The Duke's Children

Rating:
Summary: Victorian generation clash.
Review: Lady Glencora Palliser is dead. This must be understood or nothing wonderful can come of this tale. The last installment of Trollope's Palliser series begins with this sad development. Long Victorian faces grow even longer with grief. Now ex-Prime Minster, Plantagenet Palliser must cope alone with the foibles of his three adult children. As the reader discovers, their expectations are not consistent with their father's ideas. Typical of Anthony Trollope, the story unfolds leisurely for 600+ pages. Regardless, the quiet little story urges one to keep turning the pages. 19th century British politics, social customs, and romantic attitudes seem quaint, even amusing, by today's standards. Much as the writings of Jane Austen, reconciling marriage and money drive the story. Trollope's elegant style is a delight. The reader is lulled into a quiet sense of relaxation. No great truths or insights to report, but good downtime reading. Appreciate the novel as you would a fine painting or a delicate antique tea set. If one seeks a pleasant diversion from the noise, clatter, and electronics of modern life this is recommended reading. Relish the experience. ;-)

Rating:
Summary: Victorian generation clash.
Review: Lady Glencora Palliser is dead. This must be understood or nothing wonderful can come of this tale. The last installment of Trollope's Palliser series begins with this sad development. Long Victorian faces grow even longer with grief. Now ex-Prime Minster, Plantagenet Palliser must cope alone with the foibles of his three adult children. As the reader discovers, their expectations are not consistent with their father's ideas. Typical of Anthony Trollope, the story unfolds leisurely for 600+ pages. Regardless, the quiet little story urges one to keep turning the pages. 19th century British politics, social customs, and romantic attitudes seem quaint, even amusing, by today's standards. Much as the writings of Jane Austen, reconciling marriage and money drive the story. Trollope's elegant style is a delight. The reader is lulled into a quiet sense of relaxation. No great truths or insights to report, but good downtime reading. Appreciate the novel as you would a fine painting or a delicate antique tea set. If one seeks a pleasant diversion from the noise, clatter, and electronics of modern life this is recommended reading. Relish the experience. ;-)

Rating:
Summary: The Duke's Children?
Review: One of the brightest lights of the Palliser novels is extinguished in the first chapter with the death of the Duchess Glencora. Bereft of her vivacious influence the grieving Duke, already reserved and traditional, sinks into stodginess. Far worse than this, he is left with three young adult children whom he fails completely to understand. To say that they cause him many heartaches is to greatly understate the situation.

The eldest, heir to the title, Lord Silverbridge has already been booted out of Oxford for a silly prank. Now he goes into horse racing with questionable companions and winds up as the victim of a major scandal, which costs his father a huge sum. Next he deserts his father's choice for his bride to woo an American girl whose grandfather was a laborer.

The Duke's daughter, Mary, wants to marry a commoner, son of a country squire, a good man, but with no title and little money. The outraged Duke is adamantly opposed to such a match, but Mary vows to marry no other and is constantly miserable.

The youngest son, Gerald, who plays a relatively minor role in the novel, is forced to leave Cambridge because he was away without permission attending a race in which his brother's horse was running. Later he loses several thousand pounds in a card game.

The Duke bemoans his children's foolishness and their lack of respect for the traditions of their fathers. He pays for their mistakes, but vigorously opposes the two unwise marriages. But although he is a strict, authoritarian man, he is also a compassionate and loving father. Will he yield to the fervent desires of his rebellious offspring? The resolution of this clash of generations brings the Palliser novels to a satisfying conclusion.

As always, it is Trollope's great gift of characterization which makes THE DUKE'S CHILDREN an outstanding novel. From the outwardly firm but inwardly doubting Duke to the very sincere but frequently erring Silverbridge to the tragic Lady Mabel Grex, who has the young heir in her grasp only to let him slip away, these are well-rounded figures with whom the reader lives intimately and comes to understand thoroughly. With the perfectly depicted ambience of upper-class Victoriana as the setting, this novel is an absorbing work of genius.

Rating:
Summary: The Duke's Children?
Review: Rascals and confusion, Trollope wrote with all the elements that excited that of readers from the Victorian Era, and that can also excite ones from our age.

Rating:
Summary: A 200-page idea in 600-plus pages
Review: The Trollope lover will not think of missing this, the culmination of the Palliser novels, but will love Trollope a little less after reading it. It is all the things detractors of his work complain of -- plotless, rambling, dull, fussy, trivial. It is a story written not from an irresistible energy to tell it, but from a pair of good ideas: to echo the circumstances of the Duke's own marriage to his late beloved Glencora in an ironic way, and to show that the social changes brought about in part by his own lifetime of Liberal politics have resulted in a world and a way of thinking that Palliser himself cannot accept. Maybe a Henry James could put enough flesh on this scheme to render the narrative human and alive, but THE DUKE'S CHILDREN is sadly inert. It is the sort of book that tends to make a good movie: its conception is more interesting than the pages inside it.

The Duke's children are too slight and too dim to hang a novel on; and the characters from previous books who never fail to engage us -- Marie, Phineas, and Palliser himself -- are mostly either absent or seen in isolation, fuming alone in studies and drawing-rooms. The obligatory hunting and shooting scenes are engaging but beside the point, and the presence of Major Tifto and his racetrack story are a great annoyance. The bitter, disappointed Lady Mabel adds some intermittent liveliness whenever she appears, but even she wears out her welcome. (And she is, conceptually, much too near a relation to Lady Laura in PHINEAS FINN and PHINEAS REDUX.)

Finales are never Trollope's best event. He will muff them or mute them or present the scenes of his happy endings as if viewed from a distant tree-top. I could wish the Palliser saga ended at THE PRIME MINISTER, which is superb, with perhaps a little coda telling us how Trollope saw Plantagenet Palliser's future life. That the little coda should be bloated into a mammoth vexation like this one is not uncharacteristic, but is surely unfortunate.

Rating:
Summary: A 200-page idea in 600-plus pages
Review: The Trollope lover will not think of missing this, the culmination of the Palliser novels, but will love Trollope a little less after reading it. It is all the things detractors of his work complain of -- plotless, rambling, dull, fussy, trivial. It is a story written not from an irresistible energy to tell it, but from a pair of good ideas: to echo the circumstances of the Duke's own marriage to his late beloved Glencora in an ironic way, and to show that the social changes brought about in part by his own lifetime of Liberal politics have resulted in a world and a way of thinking that Palliser himself cannot accept. Maybe a Henry James could put enough flesh on this scheme to render the narrative human and alive, but THE DUKE'S CHILDREN is sadly inert. It is the sort of book that tends to make a good movie: its conception is more interesting than the pages inside it.

The Duke's children are too slight and too dim to hang a novel on; and the characters from previous books who never fail to engage us -- Marie, Phineas, and Palliser himself -- are mostly either absent or seen in isolation, fuming alone in studies and drawing-rooms. The obligatory hunting and shooting scenes are engaging but beside the point, and the presence of Major Tifto and his racetrack story are a great annoyance. The bitter, disappointed Lady Mabel adds some intermittent liveliness whenever she appears, but even she wears out her welcome. (And she is, conceptually, much too near a relation to Lady Laura in PHINEAS FINN and PHINEAS REDUX.)

Finales are never Trollope's best event. He will muff them or mute them or present the scenes of his happy endings as if viewed from a distant tree-top. I could wish the Palliser saga ended at THE PRIME MINISTER, which is superb, with perhaps a little coda telling us how Trollope saw Plantagenet Palliser's future life. That the little coda should be bloated into a mammoth vexation like this one is not uncharacteristic, but is surely unfortunate.