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Those Barren Leaves

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Aldous Huxley spares no one in his ironic, piercing portrayal of a group gathered in an Italian palace by the socially ambitious and self-professed lover of art, Mrs. Aldwinkle. Here, Mrs. Aldwinkle yearns to recapture the glories of the Italian Renaissance, but her guests ultimately fail to fulfill her naive expectations. Among her entourage are: a suffering poet and reluctant editor of the "Rabbit Fanciers' Gazette" who silently bears the widowed Mrs. Aldwinkle's desperate advances; a popular novelist who records every detail of her affair with another guest, the amorous Calamy, for future literary endeavors; and an aging sensualist philosopher who pursues a wealthy yet mentally-disabled heiress. Stripping the houseguests of their pretensions, Huxley reveals the superficiality of the cultural elite. Deliciously satirical, Those Barren Leaves bites the hands of those who dare to posture or feign sophistication and is as comically fresh today as when first published.

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1925

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About the author

Aldous Huxley

1,042 books13k followers
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with a degree in English literature. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962.
Huxley was a pacifist. He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects in his works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his visions of dystopia and utopia, respectively.

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5 stars
153 (18%)
4 stars
295 (34%)
3 stars
299 (35%)
2 stars
75 (8%)
1 star
26 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
Profile Image for Vit Babenco.
1,654 reviews4,996 followers
February 14, 2022
Heroes and heroines… Men and women of leisure…
She is a writer and she is a guest of the house…
Her hair was nearly black and she wore it drawn sleekly back from her forehead and twined in a large knot at the base of her neck. Her uncovered ears were quite white and very small. It was an inexpressive face, the face of a doll, but of an exceedingly intelligent doll.

He is a man of the world and he is a guest of the house…
…lazily insolent; the roasted quails fell into his mouth; it was unnecessary to make an effort. His eyelids drooped in a sleepy arrogance.

And of course, there is a hostess…
The mouth was wide, with lips of rather vague contour, whose indefiniteness was enhanced by Mrs. Aldwinkle’s very careless reddening of them. For Mrs. Aldwinkle was an impressionist; it was the effect at a distance, the grand theatrical flourish that interested her. She had no patience, even at the dressing-table, for niggling pre-Raphaelite detail.

Crème de la crème… Fluff of society… Foam of the surf…
Then in comes a disenchanted young poet… A victim of his idealistic love…
She was selfish, thirsty for pleasures of the most vulgar sort, liked to bask in an atmosphere of erotic admiration, amused herself by collecting adorers and treating them badly, was stupid and a liar – in other words, was one of the normal types of healthy young womanhood.

The guests are around their hostess like chicks around a hen… But everyone pursues one’s own interest… And everyone falls into amorous mood: love affairs, passions, infatuations, affectations…
However, all roads lead to Rome…
Time and space, matter and mind, subject, object – how inextricably they got mixed, next day, on the road to Rome!

They believe they shine and thunder but their lives are but books of blank pages.
Profile Image for Chrissie.
2,811 reviews1,434 followers
February 5, 2023
A quote from this book:

“It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live. The fools, the innumerable fools, take it all for granted, skate about cheerfully on the surface and never think of inquiring what's underneath.”

The quote, it appeals to me! The prose, thoughtful and witty lines, descriptions of people and places, is what attracts me to this book.

The book can be looked at in different ways. It’s a satire, that is for sure. It’s a spoof—the point being to laugh at the cultural elite. It’s also a sentimental tragedy. The characters can be pitied. The view presented of human behavior is sad.

The one quote I have cited above is just one of the book’s marvelous lines. Huxley can write. He expresses himself extremely well. He keeps the reader thinking and his turns of phrase are alternately thought provoking, humorous and sometimes lyrical. He describes places and nature so that you can see them, down to the minutest detail. He captures mood and atmosphere. It is the writing, the prose, that attracts me to Huxley.

I did not give the book four stars because sections, when the characters get into discussions, debating issues and ideas, become all too longwinded. They begin to spout garbled thoughts and they go on and on forever! You get fed up! Religion, the arts, politics, economy, you name it--these pretentious human beings, they discuss it. For me, the characters’ quick, sharp, smart retorts are better.

Elisabeth Kessler reads the audiobook. Her narration is good, but not exceptional. Three stars for the narration. I would not hesitate to listen to her again. To me it seems her Italian is better than her French.

Readers periodically smile at amusing lines and then yawn, fighting off boredom, when discussions go on too long.

