With a preface by G. Bernard Shaw proclaiming this book as an extaordinary posthumous study of English life.

Love it. Remarkable that a man can make such cold, heartless observations and still create characters that one loves and misses when they are gone. There is one image from the beginning of this book that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I even sat and read passages aloud to Megan so that someone else could enjoy them as much as I did. ( )

FROM BARNES & NOBLE: Written between 1873 and 1884 and published posthumously in 1903, The Way of All Flesh is regarded by some as the first twentieth-century novel. Samuel Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood shines an iconoclastic light on the hypocrisy of a Victorian clerical family's domestic life. It also foreshadows the crumbling of nineteenth-century bourgeois ideals in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the ways in which succeeding generations have questioned conventional values.

I don't know what I thought this book would be about from the title; I thought it could have been about the will being weaker than the flesh. It's not about that --it's about a boy whose father was a clergyman in England, and who of course shoved all his hypocritical beliefs down his throat, along with his mother. The boy, because of a family friend and his aunt Alethea, ends up having his eyes opened to reality as to his father and mother, and to the teachings of his religion. I loved that Butler shows the Bible's story of Jesus' resurrection to be malarkey. if you are like me and was brainwashed by the (Catholic) Church, you know what a battle it is to unbrainwashed yourself and open your eyes. I could have used well this book years ago, but maybe it will do it's good work to other minds that need enlightening. ( )

A hellscreen in the form of a bildungsroman, flecked throughout with wonderful humanist musings on religion, literature, education, economics, and ethics. Samuel Butler is a truly great thinker. ( )