I am giving Zuleika Dobson four stars as it proved a suitable distraction from the ongoing Brexit fiasco. It reminded me of a black-dyed meringue - sweet, light, fluffy, and very dark. The story is essentially all about death, suicide in fact, while also being a light-hearted magical realist Oxford farce. An interesting and ununusual combination. Although I read the illustrated edition, I must say the pictures didn't do much for me. They were charming enough, but chopped up the text is a rather provoking fashion. I was much more fond of the words, especially grandiose words like peripety, aseity, and orgulous, none of which I'd come across before. Beerbohm has a knack for turn of phrase, rather like a less sunny Wodehouse:

Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic. The lilac and laburnum, making lovely now the railed pathway to Christ Church meadow, were all a-swaying and a-nodding to the Duke as he passed by. "Adieu, adieu, your Grace," they were whispering. "We are very sorry for you - very sorry indeed. We never dared suppose you would predecease us. We think your death a very great tragedy. Adieu! Perhaps we shall meet in another world - that is, if members of the animal kingdom have immortal souls, as we have."

The main character is ostensibly the titular Zuleika, a mysterious and bewitching woman who has the whole student body of Oxford killing themselves out of love for her. Another aside from the narrator, of which he allows himself many, comments acerbically on this phenomenon:

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows and he is lost - he becomes just a unit in unreason. If any one of the undergraduates had met Miss Dobson in the desert of Sahara, he would have fallen in love with her; but not one in a thousand would have wished to die because she did not love him.

The treatment of Zuleika is intriguingly ambivalent. She shows a remarkable lack of remorse for the carnage she apparently caused, yet the students themselves are clearly acting very foolishly and the college fellows seem wilfully ignorant of what's happening. Given the book's original date of publication, 1911, I was tempted to read into it a macabre and prescient satire on patriotic fervour at the start of the First World War. Oxford undergraduates of three years later would after all be effectively committing suicide by trench warfare. Zuleika is perhaps a spectre representative of 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'. The author cannot have known that a world war would occur, of course, so this is all very retrospective. In any event, 'Zuleika Dobson' is an enjoyably weird novel, in which the best-developed character is the omniscient narrator and supernatural happenings go largely unremarked. Moreover, Zuleika really is a wonderful name for a literal femme fatale. As a dark mockery of Oxford, the aristocracy, and male pomposity in general, the book can be very funny. I did love this sort of dialogue:

Down the flight of steps from Queen's came lounging an average undergraduate.

"Mr. Smith," said the Duke, "a word with you."

"But my name is not Smith," said the young man.

"Generically it is," replied the Duke. "You are Smith to all intents and purposes. That, indeed, is why I address you. In making your acquaitance, I make a thousand acquaintances. You are a short cut to knowledge. Tell me, do you seriously think of drowning yourself this afternoon?"

"Rather," said the undergraduate.

"A meiosis in common use, equivalent to 'Yes, assuredly,'" murmured the Duke, "And why," he then asked, "do you mean to do this?"

"Why? How can you ask? Why are you going to do it?"

"The Socratic manner is not a game that two can play. Please answer my question to the best of your ability."

It should be noted while reading the above that the Duke is also an undergraduate! ( )

Quitting at 18%. I find the strange writing style with constantly inverted word order annoying, the tone irritating and the 'plot' slow to develop. ( )

He's an engaging, albeit dated prose stylist, and he can be very amusing. But this book proceeds to it's conclusion, and then kind of meanders around for several more chapters. There are odd bits of business, like the ghosts of George Sand and Chopin dropping in on a central character's piano recital. Actually ghosts abound in this book. If you like Wodehouse you'll find things to like here, but it's reputation as a timeless classic is a little much. ( )

Maybe even 4½ stars... This satire of undergraduate behavior is still hilarious over 100 years after it was written! The basic story is about how the young men of Oxford react when Zuleika Dobson, the beautiful niece of the college Warden, arrives in their midst. ( )

What a pleasant surprise this book was. I found it at a paperback trade-in shop, and bought it because of the incredible cover. I didn't know until I was well into it that it's considered a Beerbohm classic. The prose can be challenging; I could have had a dictionary beside me constantly if I decided I wanted to look up every word I didn't know. I didn't. Maybe if I reread it someday. I didn't think it would conclude the way it did, because I never can quite believe what lengths men will go to for a beautiful, irresistible woman. Good grief! ( )