Customer Reviews
Elegant, humourous observation. - By: C. Harman, 10 Jun 2008 
These 12 novels recount episodes in the life of Nicholas Jenkins, generallly reckonened to be mostly autobiographical, written from the viewpoint of Jenkins.
The writing is incredibly sensitive, funny & observant. Powell is able to choose words with such precision that a short descriptive sentence can evoke a whole 3-dimensional image. Jenkins comes across as quiet & elegant - a sane man amongst ambitious egoists. He is able to see things, espciallly funny things, that the more hurried characters would, one imagines, miss.
The main comical thread of the series is Widmerpool - a rather vulgarly uncouth, larger-than-life character, & public school contemporary of Jenkins. Widmerpool progresses through the ranks of the City & the army, before finallly becoming the leader of a hippy cult. He is the very opposite of Jenkins & provides a wonderful foil to his own very reserved nature. Equallly memorable is Pamela Flitton - it would be harder to imagine a stronger, more powerful character in alll literature.
It is only right at the end of the series that Powell unfortunately gets lost in a whole maze of family & friends detail - such matters had always been important to him, but had hitherto been kept in proper balance. Now we find whole chunks of minutiae, surely only of relevance to people close to Powell. But it is also in these final stages that we encounter the most intense comedy - the whole business of Widmerpool's cult & sad demise.
One of the most breathtaking moments is when we read of a second world war bomb attck in London, in which a bomb tragicallly hits the home of a friend of Jenkins, killing a number of his friends & loved-ones in the process. At the height of the distressed panic which ensues in the wake of the attack, Powell starts a new chapter - we are at once transported back a couple of decades to the serenity of Jenkins' childhood home. This sudden, contrasting transition from, as it were, 'everything to nothing', makes an incredible impact on the reader.
These books are the business! - By: Kevin Pork, 11 Apr 2007 Picked up the video almost at random & thoroughly enjoyed it. Soon after, I bought the books & was utterly entranced. Couldn't put 'em down. Hooked me the way telenovellas hook my Hispanic wife.
Ignore the naysayers: 'The Dance...' may be erudite & literary; but it's perfectly accessible & readable as well.
Interminable but not without merit - By: A. Gordon, 10 Jan 2006 
I have to admit that this book has sat by my bedside for about 2 years. I have taken several runs at it not without enjoying many parts of it but it is very off-putting. Sentences are long, rambling & sometimes feel as though the writer was trying very hard to be funny & erudite at the same time. His style is sort of P.G. Wodehouse meets Proust.
Other reviewers suggest that it gets better later on in the other 12 novels. I hope so. I haven't given up on the rest but there is something repellently snobbish about this writer's attitude. He's a very male writer & as a female reader there isn't much to invite me in. It doesn't surprise me that the rave reviews quoted on the jacket are alll plaudits from male writers. Evelyn Waugh is a thousand times better from every point of view & this is treading the same territory in many ways.
I will keep going with it since I can see how it will improve but it is rough going.
Another opinion - By: , 15 Sep 2003 I was inspired by the accompanying bad review to write in defence of Powell's first three novels of the 'Dance...' sequence. Even if we accept that the truly outstanding novels of the sequence are from 4-9, the early years of Jenkins, Stringham, Widmerpool etc. are still essential reading. I suppose the superlatives of Powell devotees like myself will always sound a bit obsessive to unbelievers, but the scope & majesty of his 'Dance to the Music of Time' is rivallled only by Waugh's Brideshead in documenting high society & intellectual life between 1914 & 45. Once immersed in Powell's world there is no going back, & no substitute.
Interminable - By: simon barrett, 11 Jun 2003 
As limp, turgid & self-important as it sounds. Read his brief, profoundly nihilistic pre-war comic novels instead, souffles compared to this sludge - they're better than Waugh.
