Last Things

The final book in CP Snow's Strangers and Brothers sequence. He brings together many of the themes and characters from his earlier novels - from George Passant, the companion of his youth, dying off the page; the doomed Roy Calvert, brought back in his daughter and grandchild, characters such as herbert Rose and Charles March, last glimpsed in passing or details some years previously, return to the scene. Politics (with a big and small p) feature, as does science and innovation, and the importance of family. Appropriate for a book that is at once elegiac, thoughtful and optimistic. Lewis Eliot comes in close contact with his mortality here, but the focus is as much on a new generation, on continuity and change. Snow's writing throughout show more is undecorated and unshowy, reflective and thoughtful rather than emotional, and his focus on the importance of work, as well as emotions and relationships, still makes him an unusual and, I think, particularly valuable writer. show less

1898 Last Things, by C. P. Snow (read 4 Jan 1985) This is the 11th and final volume of the author's series 'Strangers and Brothers.' Much of the book involves his heart stopping and his son Charles' amoral behavior. The reading of this 11-volume series was not a success: it was not worthwhile. I do not approve of C. P. Snow's moral views--pagan and amoral. At least those seem to be his views.