The first novel in the author’s celebrated Parade’s End Tetralogy explores the social tensions between marriage, sex, and honor at the outbreak of WWI. London, 1910s. Christopher Tietjens, a brilliant mathematician, shows little emotion when his wife, Sylvia, leaves him for her lover. But when she tires of the romantic pursuit and informs Christopher of her desire to return to him, it proves to be one more episode in their masochistic marriage—Sylvia’s faithless torments yet again bested by Christopher’s infuriating chivalry. Then, on a golfing weekend in Rye, Christopher meets a young suffragette by the name of Valentine Wannop, whose passion for ideas is matched by her beauty. In Valentine, Christopher sees the possibilities of life and love he has denied himself thus far. But the small dramas of their individual lives are suddenly interrupted when the world goes to war. Author Ford Madox Ford’s masterful Parade’s End series is “in human psychology and literary technique . . . as modern and modernist as they come.” The first of four volumes, Some Do Not . . . sets in motion the complex web of attachments, passions, and resentments that unfold across an era of profound change (Julian Barnes, The Guardian).