I am lazy. I should have given you more quotes. You’ll have to read the book yourself to discover your own favorites! Perhaps the book is worth four stars.

One more thing--don't worry if you are at times confused! Be patient, you will soon understand!

********************************

*Brave New World 4 stars
*Those Barren Leaves 3 stars
*Antic Hay TBR
Profile Image for Ryan.
1,153 reviews51 followers
June 24, 2022
Huxley is best known for Brave New World and his later descent into drugs and quackery. That seems a pity. His satires from the 20s still stand out for their icy precision and clarity. Those Barren Leaves is the sharpest.
Profile Image for Natalie Jean.
1 review4 followers
March 3, 2011
Extraordinarily clever. I laughed when I read this book, Huxley is a man of incredibly good satire.
I believe the characters in this book invented as different facets of himself. And in his genius state, created them as mouthpieces for his own discussion on life. There is hardly a plot, and his characters are defined by singular niches, "the jaded socialite turned cynic, the beautiful writer, the shrewd devil may care, and the delusional overachieving social aspirer." The book is overwhelmingly simple, but absurdly complex and self aware.
I love a story set in the thirties.
Profile Image for Jim.
2,297 reviews756 followers
June 7, 2018
Aldous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves is one of the author's early novels that show he is destined for great things. Perhaps he did not become a great novelist such as Faulkner or Conrad, but he became one of the most powerful intellects of the 20th century. Whether he was writing essays, novels, short stories, or nonfiction, he was an incredible force. There are times in Those Barren Leaves where Huxley is pushing against the limits of what the genre could convey, and sending us into empyrean realms of literature and even, perhaps, religion.

In many ways, the book resembles Crome Yellow: A group of English men and women are staying as guests at a country house -- this time in Italy. Mrs Aldwinkle has a need to dominate a group of people, receive their admiration, perhaps even their love. Love, however, proved elusive. Mrs Aldwinkle could not make much of a dent with Francis Chelifer. Mary Thriplow and the very masculine Calamy go part of the way. And Mr Cardan tries to woo a retarded woman, Miss Elver, which comes to naught when the latter is poisoned by bad seafood.

I read this book many years ago and was delighted to find that I had not remembered the story or characters. Which only means that I loved it twice.
Profile Image for Mj Zander.
65 reviews14 followers
August 13, 2016
The book doesn't really pick up until the second part, but once it does, it's very hard to put it down. Comparing this book to Crome Yellow, Huxley's first shows his growth in character development and description. Here his characters are more complex. There is no doubt that Mr. Cardan is a reincarnation of Mr. Scogan and Mrs. Aldwinkle of Patricia Wimbush, but delightful reincarnations they are. In addition, Huxley masters scene-setting description with descriptions of "black silhouetted leaves" against a pale sky, "thin luminous shadows" of olive trees, and mountain slopes of "blue and purple rapidly darkening to a deep uniform indigo." Huxley proves that one can create a fantastic sense of setting without being verbose. And while some of the dialogue can get a bit wordy, there are some real gems hidden within it that make it worth the time invested in reading it. Crome Yellow still holds its place as my favourite of Huxley's early works,but Those Barren Leaves is a close second.

Profile Image for Peter.
327 reviews30 followers
June 16, 2017
Enough of Science and of Art;
Close up those barren leaves...


Huxley’s third novel explores and eviscerates, in a rather rambling but entertaining way, the cultural affectations of the 1920s, as represented by Mrs Aldwinkle’s circle of guests trapped in her palace in Italy. Mrs Aldwinkle has purchased not only the palace, but “vast domains unmentioned in the contract. She had bought [the aristocratic family] and their history...the whole peninsula and everything it contained...its arts, its music, its melodious language, its literature, its wine and cooking, the beauty of its women and the virility of its Fascists.” An enthusiastic if absurd patron of the arts, Mrs Aldwinkle is not at all based on Lady Ottoline Morrell (who never spoke to Huxley again).

Huxley himself seems to appear under various guises. The poet Francis Chelifer considers himself an artist, but accedes to the banality and commercialization of his times and “makes the worst of it resolutely.” He writes for the Rabbit Fanciers’ Gazette, dines in a boarding house, and relishes the salon of Lady Giblet’s – “I never miss a single one if i can help it. The vulgarity, ignorance and stupidity of the hostess, the incredible second-rateness of her mangy lions – these are surely unique...Nowhere can you hear the ignorant, the illogical, the incapable of thought talking so glibly about things of which they have not the slightest understanding.” Not a flattering self-portrait. But Chelifer does have a wonderful way of enlivening dull days at the office. All you have to do, he says, is pause and question yourself:

Q. What did Buddha consider the most deadly of the deadly sins?
A. Unawareness, stupidity.
Q. And what will happen if I make myself aware, if I actually begin to think?
A. Your swivel chair will turn into a trolley on the mountain railway, the office floor will gracefully slide away from beneath you and you will find yourself launched into the abyss.


