The Good Companions by JB Priestley

A wonderful, warm, often funny 1920s novel of friendship and moderate adventure

I have developed a great fondness for JB Priestley over the years. Although it is of course in part because he’s from Bradford, it’s not only because he’s from Bradford; I was hooked in the early 1990s by An Inspector Calls¹ before I even knew where he was from. It was the way that he seemed to know people, his insight into human nature if you like.

Having said that, I’ve mainly got this impression from writing or documentaries about Priestley, plus his 1930s tour of the nation, English Journey, and a couple of plays (admittedly I have read them, listened to radio adaptations, watched screen adaptations and seen them at the theatre repeatedly). The only novel of his that I’d read was the London-set Angel Pavement, which I enjoyed in 2012 but don’t remember raving about.

I’d wanted to read his breakthrough 1929 bestseller The Good Companions for a while but never ran across either a new copy in Waterstones or a secondhand copy at any of the many charity shops I frequent (or at the local book fair, as I bemoaned this summer). Until the end of August when I found a copy at the local Oxfam bookshop² and it seemed just the thing to take with me on a long train journey at the start of September.

The paperback edition I read (pictured above) is about an inch and a half thick, it ends on page 618 and I think that long train journey was the key to my immersion in this wonderful novel. Just as this review has taken its time to get going, so too does The Good Companions take a while to set the scene and gradually introduce us to the main characters we will come to know so well. The novel is divided into Books 1—3 and an Epilogue, and for most of Book 1 (longer than many a novel, on its own) I couldn’t see how the three characters whose names featured in chapter titles were ever going to cross paths, or indeed how it could be described on the back cover as ‘the story of a touring theatre company’.

However, I didn’t mind in the slightest. The characters, main and supporting, were worth spending time with. In some ways the entire novel is an extended set of character sketches, with plot a slow and secondary part of the whole. Don’t get me wrong, this is not one of those literary novels where nothing happens — lives are turned upside down — but there’s no rush about it. We are given a real chance to have come to care about people before we’re asked to care about a change of circumstance, and with every person we meet and every town or hamlet we visit we’re given time to appreciate their quirks and oddities³. Following a down-on-their-luck concert party touring the backwaters and minor manufacturing towns of England throughout Book 2 allows for an awful lot of quirks and oddities.

The essence of the book is restlessness and ordinary lives. Those three chapter-title characters (Mr Oakroyd, Miss Trant, Mr Jollifant) are each ordinary in their own way, though from very different backgrounds. They were perhaps already dissatisfied with their lot, or if not wholly dissatisfied then at least sure that there must be something more out there if they could only discover it. Each experiences a jolt and, taking a chance, is propelled into the world to have a small adventure before settling into a new groove.

Mr Oakroyd is a skilled tradesman from Yorkshire in his late forties, Miss Trant is in her thirties and of independent means in the Cotswolds, and young Mr Jollifant is not long out of Cambridge and has taught briefly at a nearby prep school, but what they have in common is an open-minded interest in people. It’s this that drives the novel forward, their tendency to get wrapped up in other people’s affairs and then go with the flow.

As with another favourite Yorkshire-born novelist of mine, Kate Atkinson, there’s a liberal use of coincidence. I loved the moment in the middle of Book 2 where the narrator addresses the reader thus, after a particularly convenient meeting: ‘let it be said here and now that this encounter with Mr Ashworth does not involve any undue stretching of the arm of coincidence…Higden’s is one of the largest firms in Bruddersford, and you might meet a man from Higden’s anywhere and at any moment’. Bruddersford is the fictional Yorkshire mill-town from whence Oakroyd has sprung, and Higden’s the textile firm he formerly worked for.

I find it interesting whose accent gets spelt out in the book. A Scottish doctor’s dialogue is written in standard English but it’s noted that he pronounces nerves as ‘nairrves’. Mr Oakroyd on the other hand gets everything spelt out at all times, but I must admit (it being a strong version of my own accent and dialect) that I can’t think of a way to get the proper rhythms of his speech otherwise — standard English just doesn’t cut it if you want a genuine flavour. I found it perfectly natural to read but I’m not sure how someone from the fabled Down South of the novel would fare⁴. We also get twisted spellings to represent a Brummie trying to sound posh, and a man who’s come up from London and got so excited he’s swallowed all his consonants.

The book was so hefty and immersive that I felt like I’d had a small adventure myself by the end of it. There is marriage, death, romance, mundanity, excitement, bags of humour, unlikely friendships, grubby back streets and (for a short while) the bright lights of London. There are people for whom the extraordinary is ordinary, mediocre performers clinging on for dear life to a precarious existence, amazing talents for whom it’s all just a lark.

I loved this warm cardigan of a novel, I would happily read it again immediately if I didn’t have such a teetering To Read pile that includes not only another JB Priestley⁵ but also two Anthony Trollope, not to mention several PG Wodehouse I want to re-read. It’s not the book to reach for if you want fast-paced thrills, but if you’re prepared to spend the necessary time getting to know The Good Companions it will repay you in spades.

1. Pretty much the only thing I ever ended up enjoying, that we had to study for English at school. Maybe also Romeo and Juliet.

2. Along with an Anthony Trollope I’ve yet to read. Truly a lucky day.

3. Do bear in mind that in the 1920s there were racial terms in common use that these days are only used by the vilest people, so there are a scattering of passing mentions that give a momentary shock.

4. I also can’t help wondering what the original readers in 1929 made of it; even if they had seen one of the brand new talking pictures or heard the early BBC radio broadcasts they wouldn’t have encountered regional accents on them.

5. Bright Day, as I’m sure you were dying to know