoop https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/08/scoop-by-evelyn-waugh-adapted-for-bbc.html wherein this man tells lord Cooper ‘up to a point’, when they talk about a falsehood – and then they ask for champagne

 

I have to stop talking about Smith, though he is hilarious, for there are others: Windmerpool will be with us to the end, that much I remember, but in this episode, he wants to get married to a woman who is about twenty years older, and strong, liberated avant la lettre, she has had affairs, she knows what she wants and gets it

Kenneth Widmerpool ‘is a typical intuitive extrovert—classical case, almost. Cold-blooded. Keen on a thing for a moment, but never satisfied’ that was the description (part of it) so it does not look like he will be get on with his would-be wife, indeed, he seems to be impotent, so the preparations are cancelled

 

There should have been a spoiler alert up there – I assumed nobody is reading these lines, I was proved wrong, but then one person does not change the nobody into so many – except I would also say, said it actually, that it does not look as if they have a chance, and then this is rather a detail, not everything is centered on Widmerpool

Erridge is quite a figure, and then Mona looks like someone I would like to be with, for how long, I am not sure, it makes me think of the psychology classic https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-paradox-of-choice-by-barry-schwartz_30.html The Paradox of Choice form where we get that there are Maximizers and Satisfizers

 

 

Nick is not with Jean anymore, and I get that the glorious Anthony Powell was inspired in writing about the Tolland family by his real in-laws, he also good friends with my other favorite, Kingsley Amis https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-kings-english-guide-to-modern-usage.html I look forward to a year of reading their chefs d’oeuvre

 

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