The author is surely also present in Miss Thriplow, the commercially successful writer for whom life is merely a source of material for her novels; in the parasitic Mr Cardan – erudite, charming, cynical, and broke – who gets many of the best lines in the book; and in young but jaded Calamy who takes an increasing (if improbable) interest in the spiritual and mystical.

There’s some rather awkward plotting and time wasted on a young couple who like fast cars (him) and lingerie (her), whom Huxley treats with some contempt, but the main thing is the writing – the dialogue and the wit, the speculations and digressions. Here’s one that caught my eye as being surprisingly prescient for a book published in 1925:

Cheap printing, wireless telephones, trains, motor cars, gramophones and all the rest are making it possible to consolidate tribes, not of a few thousands, but of millions....In a few generations it may be that the whole planet will be covered by one vast American-speaking tribe, composed of innumerable individuals, all thinking and acting in exactly the same way, like the characters in a novel by Sinclair Lewis.

Those Barren Leaves is baggier and less structured than Antic Hay – a bit of a mess of a novel, to be honest. But who cares? I thoroughly enjoyed it.
11 reviews3 followers
October 4, 2011
This book was set in Italy at takes place mostly in Mrs. Aldwinkle's mansion. She has several visitors who spent most of their time talking about life and their philosophies. They talked a lot about life and death, love, and money. I wouldn't really recommend this book to very many people because it was very difficult to read. It jumped around a lot between different people's point of views and beliefs. The entire novel didn't really have a beginning middle and end, but was more just a lot of beliefs.
Profile Image for Henry Heading.
90 reviews
February 23, 2022
3.5

I enjoyed this book I felt the characters were compelling and the dialogue interesting but the first 100 pages seemed to drag a bit and some monologues ended up being so long and varied in topic that i was eventually questioning if it was still the monologue going on.

The character work is a highlight of this through various characters, who all significantly bring out different emotions relating to them in the reader, Huxley portrays the rich and the general higher classes in a great ignorance of true life. Many of the characters often refer to the terrible misfortunes that they have ended up with there complex life of living in a former Princes abode or eating diverse delicious food and even complaining of there misfortune for not having one particular luxury or the other (in relevance to luxurys of material,intellectual and of talent). In turn many refer to the poor living on the breadline (Post ww1) as the 'lucky ones' as they have simple lives and often refer to the working class as animals. This complete disconnectedness from the sufferings that working class people were going through is a perfect representation to the 'nobility' and the 'gentry' of the time and in alot of cases of today, but how this representation could be further applied to the so called 'influencers' of the day makes this book relevant to this day. Despite this many of the characters are likeable outside of their ignorance and this creates a great intrigue of the mind for the reader who most likely sees these people's faults but also sees the potential of good and beauty in many of them.

I also found the way that the dialogue was written was intriguing as to me it reminded me of the way that Platos 'The Republic' was written, additionally much of the dialogue is philosophical or of topics which are not found in ordinary small talk therefore adding a extra layer to the world and bringing these characters almost into reality.

The main reason that I couldn't give this book a higher rating is because of the mix of the great and fascinating parts of the book and those more mundane or confusing parts which often drag on a bit too long as with the first part of the whole book.

Despite its short comings I would still recommend giving this book a read as the payoff after the first part is worth it.
Profile Image for Caroline.
135 reviews12 followers
September 9, 2018
This book really reads like a practice run for Point, Counter Point. Characters spout philosophical notions about life, death, religion, art, and every other topic the author is anxious about. Some very obvious Eastern religion influences which I can't remember if he develops in Point, Counter Point. The weird bit is how he flips through different genres--Balzacian character description, an autobiography, one bit even reads like a Gothic horror novel. I thought that the pacing dragged during the Chelifer chapters, but that could also be that I just hated that character.

As in most other Huxley novels I've read, he doesn't give off an enlightened view of women. The men are the deep thinkers in Those Barren Leaves, while the women appear shallow, silly, or downright stupid. Even Miss Thriplow, an accomplished and intelligent novelist, gets all of her ideas from the men around her and is too superficial to meditate. The end of the book culminates with the three dominating male characters discussing life and its meaning. You get the impression that this meeting of minds is only possible because they left behind the superfluous things in life (the women). It's always annoying to see a writer suggest that women are incapable of deep thought and, even worse, distract men from theirs. Huxley mentions over and over again that women are weaker and built for love and children and relationships. Even his enormous imagination can't come up with a world where women don't spend all of their time obsessing over men.

