Maybe the best H.G. Wells' incursion outside his mother ship of science fiction, Tono-Bungay is the tale of a useless and addictive medicine embellished by an early form of marketing. However, behind the major plot, it hides an interesting criticism of a capitalist society, where everyone works and lives without a purpose, especially the upper class.

Although it turned out to be very different from what I imagined, focusing much more on the foundations of the English Society rather than in the development of the Tono-Bungay and the characters, it is an interesting and recommended read.

This book kept me engrossed while reading it; a classic for good reasons. It is fairly dark in its depiction of the colossal wastefulness of modern society, of the cruel folly of commerce. It ends on a note of peculiar optimism that is quite science-fictional.

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This is Wells' best-known non-sf novel. I say that despite the following points:

- Most of the plot revolves around a magical potion, Tono-Bungay. But Tono-Bungay is a complete fake, and sells well because of marketing, not because it actually does any good.
- There is a miraculous mineral which would have transformed the plot, indeed the world, if it came into play. But all supplies are lost, so it becomes a narrative hook for an unsuccessful journey instead.
- The hero flies an aeroplane to France, in a novel published (and mostly set) in 1908, something that didn't actually happen until 1909. But in 1908 it was clearly going to happen pretty soon - in October, the Daily Mail offered a prize of £500 for a cross-channel flight made before the end of the year.
- Anyway the hero's aeronautical experiments turn out to be a dead-end, and he abandons them and is designing warships by the end of the book.

But most of all, the point of the book isn't the change to human society offered by transformative technology, it's about society and social mobility in the very first years of the twentieth century in England. The tech bits are decorative rather than fundamental, and I think it's less sfnal than the Lovejoy books where he supernaturally differentiates real antiques from fakes.

So, the story is actually about our narrator and his uncle; his uncle starts the book by becoming bankrupt, but very quickly becomes fabulously rich thanks to Tono-Bungay. His nephew helps him manage the business (and does well out of it) but fails three times to find true love, his emotional life reported in much more realistic terms than I think was normal for fiction of the day - for this alone I think it's a memorable book, avoiding romantic cliches. The mineral expedition is a slightly silly adventure, but I think redeems itself as a literary device by failing to bring home the goods.

There are unfortunately still plenty of other cliches. I never quite got the feeling that we were meant to take the uncle and aunt seriously; clearly the posh folk of Surrey think they are getting above themselves and I sensed that the author thinks so too. The French scenes are a little bit in that direction too. But overall it's a very engaging and interesting novel, and I feel with some confidence that I can work through the rest of Wells.

Wells, H. G. Tono-Bungay. 1909. Penguin, 2005.
H. G. Wells, through George, his protagonist in Tono-Bungay, proclaims himself to be a rationalist, a socialist, and a man interested in improving society as much as he can. But what makes this novel so fascinating is that at every critical juncture, George acts in ways that violate all these principles and make him instead the kind of man he most despises. He studies science, but he abandons it at the first opportunity to take part in his Uncle’s patent medicine scam. He is critical of the injustice of the economic system represented by the English aristocracy, but if the aristocratic Beatrice would marry him, he would jump at the chance. His dreams of improving society and making a mark in the world end, but as he says, early in the novel, he discovers that it is the world that does things to him. All his ventures ultimately involve products that kill people, including a fictional compound called quap, “the most radioactive stuff in the world.” He occasionally sounds like Joseph Conrad, who admired Wells enough to dedicate a book to him, and perhaps he shares some of Conrad’s sadder-but-wiser romanticism.

I could not get into this story. I thought the narrator was very detached from the whole purpose of the novel, which is supposed to be a satire, or at least a commentary on the British businessman. I don't think there are really any profound statements that occurred and it made me think that Wells was attempting to write literature in the style of his contemporaries and didn't quite measure up.

I thought the romantic relationships were misplaced. They didn't seem to fit into plot well, almost like an afterthought to show the true nature of the narrator. The beginning was long, cumbersome, and didn't add much. Tono-Bungay would have worked well as a short story. It just seemed to keep going on and on and on.

I wasn't impressed. I don't think it was like Dickens at all; these characters aren't particularly memorable, in fact it reminded me of the cumbersome "The Way of All Flesh" by Butler, but far less poetically written.

I don't think it is a particularly great commentary, although the ending is depressing. Tono-Bungay has a hint of science fiction, but it seemed as if Wells was attempting to write something that he had a half-hearted interest in, which is reflected in George, whose emotional reflection is rather narrow. Simply compare this book to all the other British literature of the same time period and ask yourself, does it really measure up? After recently reading the Forsyte Saga, published not long after this, Tono-Bungay is exceedingly dull.

George is a fake bitch