This was my first novel by Trollope. Perhaps I shouldn't have started in the middle of a series, although the novel stands alone fine. Or perhaps the extraordinary circumstances of my current life resulting in reading this in fits and starts over a months's period of time affected my opinion. Regardless, this novel just did not do much for me. Lizzie Eustace is a beautiful young widow who decides to keep an outrageouly valuable diamond necklace which is purported to be a family heirloom of the Eustaces and so should belong to the estate. This decision sets off a series of robberies, schemes, broken engagements, and gossip. Lizzie is much like Becky Sharpe from Thackeray's 'Vanity Fair,' and in fact the satirical tone of the novel is quite similar.

My biggest issue with the novel is that it was incredibly repetitive -- I felt as if I read the same scene, the same dialogue with minimal variation over and over again. If I heard Lizzie say " .. for the diamonds were my own" one more time . . . And when all was said and done, there really wasn't much to the story. I was relieved when it ended. On a positive note, I did enjoy some of the characters such as Lord George, Lord Fawn, and Frank Greystock -- I could so picture them in my mind's eye as they were vividly depicted.

It is not fair to judge Trollope based on one novel, but I much prefer the selections I've read by other Victorian authors such as Eliot, Hardy, the Brontes, even Dickens. I say, read 'Vanity Fair' instead. A lukewarm 3 stars - perhaps an extra half-star to compensate for my distracted unfocused reading as of late. ( )

The "Eustace Diamonds" was the most famous of a series of books written by Trollope in the 1870's called the Palliser Novels. The theme: society in Victorian London where there were few wealthy people, a very small middle class, vast distinction between the "haves and the have nots" and a common accepted practice of marrying for money and status by both men and women. Of course, life was not easy for women. They could not hold positions of power and even if they inherited money staying single was not an option. They needed an escort....a protector.....a husband...to give them status.

This book centers on Lizzie Eustace's greed and the extremes she will go to achieving wealth and status, and her stubborn determination to hold onto a very expensive heirloom diamond necklace that rightfully belongs to her late husbands estate. The plot, similar to "'Age of Innocence", involves the allure of a beautiful non-conformist woman who is perceived to have scandalous behavior, and a respected gentleman bachelor, Lizzie's cousin Frank, who is torn between maintaining proper social protocol and the temptation to be drawn in by this flirtatious seductress.

Subplots involve Lizzie's other suitors, friends, and houseguests. And one plain, lower class governess who is madly in love with Frank.

I liked the writing style, the satire, the humor, and the philosophical message of the "Eustace Diamonds" but was offended by the blatant anti-Semitism. True, during this era in Eastern Europe Jewish people often found themselves on the fringes of society, but in Trollope's view, all villains were Jews, and all Jews were villians. Trollope refers to them as "dark, shady, greasy, characters". Trollope was small minded and ignorant. ( )

The Eustace Diamonds, one of Trollope's finest and yet cruelest works, plays between the conventions of domestic fiction and picaresque. Lizzie Eustace is an opportunistic heroine in the tradition of Becky Sharpe, using her beauty and charm to secure title and fortune for herself. Her struggle to hold on to the fabled Eustace diamonds in the face of severe opposition forms the major conflict of the book, but Trollope also turns his attention, as he has so successfully elsewhere, to the impossibilities—or at least extreme difficulties—of marriage in Victorian England. Love is no guarantee of marriage, and neither is a promise, but the novel deals sensitively with the difficulties of women as well as men in facing the rigors of the marriage market.

Trollope is a great master of the subplot, and three separate plots emerge, intertwining neatly, each holding interest and enriching the novel's exploration of the depths to which love, encumbered by finance, can sink.

While some find the narrator's treatment of Lizzie herself overly harsh, the even-handedness elsewhere is a pleasure as characters behave well, behave badly, and are characterized with exquisite complexity. And through it all, Lizzie emerges as one of the great Victorian heroines: beautiful, unscrupulous, and fiercely protective of herself and what she has managed to secure.

Though the novel is harsh and occasionally bleak, there is hope to be found as a leaven for this searing critique. ( )

My favorite Trollope, I think...I read this one again and again. I have the 1950's Modern Library edition which fits one's hands perfectly, thin easily turned pages. Nice book to hold. ( )

I know this is a good book. But I was so irritated by the stupidity of the girl who took the necklace (or thinks she can have the necklace) that I put it down and I haven't it picked it up again. I got to page 97. I'm sure it gets interesting as things do. Maybe another season in my life for this one. ( )