Despite all this, I still enjoyed it and I'm definitely going to keep reading Huxley. He is witty and thoughtful, even if I sometimes want to wring his neck.
Profile Image for Ant.
125 reviews8 followers
December 23, 2011
Those Barren leaves is a brilliant book with a layered but nevertheless easy to follow structure of stories within stories & interesting digressions. The language in it is not quite as dense as his previous work Antic Hay (he must have learnt from his prior mistakes) & while the story itself is not overly rich, the trip the characters make to Rome makes up for it. While the characters themselves are basically flawed people, it is not difficult to like each of them if only for their weaknesses. In the conclusion of the book you find (surprisingly) Huxley moving away from satirist to the philosophical tones which would come to dominate his later writings. Above all, the book is mischievously funny. It made me chuckle. I really didn’t expect such humour coming from an author I was previously accustomed to writing deep essays on the divine ground & the mystical. His wit & insight into everything he touched left me turning the last page feeling I had just read a complete story. Again, a brilliant book.
Profile Image for Neil.
16 reviews
December 20, 2009
I picked this book up on impulse without expectations. Right from the start, Huxley's excellent tongue-in-cheek humor is hard at work mocking the cultural elite on their Italian villa retreat. The beautiful Mediterranean setting is intentionally ironic, contrasting the rich achievements of the region's past artists with the people who are ostensibly in a position to carry their torch in modern society. Despite the essentially unsympathetic portrayals of the characters, and the hilarity of the collapse of their various schemes, the introspection they develop as they suffer is meaningful. On the whole, I found it worth reading but not as enjoyable as another Huxley novel from the same time period, Antic Hay (which had a strong plot and much more likable characters).
Profile Image for Jim.
9 reviews
July 16, 2013
Refined, clever writing, but I felt it was a dated and mannered account of people it was hard to believe in, or indeed to care for. The narrative of the story is less interesting than the brilliant moments of elegant, intelligent description or the delightfully malicious humorous scenes, such as Mr Cardan's quest for a supposed prize sculpture. The novel often digresses into philosophical and linguistic discourse, and much of the dialogue is delivered, less to move on the plot, but more to make intellectual statements, as Huxley uses his self-regarding characters to give voice to a range of opinions. Some fine prose, but it became heavy going and a bit self indulgent towards the end.
Profile Image for Mini.
256 reviews5 followers
Shelved as 'dnf'
September 21, 2021
dnf @ page 100, too much fluff and satire and no action or movement. In 100 pages all anyone did was have dinner. I'm sure that's the point of the novel but it's making my brain hurt and I need to take a nap. I can see why his later life was drugs and insanity.
Profile Image for jessie..
153 reviews16 followers
February 15, 2020
Feliz que finalmente li esse livro, tava na minha estante a bastante tempo!
Ele se passa em um palácio na Itália onde estão reunidos um grupo de intelectuais a convite da anfitriã Lilian Aldwinkle. Cada um dos convidados tem uma personalidade bem peculiar, em meio a essas pessoas ele vai retratar a alta sociedade européia nos anos 30, as suas discussões sobre cultura, arte, filosofia, guerra e reformas sociais, porém tudo de uma forma bem irônica:

" Infelizmente não nasci com muito entusiasmo pelo bem-estar das classes trabalhadoras."

"... Por fim ela quase desejava que ele dissesse alguma coisa. O silêncio do mr. Cardan chegava a ser mais irônico do que suas palavras."

Vai falar de forma satírica sobre a vida das classes aristocrática e trabalhadora, sobre preconceito, hipocrisia, fingimentos, romance, amor idealizado...

É uma narrativa tão gostosa de acompanhar, a forma como ele expõe a realidade e a natureza humana é incrível, é cheio de diálogos perfeitos e críticas sociais, eu simplesmente amei esse livro!
Profile Image for Desert Rose.
45 reviews1 follower
October 7, 2023
The first half of this book I thought, “Wow. Aldous Huxley is naturally talented at emulating the writing style of the time period until I realized that he literally was A L I V E during that time! Unlike my tumultuous journey thus far with Wuthering Heights, I did not struggle with the old English; Huxley succeeded in keeping my attention span in check!

