Doting, the last of Henry Green’s novels, is, as its title would suggest, a story of aging and yearning in which a wife and a brash young woman run hilarious circles around a hapless hardworking civil servant suddenly seized by long dormant desire. Like its immediate predecessor Nothing, it stands out from the rest of his work in being composed almost entirely of dialogue, and in both books, Green’s fascination with the extravagance, ambiguity, absurdity, and unintentional implications and consequences of everyday human communication leads to scenes that are as grimly funny as they are deeply sad.
“The intelligence, the blazing gifts of imagery, dialogue, construction, and form, the power to feel both what can and what never can be said, give Henry Green’s work an intensity greater . . . than that of any other writer of imaginative fiction today. . . . His remains the most interesting and vital imagination in English fiction in our time.” —Eudora Welty
“The sincere and almost religious conviction of the primacy of guilt in human relations is one of Green’s most fruitful sources of inspiration, and he forcefully develops it in Doting and Nothing, his last, great, and dismally underrated novels.” —Brooke Allen, The New Criterion
“In all of [Green’s] novels we are made aware of the most profound and surprising truths about life, love and the human heart without being able to pinpoint any one page, line or moment of epiphany. To read [him] is to find oneself in the presence of rare genius, fit to sit along Woolf, Fitzgerald and Joyce on anyone’s shelf of classics. Henry Green is here to stay.” —David Wright, The Seattle Times
"Mr. Green possesses perhaps the most accurate ear of any contemporary novelist.... Doting is a masterly exercise in technique.... It has some of the best moments of comedy Mr. Green has yet written." —The Times Literary Supplement
"The formidable author...has set out to write a funny book in Doting, and he has succeeded." —John Betjeman, The Daily Telegraph
"Nothing and Doting...actually display something close to old-fashioned formal perfection." —Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review
"A skillful intaglio of inconstancy which is pleasantly deft and devious." —Kirkus Reviews
"And in their sheer absurdity Nothing and Doting are two of the funniest novels ever written, bringing to an almost abstract essence the humor that had always been woven through Green’s work." —The Atlantic
Henry Green (1905–1973) was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke. Born near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, England, he was educated at Eton and Oxford and went on to become the managing director of his family’s engineering business, writing novels in his spare time. His first novel, Blindness (1926), was written while he was at Oxford. He married in 1929 and had one son, and during the Second World War served in the Auxiliary Fire Service. Between 1926 and 1952 he wrote nine novels—Blindness, Living, Party Going, Caught, Loving, Back, Concluding, Nothing, and Doting—and a memoir, Pack My Bag.
Michael Gorra is the author of, among other books, The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany and Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches English at Smith College.
Doting, the last of Henry Green’s novels, is, as its title would suggest, a story of aging and yearning in which a wife and a brash young woman run hilarious circles around a hapless hardworking civil servant suddenly seized by long dormant desire. Like its immediate predecessor Nothing, it stands out from the rest of his work in being composed almost entirely of dialogue, and in both books, Green’s fascination with the extravagance, ambiguity, absurdity, and unintentional implications and consequences of everyday human communication leads to scenes that are as grimly funny as they are deeply sad.
Reviews
“The intelligence, the blazing gifts of imagery, dialogue, construction, and form, the power to feel both what can and what never can be said, give Henry Green’s work an intensity greater . . . than that of any other writer of imaginative fiction today. . . . His remains the most interesting and vital imagination in English fiction in our time.” —Eudora Welty
“The sincere and almost religious conviction of the primacy of guilt in human relations is one of Green’s most fruitful sources of inspiration, and he forcefully develops it in Doting and Nothing, his last, great, and dismally underrated novels.” —Brooke Allen, The New Criterion
“In all of [Green’s] novels we are made aware of the most profound and surprising truths about life, love and the human heart without being able to pinpoint any one page, line or moment of epiphany. To read [him] is to find oneself in the presence of rare genius, fit to sit along Woolf, Fitzgerald and Joyce on anyone’s shelf of classics. Henry Green is here to stay.” —David Wright, The Seattle Times
"Mr. Green possesses perhaps the most accurate ear of any contemporary novelist.... Doting is a masterly exercise in technique.... It has some of the best moments of comedy Mr. Green has yet written." —The Times Literary Supplement
"The formidable author...has set out to write a funny book in Doting, and he has succeeded." —John Betjeman, The Daily Telegraph
"Nothing and Doting...actually display something close to old-fashioned formal perfection." —Charles McGrath, The New York Times Book Review
"A skillful intaglio of inconstancy which is pleasantly deft and devious." —Kirkus Reviews
"And in their sheer absurdity Nothing and Doting are two of the funniest novels ever written, bringing to an almost abstract essence the humor that had always been woven through Green’s work." —The Atlantic
Author
Henry Green (1905–1973) was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke. Born near Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire, England, he was educated at Eton and Oxford and went on to become the managing director of his family’s engineering business, writing novels in his spare time. His first novel, Blindness (1926), was written while he was at Oxford. He married in 1929 and had one son, and during the Second World War served in the Auxiliary Fire Service. Between 1926 and 1952 he wrote nine novels—Blindness, Living, Party Going, Caught, Loving, Back, Concluding, Nothing, and Doting—and a memoir, Pack My Bag.
Michael Gorra is the author of, among other books, The Bells in Their Silence: Travels through Germany and Portrait of a Novel: Henry James and the Making of an American Masterpiece, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches English at Smith College.
