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Summary: Looking to know Trollope...try elsewhere
Review: ... Too many plots, characters not given enough space to breathe, and way too much wrap-up yields a less than satisfying experience. But Trollope is a great writer, and when he's on top, as he is often throughout this book, he is untouchable. The Beargarden is astonishing, and has anyone ever written about so many different wastrels and made them all unique? Georgina and her brother Dolly could make a novel themselves. Poor Marie....desperate to be loved. Very touching stuff.But the main story gets lost under so much weight that the overall novel loses its focus and just stunbles to a number of unconvincing conclusions. My favorite book is He Knew He Was Right. The sub-plots there enhance the story, and the characters are more vivid and less simplistic. If you're here after the PBS series, note please...that series is adapted from this novel. There is a lot missing and a lot changed (all to the worse, I would argue). If you are new to Trollope, I would suggest The Palliser series or HKHWR. This is much less worth the time, though still a sparkling read with brilliant flashes. Anti-Semitism? People are too touchy. The characters are certainly narrow-minded bigots, but Trollope himself is clear and potent. The "old, fat Jew" is among the most noble, most intelligent, and touching characters in Trollope. A gentleman, a sincere man, and one touched by the ugliness of his world but rising majestically above it.
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Summary: Those Who Forget the Past ....
Review: Aside from the fact that this book takes place 125 years ago, it could be an end of year round-up for the corporate and political scandals of 2002. Trollope takes a deft look at the conditions of a culture that allow the Melmottes of the world to walk in and wreak havoc, (laziness, entitlement, greed) and one gets a very queasy feeling watching the bubble inflate, followed by the inevitable collapse of the whole house of cards. At least Melmotte doesn't take the whole country down with him. We may not be so lucky. On the down side, I'm guessing (it feels like) these chapters were published in newspaper form before they were assembled for the book, as each chapter contains much unnecesary reiteration, and if you're reading straight through it can be annoying. In addition, Trollope doesn't have Dickens' delicious wit or keen insight into character, and some plots which seem to be headed for the interesting turn of event are instead allowed to dangle or resolve themselves dully. (I'm thinking particularly of Mrs. Hurtle here.) And for me, the fact that there is no one to take a particular interest in, no moral compass so to speak, left me feeling a bit adrift. Yes, people are deeply flawed. But one character who was perhaps a bit less flawed than the others would have given me something to hang my hat on. Still, a page turner par excellence.
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Summary: Forget Dickens, Trollope is where it is at!
Review: I consider it to be a tragedy that Anthony Trollope's works are largely forgotten and overlooked by the reading public. So many well-educated people have never even heard ot him, although his novels are some of the best representatives of what a good novel should be! His beautiful storytelling in "The Way We Live Now" is just another example of Trollope at his best. A master raconteur, his vivid descriptions and cutting satire make this work one of his most controversial (at least at the time) and indeed one of his most respected. Though his longest work, it certainly does not seem long because he keeps the reader on his toes, so much so, that he is dying to know what will happen next. The best thing about the book, in my opinion, is the fact that it is difficult to find a character whom you can like. Each one, and there are many, has one or more particular faults, and we, as the readers, quickly realize that no one is perfect. Even the sympathetic characters are prejudiced at times. This, I believe, is a marked contrast to Dickensian personnages who much of the time are almost too angelic or cruel to be believable. Trollope give us a lesson in true human nature, one that will be very hard for me to forget.
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Summary: Best book for an intro to Trollope
Review: I would beg to differ with the reviewers who discourage those unfamiliar with Trollope from starting with this book. Because of its modern theme and relevance to our age this should be the first on any new Trollope reader's list. Even the casual Jew-hatred of the English upper class portrayed by Trollope has been in the news within the last year or two (at embassy parties in London).
Rating:
Summary: Best book for an intro to Trollope
Review: I would beg to differ with the reviewers who discourage those unfamiliar with Trollope from starting with this book. Because of its modern theme and relevance to our age this should be the first on any new Trollope reader's list. Even the casual Jew-hatred of the English upper class portrayed by Trollope has been in the news within the last year or two (at embassy parties in London).
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Summary: If you liked Edith Wharton's "Custom of the Country"
Review: If you liked Edith Wharton's "Custom of the Country" & Thackery's "Vanity Fair", this is a version of such. More political & less entertaining. I'm a fan of Trollope's
oeuvre but books specified above are better. But it's worth owning & reading!
