A Dance to the Music of Time 2nd Movement by Anthony Powell

This volume contains novels 4, 5, and 6 of Powell's 12-novel series. I can see now that this is actually one giant book. Since each separate novel is about 250 pages, at completion this is a 3,000-page story of the upper class in Great Britain from the 1920s to the 1970s. And a very good story it is. It's Upstairs, Downstairs without the "downstairs" part.

At Lady Molly's
(novel #4) finds the narrator Jenkins in his mid-20s, employed as a screenwriter. Author Powell is then able to bring in a new character, Chips Lovell, a fellow employee, who introduces Jenkins to his relative, Lady Molly. At her house, Jenkins meets the large Tolland family, which includes Jenkin's future wife. All three of Jenkins's school acquaintances turn up again, including the always awkward but surprisingly successful Widmerpool, whose brief engagement provides the most overtly comedic episode in the novel.

Casanova's Chinese Restaurant (novel #5) opens with an extended back-flash to the initial meeting of Jenkins and his new friend Moreland, a composer of serious music. This seemed to me a rather awkward way to introduce a new major character. Anyway, Moreland's artistic and marital difficulties become a major part of this novel. Jenkins's school friends Templer and Stringfellow reappear. Much sport is made at the expense of the novelist St. John Clarke, who Powell supposedly modeled after the English novelist John Galsworthy.

Novel #6, The Kindly Ones
, begins with an extended back-flash to Jenkins's childhood as the son of a career army officer. This provides author Powell with the opportunity to introduce new characters and to provide motivation for subsequent actions. Even while social and sexual intrigues continue, stirrings of war with Germany escalate. The end of this "set" of novels finds Jenkins ready to enter the army to go to war.

It is extremely difficult to attempt to summarize these novels, because so much happens and so many characters are introduced. But all is fascinating (in the fashion that soap operas are fascinating), all is subtle and understated, and all is elegantly and beautifully written. This series deserves to be included in the Modern Library Top 100 and the Times Top 100. I will quickly order the last two volumes in the series.