Reviews for The Half-Hearted

The average rating for The Half-Hearted based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-06-30 00:00:00 Sandra English David Daniell, author of The Interpreter's House: A Critical Assessment of the Work of John Buchan, describes The Half-Hearted as 'an interestingly uneven novel' but admits that there are some 'marvellous things' in the book.  I think this is a fair assessment. One of John Buchan's early novels, The Half-Hearted provides an indicator of Buchan's strengths as a writer and the things he would arguably struggle with. Let's look at the good things first. In the first part of the book set in the Scottish Highlands, Buchan demonstrates his ability at describing landscape, especially his beloved Scottish countryside. 'Mists were crowding in the valleys, each bald mountain top shone like a jewel, and far aloft in the heavens were the white streamers of morn. Moorhens were plashing at the loch's edge, and one tall heron rose from his early meal. The world was astir with life: sounds of the plonk-plonk of rising trout and the endless twitter of woodland birds mingled with the far-away barking of dogs and the lowing of full-uddered cows in the distant meadows.' The second part of the book, set in Northern India and what is now Afghanistan, is full of 'derring do' and the sort of breathless adventure that readers have come to expect from Buchan. Set against the backdrop of the so-called 'Great Game' as Britain and Russia vie for territorial advantage in Central Asia and the North-West Frontier of India, Lewis and his friend, George, are sent to the area on an unofficial fact-finding mission and find themselves pitted against the mysterious Marker, thought to be working on behalf of the Russians. Lewis is suspicious of Marker and his motives from the off and suspects his 'friendly advice' is deliberate evasion. It's exciting stuff, very well-described and the story builds to a dramatic conclusion. In the end, Lewis becomes not the 'half-hearted' but the 'stout-hearted'. Now turning to the less good things… The first part of the book to my mind displays Buchan's difficulty with depicting romantic relationships that is evident in all his books. The dynamics of the relationship between Lewis and Alice Wishart, the girl to whom he is attracted, never really convince. It's a story of missed opportunities, true feelings unspoken and misunderstandings that left me rather confused about why it all ends as it does. Lewis has a rival for Alice's affections and the choice she makes astounds me every time I read the book.  The book also contains some rather scathing remarks about 'ordinary people', some rather un-PC generalisations about women and references to Jews that might have been commonplace at the time the book was written but which today we would find distinctly unsavoury, if not bordering on the anti-Semitic. In The Half-Hearted, Buchan explores themes that he would revisit in other books such as Mr. Standfast and Sick Heart River - honour, self-sacrifice, being prepared to fight for your beliefs, the importance of facing life's challenges and the value of things hard-won. It's easy to detect the influence of Buchan's childhood companion and lifelong vade mecum, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. Not for the last time, Buchan attributes virtue to physical fitness and the 'clean, outdoor life'. Lewis is told, 'Life has been too easy for you, a great deal too easy. You want a little of the salt and iron of the world.' Having said all this, The Half-Hearted is a book I've read a number of times and for me its shortcomings are outweighed by its good points. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it as a book for readers new to Buchan (he wrote better books) but for aficionados it provides fascinating glimpses of the writer Buchan would become.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-01-14 00:00:00 Kenneth Van Buren This is one of my all-time favorite books, but in all honesty, I can't claim that it's a great book, and I would be very hesitant to recommend it to almost anyone. Buchan tells the story of a man ill at ease in his own life, constantly torn between conflicting interests and social values. The result is a book which is constantly in conflict with itself. The story both illustrates and demonstrates this conflict. It's almost as if Rudyard Kipling wrote the odd-numbered chapters - many of which brim with adventure in the Hindu Kush - and Jane Austen wrote the even-numbered chapters, which focus on duty within upper-class British society. The result is a dizzying but limpid study of a character who can neither fully embrace nor deny his place in the world. I sometimes wonder if a lot of people today might actually relate to this book, but it's simply too strange and obscure to appeal to a wide audience. Recommended only for readers who can enjoy a book for its strengths and overlook its shortcomings. Or for people who can imagine that such an idiosyncratic book might be fun. For the record, The Half-Hearted is an oddity among Buchan's works, most of which tend to be very focused, story-driven, and tightly-plotted.