The Man Who Was Thursday
(1908)
My review:
This
allegory,
aptly subtitled “A Nightmare” is, without any doubt, the best of
Chesterton’s
novels. It has an actual—and epic—plot,
even if it is surreal, a plot which is in parts very funny, and in
others
atmospheric—frightening or wondrous; it has eccentric and interesting
characters—the poet policeman who infiltrates a circle of anarchists,
only to
find that they are all policemen, and other such Alice in
Wonderland touches; a very funny—and yet disquieting—scene
in which an elderly and paralytic professor chases the hero down the
street,
and a later scene—a duello—which achieves the same purpose; and a
frightening
part when the world goes mad in Chapters XI—XII, when the reader feels
that the
end of the world—of civilisation—has come, and the reader is genuinely
relieved
when Monday is revealed to be a policeman, before a very funny chase
through
London, building up nonsense upon nonsense.
But above all—above the glorious writing, with its
susceptibility to
light, colour and weather—is the ultimate riddle of all: the nature of
God. Very powerful and thought-provoking—a
work which can only be described as “sublime.”