Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)

How little human nature has changed!

In this timeless satire about greed, Trollope shows off just how well he understands the cowardliness, the laziness, and selfishness of mankind, the wats we use and manipulate people for our own gains.

Everybody started more or less as a satirical caricature of greed and cowardliness and moral depravities. But then Trollope could not help himself and developed depth and and history and motivations to his characters such that even if we cannot approve of show more these depravities, we can at the very least understand and empathise with these awfully realistic people.

Upon finishing these incredibly detailed character studies, I am amazed by how my feelings towards each character have changed since the start. This is definitely not your usual Victorian novel-of-manners.

The strength of the book lies truly in the comprehensive complexity of the each character. This is of course easier done in the more obviously flawed characters who are somehow more relatable under Trollope's omniscient pen. I cared so little about the "good" people in the end and not just because often goodness in novels equates to boring characters. But that their goodness was mixed with that unbending, illogical stubbornness to cling to idealised principles than to face reality and commonsense. Case in point: I was at first completely invested in Hetta' happiness but when the plot-spotlight was eventually on her, I just didn't care anymore. Contrary to appearances, she is actually the most spoilt of the female characters of her generation. And the most spoilt male award goes to Paul, what a cowardly swine.

Individual praises: As I can't stop mentioning, the characterisations were excellent, tending towards a surprisingly feminist bent, with a few who really stood out in my mind. The evolution of Marie was so organic and powerful, it was a thing to behold; Mrs Hurtle was magnificent, calculating and passionate, modern and independent, I wished her secret soft-heartedness would have allowed her to crush all in her path; the slow humbling of Mrs Carbury, her attempted conniving and clueless meanness were frustrating but so understandably originating from her misguided sense of motherly love that it was almost too real and uncomfortable to read sometimes; and I maintain that out of everyone, Mr Broune, the only actually sensible Good Person, was in fact playing the best long-con game. show less

After The Warden, another excellent visit to Barsetshire, and another book I had a difficult time putting down. Trollope improves here on his gentle wittiness, absolutely delightful small-scale ecclesiastical Machiavellian scheming, and complicated human dynamics.

I'm quite enjoying the way Trollope interacts with the reader in these books, too: it almost always made me smile. And he continues to create some extremely memorable characters, from the delightfully odd Miss Thorne to the sneaky show more creature Mr. Slope and the not-to-be-messed-with Mrs. Proudie.

Looking forward to heading back to Barsetshire before too long ... show less

Louis Trevelyan is travelling the world and visits a British colony called the Mandarin Islands. He falls in love with the governor's eldest daughter, Emily, and proposes marriage. He also proposes to take her sister Nora to England with them so that Emily has company. All is well, right?

Well. Enter Colonel Osborne, a friend of Emily's father and known to be a bit of a roué. Trevelyan gets himself all in a lather because Osborne keeps coming to call, even though Emily has not given him a show more single reason to be jealous or suspicious; his suspicions come entirely from what he FEARS will happen and are fuelled by the gossip and speculation of others. So instead of just ignoring Osborne or treating him with excessive politeness, he treats Emily like she's already cheated on him and arranges a divorce and sends her away, all while moaning about how HE is being hard done by. Never mind that HE, as a man in Victorian society, at least has the opportunity to get a job; Emily is much more dependent on him, so her suffering is much worse. Also never mind that acting the way he does simply makes the gossip and speculation worse.

As you may have guessed from my summary, I have little sympathy for Louis Trevelyan. He had plenty of opportunities to apologize to his wife for making her feel like a disgraced woman, but instead he chose to be high-handed and authoritarian. Also he really should not have said, "I don't suspect you AS YET of any wrongdoing." Emily must have thought, "Gee, thanks for the vote of confidence."

All this is to say that I gave up on the book a quarter of the way through because Trevelyan was giving me a splitting headache and I kept finding excuses to avoid reading the book. Even Trollope himself was reportedly not very fond of this book, because of its protagonist. But I must give Trollope proper credit for creating a character that is able to provoke such a reaction, and the rest of the book was perfectly acceptable, hence the three-star rating. I would recommend this more to people who are less easily annoyed by fictional characters. If you're interested in the story but don't want to slog through the book, the TV adaptation featuring Bill Nighy as Colonel Osborne will do the job nicely. show less

It's utterly charming to be carried away by the small drama of a gentle churchman administering a cosy hospital established by a bequest in a will suddenly besieged by stern reformers who accuse him of living large off the proceeds. There's a lot of sly humour and some outright satire, but it's a gentle story of tradition and politics and conscience and it's not hard to see why these books have endured.