Book Reviews - Review 248

Lodge traces the lives of a group of Catholic students who meet at London University in the 1950s, and observes how the growth of the permissive society over the subsequent couple of decades affects their relationships and their faith. As the Catholic Church struggles painfully to modernise itself, the young people find themselves, to varying degrees, simultaneously liberated and disoriented.

The superficial focus of the book - as the title implies - is sexual ethics; but the real question posed lies deeper: once you get rid of the arbitrary forms of religion, can anything be said to remain of it? One of the characters says,

As narrator, Lodge profers his own thoughts:

As those quotations suggest, How Far Can You Go? is more serious than most of Lodge's novels. This is a strength and a weakness: on the one hand, the book deals perspicaciously with deep questions; but on the other, one of Lodge's best qualities, his sense of fun, takes a back seat. In addition, the construction of the novel around ideas rather than people leaves the characterisation rather two-dimensional: we have a token neurotic, a token homosexual, a token priest, a token nun, and so on, whose dilemmas are all dealt with interestingly and intelligently; but they lack vividness, passion and individuality. The dialogue, in particular, is often very bland.

Nevertheless, this is another interesting novel by a versatile, accessible and thought-provoking writer. It will appeal to anyone concerned with questions of ethics and faith, whether Catholic or not.