Chesterton, GK - The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare (1908)

Review by Nick Fuller

5/5

This allegory, aptly subtitled “A Nightmare” is, without any doubt, the best of Chesterton’s novels. It has an actual — and epic — plot, even if it is surreal, a plot which is in parts very funny, and in others atmospheric — frightening or wondrous; it has eccentric and interesting characters — the poet policeman who infiltrates a circle of anarchists, only to find that they are all policemen, and other such Alice in Wonderland touches; a very funny yet disquieting scene in which an elderly and paralytic professor chases the hero down the street, and a later duello which achieves the same purpose; and a frightening part when the world goes mad in Chapters XI—XII, when the reader feels that the end of the world — of civilisation — has come, and the reader is genuinely relieved when Monday is revealed to be a policeman, before a very funny chase through London, building up nonsense upon nonsense. But above all — above the glorious writing, with its susceptibility to light, colour and weather — is the ultimate riddle of all: the nature of God. Very powerful and thought-provoking — a work which can only be described as “sublime.”