A Passionate Man

Rating:
Summary: Very well done
Review: Dr. Archie Logan seems to have it all. He loves his wife Liza whom he met at her engagement party. Fascinated by her from the start, Archie ran a ten-day campaign to win her love. Now they have several children and seem like the ideal poster couple and family. Perhaps the only slight problem between them is that Liza feels excluded from Archie's incredible relationship with his father Andrew, a widower even though her in-law has clearly adopted her as a daughter.

However, Archie's perfect world shatters when Liza tells him that Andrew is bringing a woman, Marina de Breton, to their home after decades of parading no females around the family. Everyone else, including Archie's wife, children, and siblings find Marina charming. Archie acts jealous of the first intrusion into his relationship with his dad. However, Archie's behavior opens up the souls of everyone else, including his beloved Liza, that makes the middle aged country doctor reconsider his blindness towards the feelings of others.

A PASSIONATE MAN is a thought provoking relationship drama that centers on a good person learning that complacency can lead to negative feelings towards him. Archie is a warm, caring person, but loses perspective. His father's new situation forces him to look inside his own essence and conscience. The support cast provides more than depth by allowing the audience an opportunity to understand the inner workings of interpersonal feelings. Any one desiring a well written, conscience-rendering novel that scrubs away the armor of a human being will fully relish Joanna Trollope's mindbending tale.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Barbara Cartland or Jane Austen?
Review: I must confess that it was hard to put this book down; but once I actually did, I realized, with some sadness, that there was not as much to like about it as I had originally thought.

The writing itself is truly wonderful: where it is witty, you laugh out loud, and the lovely phrasing evokes effectively the atmosphere of an English village that is resisting suburban sprawl. (The local post-mistress is Mrs. Norris reincarnated.)

Oddly enough, however, I found the main characters not fully convincing, especially Archie. He seems to display classic symptoms of bi-polar syndrome at times: He is very kind and sensitive one moment--the next he is morally obtuse.

Liza, on the other hand, begins the novel by seeming mature and well-balanced, becomes dissatisfied with her life, gains some additional confidence, then completely crashes when her affair with a silly twit sputters out.

Marina seems charming and convincing until she allows her son-in-law to jump into bed with her; but surely she is far too sophisticated for this to be an unguarded acceptance. She must realize she is ruining her relationship with a family whom she has come to respect and love. Although she is generally kind and generous, this selfish act makes me think that no one but Austen's Mary Crawford (whom she so strongly resembles) might admire her.

Jane Austen herself, of course, is mentioned in the novel (or at least her tomb is); and while I suspect that she is not quite rolling beneath it as a result of The Passionate Man, she may have at least raised an ironical eyebrow.

For the humor and irony--the "exterior" qualifies--of Austen's works are reflected clearly in The Passionate Man; but Ms. Trollope's novel does seem to lack the inner foundation of Austen's novels, where her heroes and heroines' growing clarity in understanding both themselves and basic right and wrong is central. Mary Crawford didn't understand this.

Nor, apparently, does Archie; and one wonders what awaits him and his family in Scotland.




Rating:
Summary: Fair to midling
Review: Joanna Trollope strikes me as just a little too self-important and condescending. At the end of this book my main impression was, "So what?" I don't sense the empathy and compassion for humankind that is the mark of Anthony Trollope's books. In "A Passionate Man," the wife, Liza, is left, basically, without her dignity by story's end. The hero of our story, Archie, turns out to be not quite the perfect specimen we'd believe him to be at the beginning, but he's still not, in my view, compelling.

And why is Ms. Trollope so seemingly hostile toward the Church? If she's going to trade on her ancestor's name, she ought to show a little more ... hmmmm, if not respect, at least courtesy, to the institution Mr. Trollope portrayed with such clear-sighted affection.

Rating:
Summary: Fair to midling
Review: Joanna Trollope strikes me as just a little too self-important and condescending. At the end of this book my main impression was, "So what?" I don't sense the empathy and compassion for humankind that is the mark of Anthony Trollope's books. In "A Passionate Man," the wife, Liza, is left, basically, without her dignity by story's end. The hero of our story, Archie, turns out to be not quite the perfect specimen we'd believe him to be at the beginning, but he's still not, in my view, compelling.

And why is Ms. Trollope so seemingly hostile toward the Church? If she's going to trade on her ancestor's name, she ought to show a little more ... hmmmm, if not respect, at least courtesy, to the institution Mr. Trollope portrayed with such clear-sighted affection.