The Last Post

Ford closes his Parade’s End sequence in the quiet of the English countryside, where the war is over but its damage endures. Much of the novel unfolds inside the mind of Mark Tietjens, Christopher’s elder brother, who lies paralyzed and silent, watching family and history pass before him over the course of a single day. Around him the surviving characters try to build an ordinary life from what the fighting left behind. Ford’s stream of consciousness gives the book a meditative, elegiac weight rather than dramatic action. First published in 1928, it completes one of the major achievements of English modernism. A free PDF and EPUB edition is offered here.