The Good Companions by J B Priestley (1929)

I think I read this book decades ago – probably in the same manner as I read it this time round, i.e. being delighted with the first chapters and then finding myself skimming the pages more and more. I have seen the book described as “rambling”; my word for it would be “long-winded”.

That is not to deny the novel’s attractive qualities; it is exuberant and warm, delighting in its likeable characters and generous towards its eccentrics. There’s plenty of humour (much of it at the expense of Yorkshire) and it’s second to none in its portrait of interwar England. That was in the end my favourite aspect of the novel: the real sense of a northern milltown, of slow-moving time in the Cotswolds, the cheap boarding school that was up there with St Custard’s for revolting prunes and Dotheboys Hall for grotesques, the out-of-season seaside towns, the travelling salesmen, the difference between a mean industrial town and one with a spirit to it. The three characters represent England’s social and geographical divisions; when they collide to come to the aid of a talented but penniless concert party the divisions are dissolved and they combine for a brief period to form a co-operative troupe – the “Good Companions” of the title.

So it is a fairly feel-good novel, but there is a hard layer below the surface. There’s no tender deathbed reconciliation between the Oakroyds: “there looked out from those eyes the soul, stubborn, unflinching, ironic, of Mrs Oakroyd”. Equally, the description of the town of Tewborough – terminally ugly and depressed – is bleak. Priestley sews it all into his patchwork. The tone is of a storyteller, using the hooks of humour, warmth and prolepsis to keep the reader eager to read on.

. . . albeit with a bit of skipping.