Word: novelized
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...middle of the world's biggest war, a shrinkingly sensitive first novel with a 1920 theme has become a 1943 bestseller...
Three terse, vivid pages of description open the novel and set the scene. The main factory of Elmdown Aircraft Co. Ltd. comprises acres of windowless con crete camouflaged in a misty hollow in the South Midlands, ten miles from the nearest town. Says Priestley, "take away these drawing offices, these toolmakers' sheds, these long rows of machines, these workers on assembly, and within ten days the whip is at your back. All the brave, drilled men, willing to rush toward death, all the flags and national anthems, all the patriotic speeches, cannot rescue a people now. Without such factories...
...Priestley's novel is not about the factory or the mechanical miracles which materialize in planes. It is about the people who make the planes-their lives, thoughts and hopes. With adroit skill he takes the reader about the plant, from office to assembly line, from drill press to canteen, relating a life history here, sketching a vignette there, until some 50 faces have become recognizable people and the novel's main motifs are weaving the mild suspense which makes Priestley so easy to read...
...factory loudspeakers; Bert Ogmore, the Communist assistant foreman, who is so devout he is practically a Russian; Lord Brixen, the fashion plate, who is a safe second string of the Conservative Party, and four men who are responsible for the functioning of the factory and most of the novel's dramatics: James Cheviot, the general manager; Francis Blandford, his chief engineer; Maurice Angleby, assistant engineer; Bob Elrick, the works superintendent...
Cake-making Miss Smith has pleasantly seasoned her first novel-an old-fashioned family pudding of well-baked corn-with two simple and staple condiments: authentic recollections of childhood and a well-communicated respect for the endless valor of the poor...