The Light and the Dark

This is (at least so far in my random wanderings through his roman fleuve) the most deeply felt and therefore most moving of Snow's novels. The story of the gilded and brilliant Roy Calvert losing his personal battle to manic depression, then failing to grasp the salvation he accidentally finds in marriage and fatherhood, is very affecting. Snow also draws his minor characters vividly and movingly, through bereavement, rejection and sacrifice. Strangely piercing.

A vividly rendered picture of Cambridge college life at the advent of the Second World War as seen through the character of Roy Calvert, an intellectually brilliant and emotionally troubled student of linguistics; and his relationships at the college and, especially, with Lewis Eliot. Snow presents Calvert as a brilliant and firey young man whose iconoclastic character and temperament put him at odds with the usual staid conservative habits of a Cambridge college community of the 1930s. This novel sparkles with the details of life as only a master novelist can render them. One of the very best of the "Strangers and Brothers" series.

1891 The Light and the Dark, by C. P. Snow (read 15 Dec 1984) This is the fourth book of the series. It tells the story of Roy Calvert--who appeared briefly in the first volume. He became an expert in an obscure Asian language, and a fellow at Cambridge. He was some kind of manic depressive and much of the book talks of his moods. Lewis Eliot is a great friend of his. Roy eventually becomes a pilot, marries Rosalind and has a daughter, and goes on a mission over Germany. I guess some of the book was good, but I am a little too obtuse to know just what the point of it all was.