SOURCE: Beaumont, Matthew. “Corroded by a Culture of Futility.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 5125 (22 June 2001): 21.

In the following review, Beaumont offers a generally positive assessment of Nineteen Twenty-One, though notes that the novel's theme of futility is, to some degree, embodied in the work itself.

According to Cyril Connolly, the “central concept of the nineteen-twenties” was futility. The years of the First World War were perceived by most of its contemporaries to be full of purpose; those of its aftermath seemed to many people, perhaps especially to those who were frantically embracing the culture of freedom promised by peace, simply forlorn. After the “war effort”, there was only a profound and diffusive sense of fatigue. The 1920s, to borrow a term of abuse favoured by Bentham's opponents a hundred years or so before, were “futilitarian”.

The word “futility” primarily refers to a sense of ineffectuality and fruitlessness. In one...