ONLY TIME WILL TELL BY JEFFERY ARCHER
SYNOPSIS:-
The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1919, in the backstreets of Bristol. His father was a war hero, but it will be twenty-one tumultuous years before Harry discovers the truth about how his father really died and if, in fact, he even was his father. Only Time Will Tell takes a cast of memorable characters from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take his place at Oxford, or join the fight against Hitler's Germany. In Jeffrey Archer's masterful hands, you will be taken on a journey that you won't want to end, even after you turn the last page of this unforgettable yarn, because you will be faced with a dilemma that neither you, nor Harry Clifton, could ever have anticipated.
REVIEW:-
Only Time Will Tell, Jeffrey Archer’s 16th novel, is the first in a new three-volume cycle the master is calling The Clifton Chronicles.
The sequence will chart the life of one Harry Clifton, whom we first meet as the orphaned son of a Bristol stevedore at the start of the 20th century, and where it will leave him – oh, Lord – only time will tell.
Harry is Archer’s stock character: the unassuming chap from a modest background in whom predatory well-wishers divine some grand potential they conspire to make him fulfil. In this case it’s – well – it’s pretty vague actually but it hardly matters. He could be a gifted frogman.
Harry is plucked from obscurity and put up for a scholarship to a fancy prep school. Will he be bullied? Will he see off the bully? Will he make various lifelong friends? Will he get a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School? Will he meet a pig-tailed girl with her nose in a book? Will his mother’s tea shop succeed so that she can pay the fees?
Harry’s path is inevitably barred by those who have reason to be jealous of him or to fear him, but each reversal is met with fortitude and overcome with selfless grind and a dash of talent.
For long stretches Only Time Will Tell reads like a misery memoir, albeit one written by an accomplished narcissistic fantasist with a penchant for genealogical mysteries. Because at its heart, you see, there is a conundrum: is Harry his father’s son? Or is he the illegitimate son of a shipping magnate?
There are one or two surprises along the way: a couple of legal niggles and a curious wrinkle in the plotting. Instead of a cracking showdown as the baddie is unmasked there is only a letter of apology and promise to be better in future.
As ever a little too much of the author creeps in, to sometimes comical result.
Here is a housemaster talking to a 12-year-old boy: “‘By the way Harry… I’ve just read your essay on Jane Austen, and I was fascinated by your suggestion that if Miss Austen had been able to go to university, she might never have written a novel, and even if she had, her work probably wouldn’t have been so insightful.’
‘Sometimes it’s an advantage to be disadvantaged,’ said Harry.
‘That doesn’t sound like Jane Austen,’ said Mr Frobisher.
‘It wasn’t,’ replied Harry. ‘But it was said by someone else who didn’t go to university,’ he added without explanation.”
Archer is on top form elsewhere, too. It is as if the laws that bind ordinary novelists don’t apply to him, and he performs his signature trick – the oily glissade past the twin imperatives of plausibility and verisimilitude – with ease, so that despite the better part of you knowing this is an over-egged farrago of corny nonsense, he pins you down like an ultimate fighter.
SYNOPSIS:-
The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1919, in the backstreets of Bristol. His father was a war hero, but it will be twenty-one tumultuous years before Harry discovers the truth about how his father really died and if, in fact, he even was his father. Only Time Will Tell takes a cast of memorable characters from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take his place at Oxford, or join the fight against Hitler's Germany. In Jeffrey Archer's masterful hands, you will be taken on a journey that you won't want to end, even after you turn the last page of this unforgettable yarn, because you will be faced with a dilemma that neither you, nor Harry Clifton, could ever have anticipated.
REVIEW:-
Only Time Will Tell, Jeffrey Archer’s 16th novel, is the first in a new three-volume cycle the master is calling The Clifton Chronicles.
The sequence will chart the life of one Harry Clifton, whom we first meet as the orphaned son of a Bristol stevedore at the start of the 20th century, and where it will leave him – oh, Lord – only time will tell.
Harry is Archer’s stock character: the unassuming chap from a modest background in whom predatory well-wishers divine some grand potential they conspire to make him fulfil. In this case it’s – well – it’s pretty vague actually but it hardly matters. He could be a gifted frogman.
Harry is plucked from obscurity and put up for a scholarship to a fancy prep school. Will he be bullied? Will he see off the bully? Will he make various lifelong friends? Will he get a scholarship to Bristol Grammar School? Will he meet a pig-tailed girl with her nose in a book? Will his mother’s tea shop succeed so that she can pay the fees?
Harry’s path is inevitably barred by those who have reason to be jealous of him or to fear him, but each reversal is met with fortitude and overcome with selfless grind and a dash of talent.
For long stretches Only Time Will Tell reads like a misery memoir, albeit one written by an accomplished narcissistic fantasist with a penchant for genealogical mysteries. Because at its heart, you see, there is a conundrum: is Harry his father’s son? Or is he the illegitimate son of a shipping magnate?
There are one or two surprises along the way: a couple of legal niggles and a curious wrinkle in the plotting. Instead of a cracking showdown as the baddie is unmasked there is only a letter of apology and promise to be better in future.
As ever a little too much of the author creeps in, to sometimes comical result.
Here is a housemaster talking to a 12-year-old boy: “‘By the way Harry… I’ve just read your essay on Jane Austen, and I was fascinated by your suggestion that if Miss Austen had been able to go to university, she might never have written a novel, and even if she had, her work probably wouldn’t have been so insightful.’
‘Sometimes it’s an advantage to be disadvantaged,’ said Harry.
‘That doesn’t sound like Jane Austen,’ said Mr Frobisher.
‘It wasn’t,’ replied Harry. ‘But it was said by someone else who didn’t go to university,’ he added without explanation.”
Archer is on top form elsewhere, too. It is as if the laws that bind ordinary novelists don’t apply to him, and he performs his signature trick – the oily glissade past the twin imperatives of plausibility and verisimilitude – with ease, so that despite the better part of you knowing this is an over-egged farrago of corny nonsense, he pins you down like an ultimate fighter.
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