Inundated with poetic detail and a range of exposés diving into the psyches of the characters, Those Barren Leaves paints a romantic picture of Italy, amongst the elite, of course. Surprisingly, I thought Huxley’s depiction of women and their inner worlds wasn’t half bad. They weren’t solely focused on the lives of men and how their behaviors are dictated by those men. Actual depth and multidimensionality was introduced, but….fell short towards the end.

All of the philosophy discussed by the men got a bit overran, as it does, but I appreciated the narrative jumps. Overall, I enjoyed reading this book more than I expected I would and am definitely going to read more Huxley.
Profile Image for Michael Zwiauer.
22 reviews
April 27, 2024
Very much a spiritual successor to Crome Yellow. I absolutely loved it, but it lacked some of that bite and anarchic freshness I found so surprising about his debut novel.

I highly doubt this is for everyone, but it charms me in so many ways and resonates with so many of my current feelings about art, religion, morality, and love.

Each and every one of these characters (perhaps apart from Chelifer), are funny and piteous in equal measure and it succeeds as a virtuosic satire while never looking down on or patronising any of its subjects.

Finally, on style, I find it tremendously exciting to find a writer in Huxley who is economical in his descriptions and generous in dialogue. It leaves so much more for the imagination to conjure.
Profile Image for Gian Marco.
53 reviews
February 12, 2020
Huxley sharpens the tools which he employed in writing Crome Yellow and delivers an atmosphere which, it seems to me, could only be tasted in those akward post-fin-du-siècle times.

Witty, cynical and never failing to be satirycal, he proceeds to describe perfectly detailed characters who do not do much more than talking throughout the story - and I kind of gladfully expected it when I picked up the book.

As it usually seems to happen in his works, female characters lack some depth, but I dare say he seems to implicitly suggest that they are slaves of what society (i.e. male characters) expects from them, thus making a fine comparison between Mary, for instance, and the three male protagonists, who all seem to lack something in the end and are unable to obtain it because they are too obsessed with their own way of life.

In general, it reads playfully well. It has a delightful balance between comedy and melancholy, and a great deal of those conversations you would love to participate in - the same which, ironically, Mrs. Aldwinkle obsessively looks out for without realising that she is often there to witness them, and she just cannot realise it because she is distracted by what these moments ought to be instead of what they really are (she could use some Chelifer's truth serum, I am sure), so much that she never developed the tools to understand such themes.

What strikes me as puzzling, though, is the relation between the title and the characters. Some say that they represent Huxley's various facets, but I wonder if he would fall for something as cheap as self-deprecating himself as being superficial by exposing the shallowness of all his tracts.

It seems to me that, just like barren leaves, the characters, save the younger ones, who might be on their way to do just the same mistakes as the elder, have beautifully accomplished what should be the natural path of people who were not 'born to sow the earth' (of course, take this as a merely social description void of any philosophical value), that is living to become something different and to look (not to find) something more to it, since they all express and feel emotions that, however uncertain, or wrong or improbable, differ from the animal status of life so much that you should not deny the fact that they are, in the end, 'living souls'.

I cannot agree, either, with those who say that the novel is absolutely critical of the lesser aristocracy/bourgeoisie - mostly because of how comic and unattractive Mr. Falx sounds all the time. He is so deliberately (from the writing process point of view) boring, he doesn't even try to sound believable. This clearly demonstrates, in my opinion, that Huxley knew well that sophisticated as well as elevated thinking, unfortunately, requires the boredom which instead derives from having nothing useful or necessary to do.
("That's good", said Mr. Cardan, "I should be sorry to think you were doing anything actively useful. You retain the instincts of a gentleman; that's excellent...")

Mr. Chelifer might agree on this, if he were to read it in fifty years from his notes, because it sounds precisely like the kind of harsh reality we should courageously face - that everyone has their own suffocating cage, whatever the social class, and that, at some point, however interesting we might have been, we might well all end up withering like barren leaves, a meagre but sweetly melancholic memento for the people to come.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Profile Image for Doug Lewars.
Author 17 books9 followers
September 5, 2018
*** Possible Spoilers ***

This book is not easy reading.

1923 - 1925: These are the dates during which Those Barren Leaves was most likely written. At the time Huxley was publishing every two to three years so it seems reasonable that he wrote in between publishing dates. The First World War had been over for 5 years. Although some might have detected the first hints of problems in Germany, it is unlikely they'd be noticed by most people. Most people could view the world in a reasonably optimistic manner.

