The dance speeds up
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"A Buyer's Market" is the second volume of Anthony Powell's magisterial "Dance to the Music of Time" (see my review of volume 1, "A Question of Upbringing"). If volume 1 is slow, volume 2 shows the series gradually developing momentum, with a series of humorous set-pieces interspersed with disturbing, almost macabre episodes as the narrator moves through the high society of inter-war London. Powell begins to introduce more bizarre characters and previously marginal figures such as Widmerpool begin to move to centre-stage. Apart from his exquisite dry humour, Powell also begins to show off his literary skills. Look at Max Pilgrim's song at 4 a.m. at a ball in Eaton Square:
Even the fairies
Say how sweet my hair is;
They mess my mascara and pinch the peroxide.
I know a coward
Would be overpowered,
When they all offer to be orthodox. I'd
Like to be kind but say: 'Some other day, dears;
Pansies for thoughts remain still the best way, dears.'
It's about half-way through "A Buyer's Market" that you realise you're going to have to buy all 12 volumes of "A Dance to the Music of Time".
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