Wolf Solent, by John Cowper Powys

John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) is one of those English novelists whose name I've often come across, but never known much about. Penguin Modern Classics has now reprinted Wolf Solent, his first major literary success, published in 1929 when the author was in his late fifties. It's a huge 700 page tome and I felt I was in the mood for a substantial English novel that plunged life's depths. I must confess, for the first 100 pages I struggled with the language. Powys uses a ridiculous amount of exclamation marks, which I found discombobulating. In fact, I was ready to give up, but when one morning I found myself with nothing else to read, decided to read a bit more and try to put the exclamation marks out of my mind. (I also flicked through the introduction by A. N. Wilson who mentioned that Powys' style was an aquired taste.)

So I read on and found myself immersed in Powys' rich and strange prose. The story follows thirty-five year old Wolf Solent who returns to his home town of Ramsgard in Dorset after losing his London job as a teacher. Back in Ramsgard, he is drawn to two women, the earthy Gerda (she is a mesmerising bird whistler) and the more cerebal Christie, daughter of an immoral bookseller. The novel is fully thronged with a cast of weird and wonderful characters, among which are a local vicar, Wolf's pushy mother, a gravestone cutter, a local squire and a poet, to name but a few. 

Wolf Solent is the kind of novel in which you go along for the ride, and don't ask too many questions. Often I found the words beautiful and compelling, but scratched my head as to what they meant. The descriptions are dizzying and breathtaking, with passages detailing Wolf's stream of consciousness. His nature descriptions are a joy, a spirited toast to being alive.

John Cowper Powys won't be for everyone, as A.N. Wilson mentions in the introduction, but he is certainly a completely original, utterly uncompromising writer - someone to fit between D.H. Lawrence and Thomas Hardy. I'm glad I read it and would be tempted to try his other work.