It was a time when the term 'classism' would have been considered ridiculous. Of course there were classes and it seemed perfectly reasonable for them to exist. In this book, Huxley deals exclusively with the upper class; and, in particular, the artistic class - its foibles and pretensions - and there are a LOT of pretensions. Set in a castle somewhere in Italy, Mrs. Aldwinkle gathers about her individuals she considers unique, intelligent and artistic. In fact, such talents as they have are mostly in their own minds. They imagine themselves to be the highest of the intelligentsia and it is this that Huxley satirizes so effectively. There were a number of places where I found myself chuckling, a number of places where I didn't understand what was going on and there were some that I found boring; nevertheless, for the most part I enjoyed the book - if only because in a couple of places he has some fun with writers and I enjoyed his wit.

This isn't a novel for everyone. There is a plot of sorts but the pacing is pretty slow. The characters are interesting mostly for their foibles. There's a little character development but not much. Dialog frequently consists of long rambling speeches. I think the reader needs a good deal of patience to work his or her way through this one. Being almost a hundred years old makes quite a difference in literary style and unless one is prepared to invest some time, it might be wise to take a pass here. I would not recommend this for reading on the subway. However, if you like to see satire wielded not with a sword but with the finest of scalpels then this might be what you're looking for.
Profile Image for Sorana.
79 reviews56 followers
September 29, 2012
I felt like reading high-quality fanfiction while reading this, and that was a compliment since reading fanfics is generally more fun than reading anything else. People, tons of interesting people and personalities and psychological observation, pretense and digression in a pretentious social environment, not one detail remained unsaid. Add tons of philosophical discussions in that context- perfect. The mysticism at the end was predictable, but welcomed. This was wonderful and I'm looking forward to taking all my time reading Huxley's similar novels.
Profile Image for Sarah.
108 reviews
April 7, 2008
How could the guy who wrote Brave New World also write a book this boring and pointless? It boggles the mind.
11 reviews1 follower
August 2, 2020
This got me back into reading, a wonderful exploration of how our personal philosophies and outlooks effect the outcome of our lives. All that plus some beautiful descriptions of 1920s Italy.
Profile Image for #DÏ4B7Ø Chinnimasta-Bhairav.
622 reviews2 followers
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* -} Gestalt Psychology Simplified with Examples and Principles {- *

* -:}|{}|{: = MY SYNTHESISED ( ^ GESTALT ^ ) OF THE * -:}|{}|{:=:}|{}|{:- * ( WAY THE AUTHOR FRAMES = HIS WRITING PERSPECTIVES ) & ( POINTERS & IMPLICATIONS = the conclusion that can be drawn IMPLICITYLY from something although it is not EXPLICITLY stated ) = :}|{}|{:- *

* -:}|{}|{: = ? = }|{}|{:- *

~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~

~}-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-{~

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To SEE a WORLD in a Grain of Sand,
And a HEAVEN in a Wild Flower,
Hold INFINITY in the palm of your hand
And ETERNITY in an Hour"
~ William Blake ~

~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~

Form is Emptiness; Emptiness is form.
Form is not different than Emptiness;
Emptiness is not different than form
~ Heart Sutra ~

Like the ocean and its waves,
inseparable yet distinct

~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~

" I and The Father are one,
I am The Truth,
The Life and The Path.”

Like a river flowing from its source,
connected and continuous

~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~

Thy kingdom come.
Let the reign of divine
Truth, Life, and Love
be established in me,
and rule out of me all sin;
and may Thy Word
enrich the affections of all mankind

A mighty oak tree standing firm against the storm,
As sunlight scatters the shadows of night
A river nourishing the land it flows through

~}- - - - - - - - - - - - - -:}|{:- - - - - - - - - - - - - -{~

~}-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-:}|{:-{~
Profile Image for Mark Elderson.
40 reviews1 follower
September 2, 2018
What's it about? It is the mid 1920's and Italy. Just as with Crome Yellow, Aldous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves begins with someone on a bicycle approaching a very big house. In this case it happens to be only a postman on the bicycle, but the Big House is again central, this time being an Italian former summer-palace now owned by a wealthy English lady entertaining herself with whatever interesting company she can get her hands on. Aldous Huxley again mixing Interesting Ideas voiced in the conversations or the thoughts of his characters, with Humour in the form of his customary affectionate mockery and a wit which reaches its highlights when he is being very rude about the Working Class or about the Upper Class.

Comment. The hand - throughout the 1920's Aldous Huxley was, recalling the edict to either be interesting or be entertaining (else why should people stick around?), writing novels that were trying to be both. But, isn't there a feeling that, for Huxley anyway, the Interesting - the Ideas in these novels - was always the first concern?

