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My favourite novel is Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. It has been called the best constructed novel in the English language and this I suppose partly accounts for my passion. I have read it numberless times, yet find it hard to say what it is about: a man who has certainly, among other things, been a good soldier; his wife who is beautiful and stern and a pillar of rectitude; the sad narrator whose wicked wife won't sleep with him on account of her bad heart; the 'girl' - the innocent, gentle, timid girl that the good soldier is in love with, beyond reason, beyond all bounds, into madness. You will have to read it and see if you can come up with a better description. Review by Ruth Rendell, the crime writer, whose novels include 'The House of Stairs' under the name Barbara Vine (Kirkus UK)
