Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley's first novel, Crome Yellow, was published in 1921, and, as a comedy of manners and ideas, its relatively realistic setting and format may come as a surprise to fans of his later works such as Point Counter Point and Brave New World. Some who know only Brave New World may not know that as a 16-year-old planning to enter medicine, Aldous Huxley was stricken by a serious eye disease which left him temporarily blind, and which derailed what certainly would have been a prominent career as a physician or scientist. Crome Yellow has often been called "witty," as well as "talky," and it certainly owes as much to Vanity Fair as it may, surprisingly to some, owe to Tristram Shandy, although one might think that characters such as Mr. Barbecue-Smith and his remarkable writing theories could have some literary antecedents in Lawrence Sterne. Denis Smith, the protagonist of Crome Yellow, attempts to cross wits with the denizens of Crome, particularly Mr. and Mrs. Winbush and the remarkable Mr. Barbecue-Smith -- in pursuit of a star-crossed love, and in the face of another girl who possibly loves him. Blurb from Amazon.com
Crome Yellow was Aldous Huxley's first book, published in 1921. In England after the first World War a group of people gather at an English country home for a holiday. They interact and talk, then talk some more. There really isn't much in the way of plot.
The book is written as a series of short chapters, with the POV character changing from chapter to chapter. The best thing about the book is the dialog between the characters. But in some places the whole thing comes to a standstill while one character or another makes a pages long speech. There are hints of the things to come in Brave New World, when one character talks about the future when babies will be grown in bottles and everyone will be assigned to a static station in life.
The Mr. Barbecue-Smith mentioned above is an author of self help books. He describes a writing method that I think some of these authors still use today, where he just sits down and writes whatever comes into his mind and publishes it.
According to Wikipedia Crome Yellow is a satire of traditional English country house novels. I don't think satire works well if you aren't familiar with the thing being satirized. I found this book to be a bit of a slog.
Crome Yellow is available as a free ebook on Amazon.com.