Those Barren Leaves ends on a large one of these Ideas: Is it possible, through some form of contemplation techniques, through hard concentration on one thing and therefore an emptying of the mind of all distractions, is it possible to 'open the curtain' on an astonishing and wider 'reality' within which our own limited perceived reality dwells? Later on in his life, did Huxley in addition to his other hunting go off on a hunt in just this direction? Those Barren Leaves draws to a close on this idea, and it is here that Aldous Huxley reveals a little of his writing craft. It is here that he chooses to use a device - the hand.

A man and a young woman are in bed. The man is holding up his hand. The hand, for him, would be the introduction to something he has been considering but has not yet summoned up the courage to embark upon - a withdrawal from his pointless, yet pleasantly distracting, world, into a world of the isolated cottage and a freedom to force the mind on to these contemplation techniques. Why not start the process by contemplating just this very hand.
And the young woman contemplates the hand and thinks about what that hand could be doing on her body. And what does the young woman say? '"Why don't you think about me?" (-) "I'm sorry I should have got in the way of your important occupations," she said in her most sarcastic voice. "Such as thinking about your hand." She laughed derisively. There was a long silence.'
That hand means one thing to the contemplative man: that hand means another thing to a certain sort of young woman. It is the juxtaposition of the two that is, within what this novel is trying to explore, a bit clever.
Profile Image for Michael Triozzi.
64 reviews3 followers
October 26, 2024
Huxley's early 'country house' novels can be puzzling to readers more familiar with his more famous later writings, but there's a lot in them to love and to ponder. Compared to "Chrome Yellow," "Those Barren Leaves" has a tighter focus on the internal lives of the characters. Huxley takes care to show how, one-by-one, each of the guests at Mrs. Aldwinkle's country house is a creature of hypocrisy. The novelist is secretly an emotionally stunted woman obsessed with making herself seem passionate through her writings. The Don Juan is secretly consumed by the idea that there might be more to life than seduction. The patroness of the arts is (not so secretly) a clownish figure of bourgeois tastes. Even the cynical glutton is secretly terrified of death. There is little plot other than a few silly adventures and a couple of dives into the characters' fears and thoughts. But it's a lovely, if tedious, holiday in Italy.

You get the sense that Huxley has a distinctly condescending attitude toward each of his characters, and possibly to his readers. It's not so much that he thinks he's the smartest person in the room, but that he knows he his and likes to show it. At times it feels like Huxley is performing the literary equivalent of simple magic tricks with a knowing smirk, pulling scarves out of his sleeves just to show he can. Mr. Cardan remarks that a romantic writing style is more suitable to comedy than to drama, and then Huxley treats us to a gothic/romantic/comedic subplot featuring the character. Mary Thriplow, the novelist, thinks to herself that a certain passage of the novel might work well in a novel. The poet, Mr. Chelifer, describes passing scenery at length before noting how "dreary" it is when writers describe passing scenery.

There are times when the characters seem to serve only as vehicles for Huxley's philosophical meanderings or participants in socratic dialogue. A character spends a chapter staring at his own hand and contemplating its meaning, so much so that you begin to wonder if Huxley's famous experimentation with mind-altering substances had already kicked in. At one point I found myself hoping that Mr. Chelifer, floating on the sea and pondering his life, would get hit by a boat. When, in fact, Huxley had a boat hit him I practically cheered. I spent the rest of the novel hoping that a second boat would hit him.

This might be a fairly good book that I would recommend to practically no one.
May 14, 2024
An early novel (1925, following Crome Yellow and Antic Hay), this novel offers long discussions of views that Huxley later dealt with in his Perennial Philosophy.

Like Crome Yellow, this is ostensibly a 'manor house novel', but is set in Italy in the Palace of Lilian Aldwinkle, a tiresome woman of vast wealth who wishes, with her numerous houseguests, to relive the glories of the Renaissance when her palace was first created. She is tended by her niece Irene, a lovely girl who is courted by a lisping young aristocrat named Lord Hovendon. Mrs Aldwinkle, in turn, becomes infatuated with a would-be poet named Francis Chelifer who cleverly avoids his hostess's advances. An intriguing young woman, Mary Thriplow, is a published novelist who has an affair with another house guest, Calamy, a man with a Don Juan-like ability to seduce women but who has existential questions about the 'world beyond' our senses.

Huxley gives a poignant narration of a first love and disappointment, a painful unrequited love (and its humorous rebuffing by the object of affection), and the charming courtship of Mrs Aldwinkle’s young niece by a fast-driving aristocrat.

