"Astonishing. Exactly why these three novels are astonishing is something I am not sure I can explain adequately. Yet I think that maybe I understand a little of the mechanisms at play here, but the fact they don't feel like mechanisms, they feel entirely organic, muddles my ideas on the subject somewhat. All fiction writing is a mechanical process, of course, and the notion that the 'characters' on the page of a novel are somehow alive (with authentic minds of their own) is a shared illusion. We know it's an illusion but we go along with it anyway because it is a convenience of approach.

However, Green's characters in these three novels actually do feel alive. They feel outside or beyond the control of their author, no matter how often the author tries to poke his nose into the narrative with an analytical remark here or a value judgment there. We think, as we are reading, "Oh, go away Henry Green, you don't really understand what these fictional people are up to. Stop interfering (which is a futile thing to attempt anyway) and let them get on with it..."

But one aspect of these novels that I do think I have grasped is the remarkable truth they convey about human interactions. The 'human condition' may be what philosophers say it is, or it may be something else, but human interactions in the real world rarely move a plot along, because generally there are no plots to our lives. Green's characters are constantly trying to outdo each other, for reasons of mild personal gain, whether that gain is a slightly enhanced financial security, greater respect, a more acute sense of belonging, the wish to be noticed and taken seriously, but they often deceive or outdo themselves in the process. They change their minds all the time, are unaware of what exactly their ultimate intentions are, hedge their bets, make tactical errors that go unnoticed by others because those others are also too focussed on making their own tactical errors. And very little of this behaviour is genuinely malicious. It is more often than not a simple outcome of manouevering within limits to preserve some physical integrity or social status.

This omnibus of three novels is possibly the finest omnibus of fictions I have ever read. And that's saying a lot. Loving is the ultimate upstairs-downstairs story, a gentle comedy and an empathic satire; Living is the ultimate proletarian novel, unsentimental and brusque but also tender; Party Going is absolutely like a collision between Kafka and Noel Coward, a brilliant game of chess in which no one knows what piece they are or even what side they are on.

Outstanding in every way."