regshoe | Entries tagged with author: anthony trollope

Hello! Reading has been a bit uneven recently, but here are a few books.

Re-read Middlemarch by George Eliot (1872), which is certainly a good book. I enjoyed the re-read; I didn't find myself getting very much attached to any of the characters, but all their stories are compelling, sometimes painfully so, and Eliot writes with such observation and articulation. Also the last time I read this book must have been before I got into Raffles fandom, because I had forgotten about the amusing same-name coincidence.

Moonfleet by John Meade Falkner (1898). Well, if I had a nickle for every time I've read an adventure novel whose author apparently read Kidnapped and went 'What a great book, I'm going to write one just like it! Not sure about all this kissing and sleeping under one coat, though—I'll give them a nice normal surrogate father-son relationship and add a bland het love interest, that's better,' I'd have two nickles. And being such a blatant rip-off rather let this one down, because it invites comparisons to Kidnapped and RLS in which few other authors would have come off favourably, even though Moonfleet is actually a pretty good adventure novel as they go. It's set among smugglers on the coast of Dorset in the 1750s, and is actually not about Jacobites when it could have been, given the historical connection between smuggling and Jacobitism. (I thought it seemed to avoid the subject rather conspicuously, even: there's that bit where John remarks that he never understood why Maskew—a Scotsman who's moved to England and become respectable local gentry—was so zealously against smuggling, and surely the obvious explanation is that Maskew, Ebenezer Balfour-like, had a dramatic youthful Jacobite phase, regretted it, went to England to escape his past and is now trying to compensate by being as loyal and establishment as possible?) There is a lot of enjoyable if rather meandering drama; the later part of the plot takes an unexpected turn which did not work for me, I think partly because it's a really weird pacing choice and partly because of my habit of drawing back emotionally from a story when it gets too unexpectedly horrible; and the ending is a bit too obviously manipulative to work.

Annick Trent's next upcoming novel is compared to both Moonfleet and Kidnapped (also Jamaica Inn, which I really ought to read at some point); I shall anticipate eagerly.

The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope (1867).

This review is a bit more spoilery than my usual; perhaps inevitable for the last book in a series, and I find that most of the important things I have to say about it are about the ending.

I skipped a year in my Barsetshire read-through, possibly because I didn't want the series to end... And I am afraid to say that I failed in faith in this book; I doubted Anthony Trollope, when I said in my very review of the previous book that I was wrong to doubt him; I saw one of the subplots introduced in this novel, went, 'uh oh, I do not like where this might be going' and was so distraught at the possibility that I did something I very seldom do and looked up spoilers for the ending. The spoilers showed at once how foolish I was to doubt; suitably chastened, I went back to reading the book and liked it very much indeed. Trollope, I apologise most humbly; Lily Dale couldn't have asked for a better author. (But I'm glad I did it; the ending notwithstanding, I don't think I would have enjoyed it if I'd tried to read the whole thing actually without knowing.) I love her. Anyway: the main plot of this book is about Mr Crawley, an impoverished and mentally ill clergyman who is accused of stealing a cheque for twenty pounds. The evidence against him looks conclusive, and—because of the lapses in memory with which he is afflicted—he can't account for his possession and use of the cheque; but surely he wouldn't have spent money which he didn't know was rightfully his?... Oh, I love Mr Crawley. I feel so much for him in all his stubborn pride, and also for the wife and daughters whose lives his behaviour makes harder. I was very glad to see him get a happy ending; I was much afraid that he'd be exonerated but be so broken down by his sufferings that he'd die, but no! Besides that, I wasn't especially interested in either the Grace/Major Grantly or the London shenanigans subplots, but I loved the—very appropriate for the final book of the series—Mr Harding chapters; I teared up at the bit where he can't walk to the cathedral any more. A fitting farewell to Barsetshire. And as for next year, happily, Trollope wrote plenty more novels besides these six...

The introduction to the Penguin Classics edition I read quotes from a baffling review by, of all people, Margaret Oliphant, mocking the ending of Lily's story as absurd and unbelievable; er, her views underwent some change between this and the composition of Kirsteen, I suppose (???).

Mandoa, Mandoa! by Winifred Holtby (1933). Kind of about the fictional African country (somewhere between Ethiopia, Kenya and Uganda, apparently) of the title, really a satirical novel about the whole complicated process of international politics, European-African relations, culture clashes and concepts of civilisation. I did not like it much, sadly: there are moments of the sort of thing I like in Holtby's other novels, but a) I'm afraid I just find those subjects depressing, b) that's definitely too much early 20th century European views of Africa and Africans, c) I am not clever enough to get this sort of satire.

