The Romantic

May Sinclair (1863 - 1946)

As a simple story told, "The Romantic" is one of Sinclair’s tightest and most compelling. Charlotte Redhead, a young British secretary, finds herself in a degrading extra-marital affair with her boss. In reaction, she renounces Sex and links herself platonically to a handsome young Bohemian (John Conway) she meets by chance, tramping in the fields. Together, under a powerful romantic excitement, the two rush off to Belgium in the early weeks of World War I, having organized their own little volunteer ambulance corps. The romance of the adventure begins to break down when the various ambulance corps start to back-stab each other, each selfishly seeking to one-up the others for glory. The real crisis comes when the central characters begin to reveal the true human characters behind their romantic delusions, in the end turning the attention back to the genuine human suffering that was the real story of the hideous Great War. An indictment of the author’s own thrill-seeking past, as revealed in her "Journal of Impressions in Belgium," and showing some of the concerns of the so-called Lost Generation that included Hemingway and Dos Passos and Woolf, "The Romantic" weaves together a number of fascinating themes, re-interpreting with Sinclair’s inimitable frankness post-war attitudes about sex, war, patriotism, and even the new psychology. (Summary by Expatriate)

Genre(s): Literary Fiction

Language: English

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 Book 1, Chapter 01 Expatriate
00:11:47
Play 02 Book 1, Chapter 02 Expatriate
00:15:04
Play 03 Book 1, Chapter 03 Expatriate
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Play 04 Book 1, Chapter 04 Expatriate
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Play 05 Book 1, Chapter 05 Expatriate
00:12:16
Play 06 Book 2, Chapter 06 Expatriate
00:15:38
Play 07 Book 2, Chapter 07 Expatriate
00:18:15
Play 08 Book 2, Chapter 08 Expatriate
00:17:03
Play 09 Book 2, Chapter 09 Expatriate
00:15:31
Play 10 Book 2, Chapter 10 Expatriate
00:13:54
Play 11 Book 2, Chapter 11 Expatriate
00:29:10
Play 12 Book 2, Chapter 12 Expatriate
00:23:51
Play 13 Book 2, Chapter 13 Expatriate
00:18:56
Play 14 Book 2, Chapter 14 Expatriate
00:17:39
Play 15 Book 2, Chapter 15 Expatriate
00:15:15
Play 16 Book 2, Chapter 16 Expatriate
00:08:42
Play 17 Book 2, Chapter 17 Expatriate
00:11:08