What: In the satirical novel Told by an Idiot, author Rose Macaulay follows one family around the corner of the turn of the last century, from the last decades of the Victorian period to the end of World War I. Much like its primary heroine, Rome Garden, the book is jaded, amused, critical, perceptive, witty, and urbane.
Comparable to: It's like Virginia Woolf's Orlando in its cynical sweep, or like an Elizabeth von Arnim novel in its pointed and wry character descriptions.
Representative quote: "Stanley was like that --- enthusiastic, headlong, a deep plunger, a whole-hogger."
Bonus representative quote: "No teasing worried Una; she was as placid as a young cow."
[Note: Quotes were chosen at random. Roughly 80% of the novel is very, very quotable.]
You might not like it if: You're completely thrown off by the fact that the extreme specificity of the period detail is threaded with an absolute certainty that human nature is basically what it always has been (religious crises, fashionable radicalism, sex novels, and all).
How to get it: It's out of print, so check your library and used book sellers.
Connection to previous Wreckage: Macaulay presents a less sweeping, more personal societal satire in Crewe Train (Rec. #84).
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