I'm in one of my Victorian phases at the moment. I probably won't stay here for very long, as I've just got a couple more Age of Sail historical novels (one Aubrey-Maturin and one Hornblower) from the library this morning, but in the meantime, have a Victorian novel and a not-quite-Victorian historical novel set during the Victorian period.

The Small House at Allington by Anthony Trollope (1864). It was time for my annual Anthony Trollope novel! This is the fifth book in the Barsetshire series, although it's not actually set in Barsetshire itself (the exact location is not specified, but there are references to places in Barsetshire as being in 'the next county'). Allington is a little country village where there is a Great House—home to an old-fashioned and unmarried squire, Christopher Dale—and a Small House—owned by the squire and inhabited by his widowed sister-in-law and her two daughters Bell and Lily. The novel follows the various romantic entanglements between Bell and Lily, the squire's nephew Bernard, a friend of his named Adolphus Crosbie, the local doctor John Crofts, and the 'hobbledehoy' John Eames. Along the way various characters make unwise decisions, and receive more or less sympathy for it from Trollope's omniscient narrator; this seems to be a favourite theme of his, with characters getting into debt earlier in the series and making poor romantic/marital choices here.

Now, I judged this book unfairly! I was very doubtful about parts of the plot while reading, but the ending proved me wrong, and now I see that I ought to have had more faith in Trollope to do the right thing by his female characters. I can't discuss the details without spoilers, so here goes: ( spoilers )

There's also quite a lot about work in mid-Victorian civil service offices, which employ both Crosbie and Eames, which was an interesting bit of history. As was a bit of 'modern Victorian' historical contrast; in the fall-out from Crosbie's disgraceful behaviour, there's a bit about how thirty years ago this would have been resolved by Eames or some other honourable gentleman calling him out, but unfortunately duels are not the done thing anymore (instead Eames merely punches Crosbie at a railway station, a nice bit of setting juxtaposition). I was intrigued by the appearance of a side character named Palliser, as I know that's the title of another of Trollope's novel series. In fact the book's Wikipedia page says 'Although "The Small House at Allington" traditionally is placed within the Chronicles of Barsetshire series, a much stronger argument can be made to include it as the first of Trollope's Palliser novels'. Well, I've got one more Barsetshire book to go now, so in two years' time I might start the Palliser novels and see where they go from here...

The Sheep-Stealers by Violet Jacob (1902). I decided to branch out a bit from Flemington and try Jacob's first novel, set on the Welsh borders at the time of the Rebecca riots of the 1840s. I thought it might make a good comparison to E. A. Dillwyn's The Rebecca Rioter; in fact, despite the appearance of both the riots and the promised sheep-stealing, Jacob is much less interested in crime as a subject than Dillwyn. The plot is mostly about a complicated love polygon between the various main characters: Rhys Walters, a local farmer; Mary Vaughan, the daughter of the hated toll-keeper, whom Rhys seduces, gets pregnant and then dithers about marrying until whoops, it's too late, he's on the run after supposedly murdering her father during a Rebecca riot; Harry Fenton, a local squire's son; Isoline Ridgeway, a spoilt and snobbish young lady who meets Harry at a ball; and George Williams, a young man forced by poverty into sheep-stealing for a cruel and unscrupulous master. The book begins with that Rebecca riot; Rhys, on the run, takes shelter with George and is persuaded to join the sheep-stealing business, while George tries to escape from it; meanwhile Mary, after the birth and death of her child, is left alone to deal with her ruined reputation; and Harry falls desperately in love with Isoline, who for her part is very much in love with the idea of the money which it turns out he doesn't have, and who at the same time begins a series of thrilling clandestine meetings with the disguised Rhys.

This book has some... peculiar attitudes about gender. I was very annoyed while reading by the contrast between Jacob's treatment of Rhys, who abandons Mary and later courts Isoline under false pretences—while not exactly presenting him as a sympathetic hero, she has a lot of time for his complexities and psychological struggles, and not a great deal of blame for his carelessness and cruelty towards the women in his life; and her treatment of Isoline, who is shallow and snobbish and accepts Harry for his money and who we're repeatedly told is the worst ever, so evil and heartless!! with basically no nuance. On the other hand, Jacob condemns the sexism faced by Mary as a 'fallen woman', and treats her quite sympathetically; but, on an additional hand, she seems to go out of her way to portray this sexism as coming largely from other women—which, yes, women are responsible for a lot of misogyny, that's an interesting conversation to have in a book, but I thought it sat uncomfortably alongside the treatment of Rhys and Isoline. Another theme Jacob seems to like is class differences, and especially the uncomfortableness resulting from upper-class characters' practical dependence on their social inferiors. One of the side characters, Howlie Seaborne, is an irritating and insolent but courageous child who works as a servant for Isoline's family, and who reminded me a little of Skirling Wattie; unfortunately, my contrary liking for Isoline meant I was not really inclined to take his side in their conflicts.

