Party going
Book • 1947
Henry Green's Party Going (1939) follows a group of upper-class friends stranded by an impenetrable London fog in a train station and connected hotel as they wait for a continental trip and a party hosted by their wealthy friend Max. The novel eschews conventional exposition, using compressed, poetically inflected prose and elided grammar to focus on desire, class divisions, sexual maneuvering, and social complacency.
Fog functions both as a plot device that enforces stasis and as a metaphor for uncertainty, purgatory, and suspended social order.
Central episodes include the mysterious illness of Miss Fellows and the arrival of the glamorous Amabel, whose presence intensifies sexual tensions and alters group dynamics.
Party Going is noted for its disconcerting, sly narration that turns mundane details into resonant art while withholding definitive moral judgments.
Fog functions both as a plot device that enforces stasis and as a metaphor for uncertainty, purgatory, and suspended social order.
Central episodes include the mysterious illness of Miss Fellows and the arrival of the glamorous Amabel, whose presence intensifies sexual tensions and alters group dynamics.
Party Going is noted for its disconcerting, sly narration that turns mundane details into resonant art while withholding definitive moral judgments.
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Ian Patterson
Party Going with Ian Patterson
