A book about the passage of time, in this case Mr. Chipping aka. Mr. Chips, with his teaching career from 1850 till after the First World War. For a relatively short work it manages to convey the Era aptly. By turns humorous and tragic a good book to spend time with. ( )

quite sentimental but entertaining. mr.chips is likable and sympathetic. ( )

A feel good character study of a kindly old Victorian English boys school professor. It is too saccharine sweet sentimental for my taste. Hilton tells us how wonderful Mr Chips is, how funny he is and beloved but doesn't convincingly show it, it's all sentimentality. I can see how it would remind older readers of Victorian era professors they had, sure and confident of themselves and the world before it blew up in WWI - the older reader could "know" Mr. Chips the archetype based on an amalgamation of professors they had grown up with, so it's hard to be critical of that. But Hilton has not fully fleshed out Mr Chips so he comes across for modern readers flat, a cartoon character out of a British children's boarding school genre novel .

The illustrations by Dianna Diamond in the Readers Digest edition are excellent, photographic in detail. I have not seen a movie adaptation but hope to do so as I think the sentimentality will transfer well to film.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd ( )

Classic