Flowering Wilderness is the second last book of the last Forsyte trilogy (End of the Chapter), a nine book series which for years I thought ended with the death of Soames Forsyte, just as the TV dramatisation did – but it didn’t.
The year is 1930 and Dinny Cherrell (Cherwell) has fallen head over heals with Wilfred Desert, a fairly impoverished poet. He had been the best man at Dinny’s cousin’s (Michael Mont) wedding to Fleur Forsyte, and a few years after that he had caused ructions within that marriage which led to Wilfred leaving Britain for the Middle East. When he returns to London it seems that Wilfred is as besotted with Dinny as she is with him so all should be sweetness and light, but a rumour has reached London that while Wilfred was living in the Middle East he had been forced to renounce Christianity and become a Muslim – at the point of a gun!
Nowadays that would be a no brainer but back in 1930 among the upper classes it was an outrage – what sort of man wouldn’t be happy to have his brains blown out rather than abandon Christianity? Not that Wilfred was any sort of believer anyway.
Dinny doesn’t care a hoot about it all, and she’s happy to get married and follow him back on his eastern wanderings, but her parents think very differently, and when Wilfred makes matters worse by writing to a newspaper admitting his ‘conversion’ it makes the whole situation impossible as far as Dinny’s family is concerned.
This is a great read, Galsworthy’s books are full of social history, often highlighting the hypocrisy of the law, and of those in society who think they are above everyone else. I suppose Galsworthy was the Dickens of his day, but I’m not a big fan of Dickens, controversially (no doubt) I think Galsworthy is a better writer.
I’m now half way through the last book in this series, Over the River, and I hope to be able to review that one soon too.
I read the entire series one summer but mostly remember the ones that were dramatized. I loved watching Susan Hampshire play Fleur! I watched a few episodes of the more recent series a few years ago but it was not nearly as good, although it featured some good actors.
Constance,
I agree about Susan Hampshire and that the more recent series wasn’t as good. I have both versions on DVD I think, I should binge watch them when there’s nothing on TV – which is often!
I read the trilogy of trilogies back when everyone was reading them, and I still have them somewhere.
To me, the Forsytes were entirely too full of themselves to really like. However, I enjoyed the 3rd trilogy, and found the Cherrell cousins quite comfortably approachable.
Thanks for the reminder. If I reread them now, I hope they stand up to memory.
Susan D,
I was glad that Dinny Cherrell had such a big part as she was the best character in that trilogy. I don’t think Galsworthy meant the Forsytes to be very likeable, Fleur is a spoiled madam. I got the impression that many of the characters were based on Galsworthy’s own wider family so he was probably scoring some points against them.