Having begun this book, we expect (hope) it will be light relief after Conrad's Under Western Eyes.

At our recent meeting we looked at the story, such as it is, in the first two chapters; we considered the gap in time between then and now, and the sort of reading material that was popular then. We considered the 'funniness' of the contents and in particular the attitudes displayed by the author, the 'I' of the story, and the similar but different viewpoints of the other characters, George and Harris. The main difficulty seems to be putting ourselves in the place of late Victorian young men, whose relationships appear to be entirely with each other and who are professional bachelors. We have been greatly amused by many of the points, small and large, as we looked through the narrative.

At our following meeting we shall go on to the next four chapters, but we will need to be prepared to also look back at the first two.