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Summary: Trollope's Master Work
Review: It is most when reading (or re-reading) Trollope that I realize how much recent novels suck. Trollope, who regarded novel-writing as a learned trade, shows wider understanding of human nature than twentieth-century, breadloaf-fed artistes. Trollope was the master of personal character. He knew what motivated people, and what faults kept them from behavior they knew was correct The Way We Live Now is an examination, from a skilled, intelligent early Victorian, of the beginning of capital as worth. Melmotte might be any of current unscrupulous speculators you can name (if you even think speculating is ungentlemanly). I do not personally agree with Trollope as he seems to believe in birth and blood, but I can easily agree that those who buy notice are never worth notice.
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Summary: The Way We Still Live Now
Review: The Enron collapse shows that, as long as we continue to enjoy the benefits of capitalism in the West, Trollope's most famous novel will continue to be timely. This has often been called Trollope's best novel: while it does not contain his best writing (which would be found in individual chapters of PHINEAS FINN and THE LAST CHRONICLER OF BARSET), nor is it his funniest (BARCHESTER TOWERS), it is his most consistently engaging in its details of a railway bubble in mid-Victorian London. The great financier at the center of it, Augustus Melmotte, rises from obscurity to be asked to host a dinner for the visiting emperor of China (which forms a splendid setpiece for the novel) on the eve of his financial ruin. The novel is very exciting and enjoyable, and shows Trollope straining the hardest to meet the standards set by his admitted hero, Thackeray; although this certainly doesn't meet the level of VANITY FAIR, it's still pretty good. There is a bit of a trouble that Trollope has too many subplots going and winds up spending hundreds of pages at the end (long after the work's main action is over) having to resolve them. One of the very best of these ongoing stories, the desperate attempts of the contemptibly snobbish (but still oddly sympathetic) Georgiana Longstaffe to find a husband, is as a result resolved much too suddenly and unsatisfactorily. I would still recommend THE WAY WE LIVE NOW as a fine read--and as a very splendid introduction to Trollope.
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Summary: Like it happened yesterday.
Review: This book was my first encounter with the works of Anthony Trollope. While it is not entirely surprising that Trollope's legacy is overshadowed by the ones of contemporaries like Dickens, Austen, Elliot and Thackeray, this book gives such a juicy historic precursor to the Enron and WorldCom scandals, that it deserves a spot on the current bestsellers list. In detailing the rise and fall of the swindler-turned-tycoon Melmotte and the pathetic tendency of the bankrupt gentry to simultaneously woo and despise him, Trollope gives us a satire for the ages. Moreover, the repeated dogma that it's OK to do the wrong thing and have the wrong friends as long as everybody else is doing it, is also right on the money. While Theodore Dreiser took the psychological analysis of the swindler to a whole other level in his "The Financier", Melmotte is still a wonderfully well rounded crook. The second memorable character is lady Carbury. Trollope shaped her and her literary aspirations after his own mother. While I was not too impressed with the exposure of the "literary world" that her character allowed, the lady is a nice archetype of the survivor, who yet is willing to sacrifice everything for her loser son. Apart from these main characters, archetypes, there is a large supporting cast adding themes of love, betrayal, abuse and manipulation. While many of the players provide the context of a society sucking up to Melmotte, the great number of themes and intrigues leads to too much diffusion of the central theme. While characters like Roger Carbury and Ms. Hurtle are well rounded, the resolution of their "issues" is rather lackluster. In his portrayal of the demise of the British gentry after passage of the two reform bills Trollope has drawn parallels with the decline of the roman Empire and includes many a reference to good old Horatius. A lot of the book can be encompassed in the non-included quote: ad spectatum veniunt, veniunt spectantur ut ipse (=they come to the spectacle, (yet) come to be seen themselves). In addition, this book provides one of the best examples that I have encountered, that you can't be doing the wrong thing as long as everybody else is doing it. A good, entertaining and fairly easy read.
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Summary: Brilliant
Review: This work of literature encompassing life among the upper-crust of society in Victorian England is by far the best fictional representation I have ever read. Trollope creates fantastic characters from the saintly/virginal society girl who pines for a lover, to a dastardly gentleman who squanders his families small fortune on rather unsavoury habits such as gambling and less than scrupulous women. Most of this is told through the perspective of the matriarch of one family (Lady Carbury) who's only wish is that her son (a scoundrel at best) marry well and with any luck above his station (which he tries to sabotage at every turn) and for her daughter to marry into wealth at any cost whatsoever. That with the general gossip and the "Newcomer's from Paris" (The Family Melmotte) who left Paris hurriedly it seems under a rather dark cloud of suspicion will keep you glued to this book throughout. It is a very lengthy novel (481 pages) but you will be desperately turning the pages in the Appendix hoping for just a bit more!
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