Invitation To The Dance: A Handbook to Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time

'Hilary Spurling's handbook triumphantly succeeds in its twofold aim of being reference-guide and bedside companion; funny and observant too, as befits the subject.' -- Kingsley Amis, Observer A Dance to the Music of time is a literary landmark of twentieth-century writing. As the reader cavorts through the 12-volume novel alongside the narrator Nicholas Jenkins, it soon becomes apparent that he inevitably confuses dates and events, but Hilary Spurling tidies up the most minute detail into its proper place. More than a simple glossary, Invitation to the Dance contains extensive Character, Book, Painting and Place indices, creating a magnificent database of Powell's imagination and England's cultural landscape. This is a masterpiece of 'extreme ingenuity' detailing over four hundred characters and one million words of Powell's lively fifty-year dance of fiction and fact. 'Hilary Spurling's exhaustive analysis of the novel's characters supplies a master-key for the reader' -- Anthony Powell