The Great Fortune

If negotiating the terms of a new marriage, especially to a partner known for no more than a few months, is challenging, then how much more so when set against the start of WW2?

Guy and Harriet Pringle have met and married over the summer break before travelling to Bucharest where Guy is a British Council lecturer. There's no overarching plot to this semi-autobiographical novel, it's more a meandering portrait of characters: Harriet's realisation that Guy's big heart and interest in everyone around him means he might never prioritise her or their relationship; the jaw-droppingly selfish Yakimov who will survive whatever happens (and who seems to have wandered in from a Dickens novel, so close is he to caricature); Sheppy trying to mobilise an assorted array of British businessmen and lecturers into some kind of strike force against the Germans.

Although first published in 1960, this has quite an old-fashioned air about it, not least in the general superiority of the British characters as they rather nastily dismiss anyone not English. There are some interesting characters but the dated attitudes towards empire and nationality, however accurate to the time, are off-putting, especially as they appear to reflect Manning's own cultural values. An interesting portrait of a historical place and time, but I found it disappointing that it endorses rather than critically examining the cultural framework of the British - this is no The Jewel in the Crown of the Balkans.