Wednesday 1 June 2011

"The History of Mr Polly" by H G Wells


This anatomy of a mid-life crisis was ranked 39th by Robert McCrum in The Guardian's 100 best novels of all time. 

Alfred Polly was an only child who was sent to school by 'his parents' (although his mother died three years before), then apprenticed in a department store when significantly lacking in mathematical ability but extraordinarily well read with a massive imagination; a superb salesman with an ability to charm others with his nonsensical mispronunciations of words. He goes through a number of jobs before a legacy from his father enables him to set up shop in a place called either Foxbourne or (later) Fishbourne. He marries at the same time and then spends 15 years regretting a loveless marriage and slowly going bankrupt (in common with almost all the other shop-keepers). So he sets his shop on fire for the insurance and becomes a hero in the ensuing blaze; then he abandons his wife and ends up working at a country inn.

It is an amusing little story enlivened by acerbic wit:
  • "Outside the regions devastated by the school curriculum he was still intensely curious." (p15)
  • "On the whole he preferred business to school: the hours were longer but the tension was not nearly so great." (p17)
Any word play: "if, indeed, one may speak of a recent meal as a circumstance - seeing that Mr Polly was circum" (p9)

June 2011; 234 pages

Other novels by H G Wells reviewed in this blog include:

Biographies of H G Wells reviewed in this blog:




This review was written by

the author of Bally and Bro, Motherdarling 

and The Kids of God


No comments:

Post a Comment