I enjoyed reading this novel, and I find Huxley's prose and poetry very rewarding. His description of Mrs Aldwinkle's physical side (in the words of Mr Cardan, her former lover and another houseguest) I found hilarious: 'She was eighteen in the attics and widow Dido on the floors below. One had the impression of being with two women at the same time. It was most stimulating.'

In spite of Mrs Aldwinkle's desire to recreate the Renaissance, her guests speak privately of their hostess as having vulgar taste, and Huxley lampoons the first Italian occupants of the old palace as being anything like admirable people, with snout-like features revealed in their portraits. I enjoyed this novel and, having finished it, look forward to more of Huxley's early works.
74 reviews
March 21, 2024
Huxley’s characters are shallow and self-absorbed. They only interact with others — whether socially or mentally (that is, whether in their presence or out of it) — to the extent that self-image is semantically ironic: constructing it involves a kind of disembodied exercise whereby one looks at oneself through the eyes of others. It is troubling, therefore, whenever one reads a book like this and sees oneself in its characters. Am I also so afflicted by the mental pathologies of the shallow and self-absorbed?

As usual, there is no discernable plot. Huxley, as an author of ideas, has frequently been criticized for his narrative looseness. If there is a plot it exists only in the form of thematic flows and character arcs. Nothing material unites the characters. And there isn’t really a reason why they should all be gathered at this Italian palace except that social elites used to go in for that sort of thing. As a result, the book can be dull and meandering when taken as a whole.

However, some parts — some mini-stories and character arcs — held my interest; in particular, Irene’s character arc, the Cardan and Elvers subplot, and the sections written in the voice of Francis Chelifer. The latter, especially, resonated with me, being, myself, a highly pathological person involved with highly pathological people — those ideal love-obsessions for people you don’t really know and whom you’d probably find irritating, the martyrdom of being loved by pathetic people like Mrs. Aldwinkle and the awkwardness of having to deal with their pitiable displays out of courtesy or convention.
Profile Image for Socrate.
6,737 reviews240 followers
March 25, 2021
Era îmbrăcată într-o rochie ecosez cu carouri mari albastre pe fond alb, cu talia foarte ridicată şi fusta, foarte lungă şi largă : era o rochie demodată şi totodată extrem de modernă, simplă, ca o uniformă, de şcolăriţă şi totuși emancipată, modestă dar în acelaşi, timp mult mai îndrăzneață decât cele care se purtau în saloanele din Chelsea. Faţa-i era foarte netedă, bucălată şi palidă, atît de netedă şi bucălată încât nimeni nu i-ar fi dat cei 30 de ani bătuţi pe muchie. Avea trăsături delicate,, ochii căprui închis, iar sprâncenele arcuite erau parcă trase cu penelul de un pictor oriental pe o mască, din porţelan. Părul, aproape negru, strâns într-un coc bogat pe ceafă, îi lăsa fruntea liberă. Urechile, descoperite, erau foarte albe şi mici. Era o faţă inexpresivă, ca de păpuşă, dar o păpuşă extrem de inteligentă.
Profile Image for Tony Yang.
24 reviews
September 16, 2021
If you can bear the long dialogues and monologues and care less about plot-setting, this one is readable because there are no shortage of gems, or just rubbles sometimes under guise of gems. Character and plot depiction in this novel are nowhere near any principles that books like Novel Writing Skills can teach you. Nevertheless, the talent of the author can easily be traced by the only parts which can be called "plot-setting and character-sculpting", e.g., Mr. Cardan hunting for Miss Elver. Cramming philosophic ideas into a novel is not the first time embodied by modern novelist; Aldous Huxley is not the only one, but surely not a sophisticated one if you know the boundary of philosophic ideas and the tongue-in-cheek satirical remarks. In this sense, he doesn't write a group of characters, but he is among them.
1 review
May 2, 2019
This is the same Huxley I've read in Point Counter Point, but this time the main part of his ideas are about creativity and art of thinking itself. I felt like the main stage of the narrative was sometimes too dramatic, maybe it was so loaded by intention, but I'm not really familiar with Italian culture, so often I was bored by it. But, as you probably know, when Huxley hits it, he hits it, and I personally had enough of these moments to praise the book for the desire to be sharp in concrete. Huxley leads you through all these detailed landscapes to suddenly stop and think and capture the next idea. He was not a man who seeks simple answers, that's what makes his work so engaging, and that applies to That Barrow Leaves too, don't doubt it.
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