No spoiler alert needed…
Book review:
To Serve Them All My Days
by R. F. Delderfield
Washington Square Press, Pocket Books, New York, 1973
678 pages
Delderfield simply uses an utterly familiar plot line in To Serve Them All My Days: a Welsh coal miner’s son survives World War I, and becomes a teacher at a boys’ school in England south of Wales, and grows in his role to become the beloved headmaster. Everyone calls him “Pow-Wow,” with love and respect.
However, much of the tale is an unfamiliarly rich creation of manifestly human characters who deal with the slings and arrows of life, and make the best of their world to give willing, deserving boys a good education and a glimpse of how to live a decent life.
The dialogue is above average in many places. Delderfield is a determined master of exploring the minds of his key players. There is enough reflection and imagination and longing and joy/despair for any discerning reader.
No spoiler alert is needed here. You can’t possibly be in doubt about how the story ends.
With Delderfield, getting there is the point of the journey.
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Book review. Copyright © Richard Carl Subber 2017 All rights reserved.
Book review: The Bridges of Madison County
If you’re looking for
highly stoked eroticism
and high-rolling lives
that throw off sparks when they touch,
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by Robert Waller
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Writing Rainbows: Poems for Grown-Ups with 59 free verse and haiku poems,
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© 2017 – 2024, Richard Subber. All rights reserved.
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