A Question of Upbringing
Anthony Powell
223 pages
published in 1951

If, having read my booklog for a while, you get the impression I use the local library a lot, you are quite correct. As any avid reader knows, a library is the perfect way of sampling those books you're not quite sure of you'd like. The very novel under discussion here, A Question of Upbringing, is an example of this proces. I had read good things about Anthony Powell and his 12 novel series, A Dance to the Music of Time, of which this is the first installment, enough so that when spotted this book on the shelves, I stopped and read a bit. It intrigued me enough to take home with me.

With A Question of Upbringing, Anthony Powell started what I gather is believed to be his magnus opus, A Dance to the Music of Time, which chronicles the life of its narrator and his friends and acquintances from boyhood at public school in the 1920ties up to the early 1970ties. During this time England changed quite a lot; it will be interesting to see how the characters deal with these changes in later books. A Question of Upbringing itself is set in the early 1920ties, at a time when it was still possible to think the British empire would last forever and life would continue unchanged.

The story begins with the narrator, Nicholas Jenkins, [1] still at public school in his penultimate year. He is messed with two other boys, Peter Templer and Charles Stringham, with whom he is friends, of a sort. There's also an older boy, Widmerpool, by whom Jenkins is somewhat fascinated because Widmerpool does not quite fit in, rumoured to have wrong the wrong overcoat at his first day in school and very being keen on sports if not that good at most of them. The novel indeed starts with Jenkins encountering Widmerpool on one of the latters daily running laps, which sets the tone for the rest of the book and indeed the series, if I'm not mistaken.

Though Jenkins is the narrator, we learn little of his life. He comes across as a detached observer, not as much telling a story as recounting a series of anecdotes and incidents which happened in his last year at school, his first year at Oxford and in time he spent in France learning the language in between school and university. One can say truthfully that Jenkins is a low key narrator. This low key narration is part of the charm of the novel in its detached ironic coolness. Powells is a sharp observer of character, his various personages all seem real, which the clinical style of the narration enforces.

Despite the very favourable critical reputation of the series, described by some as the English answer to Proust A recherché du Temps Perdu, this is not a difficult book. At 223 pages, it is not overtly wrong and the style of writing makes reading A Question of Upbringing very easy, if you're at all susceptible to it. I will probably read the sequels as well.

[1] I don't think we actually ever learn his first name from this book. He's consistently addressed as "Jenkins", if his name is used at all.