A Question of Upbringing by Anthony Powell

The evening was decidedly cool, and rain was half-heartedly falling.  I knew now that this parting was one of those final things that happen, recurrently, as time passes:  until at last they may be recognized fairly easily as the close of a period.  This was the last I should see of Stringham for a long time.  The path had suddenly forked. With regret I accepted the inevitability of circumstance.  Human relationships flourish and decay, quickly and silently, so that those concerned scarcely know how brittle, or how inflexible, the ties that bind them have become.
--Anthony Powell, A Question of Upbringing, (University of Chicago Press, 1951).

Some books should be read at least twice --Bleak House, Middlemarch, Moby Dick, Clarissa, Lolita --once when young and again when one is older.  A Question of Upbringing is Powell's initial volume of his 12-volume Dance to the Music of Time, named for the marvelous Poussin painting, and I am reading it for the second time, after reading Powell's memoirs.  Narrator Nicholas Jenkins begins in public school, spends a summer in France and then heads for university in this first volume.  Major events include "Braddock alias Thorne." in which some students call the police and report seeing a wanted criminal who is actually their housemaster ("this rather absurd affair, which did no one great credit"), Jenkins confusing Madame Debuisson with Suzette, the girl he cared about ("It was now too late to retreat") and, in college, crashing a Vauxhall into a ditch when four men were out with two girls they picked up,after hours ("This was an exceedingly inconvenient occurrence from everyone's point of view.").

This novel is more amusing than I remember it, the specificity of the environment and the characters more interesting.  Even Widmerpool, who I thought was poorly treated when I first read these novels, come across both as an effective character and a product of his time (the novel takes place in the 1920's), with memories of the war still vivid and everyone concerned about the future, trying to decide what collar they should wear and worried about whether they should stay at university or "go down."  A Question of Upbringing makes both the present and the memories of the past, when crucial choices were made, come alive.