Told By An Idiot by Rose Macaulay (Boni & Liveright, 1924)

 

Told by An Idiot is a social history of England disguised (not all that successfully) as a family saga.  It follows the Gardner family from the final  years of Victoria (1890) through the fin de siecle, and into the Georgian and Edwardian Ages, detailing much of the politics, social mores, fashions, and culture of these periods -- sometimes interestingly and sometimes (often?) not.

The Gardner patriarch is the least believable character, a caricature of a religious man who cannot settle upon a religion, and so tries them all.  This allows Macaulay to satirize many sacred cows (and other religious flora and fauna), but it quickly seems like the gimmick it is and becomes tiresome.  The mother, a sort of Christian martyr, supports her husband's fecklessness with unwavering (and unbelievable) devotion and good cheer.

There are six children, whose different characters allow Macaulay to conveniently explore different topics: Victoria, Marcus, Sydney, Rome, ?, and Una.  Because there are so many of them and so much of the book concerns itself not with the family but with general socio-political lectures, none of these second-generation characters are very much developed, except for Rome, a free-thinking and passionate woman who decides not to mary and leads a sensuously indulgent and independent life (a self-portrait of the author?).

This book retains Macaluay's witty and irreverent style of narration, but is encumbered, and finally undone, by its ambitious yet misguided premise.