I was also struck by the lack of any reference to any of the characters speaking Welsh, which seemed odd for the period; but according to Wikipedia only 67% of the population of Wales spoke Welsh in 1851, and the border regions at this time were largely monolingual English-speaking, so this does appear to be accurate for the specific location. I ought to find more books set in nineteenth-century Wales to read with some more geographical variety. I thought the book's ending was rather weak, especially as regards Rhys; and throughout, there's the same... not exactly bleakness, but cynical coldness and lack of authorial care for the characters which is my least favourite feature of Flemington, and which makes such a contrast to D. K. Broster.

Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope (1861). The annual Barsetshire novel, and great fun as ever. This one introduces the rich and despotic widow Lady Lufton (she reminded me a little of Elizabeth Gaskell's Lady Ludlow), one of the grand figures of conservative Barsetshire. The plot follows the financial troubles of Mark Robarts, a young clergyman who has benefited perhaps a little too much from Lady Lufton's patronage and who gets into difficulties after trying to help an unreliable friend with money; and the love story between Lucy Robarts, Mark's sister who comes to live with him and his wife, and Lord Lufton, Lady Lufton's son and Mark's childhood friend. Trollope's characters are always brilliant, and I loved Lucy in particular—there's a sort of defensive self-deprecating seriously-joking tone to her emotional moments that's a rare thing to see in a Victorian heroine and which felt very human. There's also an amount of church politics and of social commentary—Trollope's characterisation of rival political factions as 'the gods' and 'the giants', complete with multiple-page-long mythological commentaries on their wrangling and dramas, was very entertaining. Besides this, the series has by now built up quite a crowd of side characters from previous novels who all make their reappearances, and I was especially happy to see Miss Dunstable again, who is as lively and entertaining as ever and who ends up finding a surprising but somehow appropriate happy marriage.

Invisible Differences by Julie Dachez and Mademoiselle Caroline (2016; translated by Edward Gauvin, 2020). I think this is the first proper graphic novel I've ever read! For book club, which is certainly broadening my reading nicely. It's Dachez's fictionalised autobiographical story (I'm not sure how fictionalised; there is a fun device where Caroline is also a character in the story, and their decision to write and draw the book together forms part of the plot) about her life with Asperger's syndrome (the term she uses): the confusion of life before diagnosis, how she got a diagnosis in her late twenties, learnt to embrace her 'differences' and found her place in the world as an autistic adult. I enjoyed it a lot! A lot of the descriptions were very recognisable, and I liked the use of art and colour: sensory overload is illustrated by the pictures going red and the space filling up with written-out sounds; the first part of the comic is in mostly black and white, with more colour introduced as Dachez's fictional counterpart becomes happier and more comfortable with herself. It's a fairly simple story with a straightforward Message to convey and not a great deal else to do (none of the messy fictional complexities of Convenience Store Woman, with which it makes an interesting comparison), but I think it does what it set out to do very well. I was taken aback at the positive mention of ABA therapy in the notes section, but it sounds like it's not much of a thing in France (which is apparently unusually bad at paying attention to autistic people at all), so I suppose the authors didn't know very much about it?

I've also finished the Raffles Discord read-along of A Thief in the Night, which was even more interesting and illuminating than the first two. There's always more in these stories the closer you look at them... Throughout,

wolfiesulkingintheirtent has been developing a theory that in-universe narrator Bunny was actually deliberately using this book in particular to tell the world all about how amazing, kind, generous and overall a good person Raffles was, and I like this theory very much. Raffles, and the Raffles/Bunny relationship, certainly come across at their best in some of the stories here. <3

Two (almost-)Victorian novels that, now I'm comparing them side by side, go fairly well together: they present two quite different takes on the subject of ambivalence, as applied to the social structures of the late nineteenth century and the ecclesiastical structures of the mid-century.

Kipps by H. G. Wells (1905). I would never have guessed this was by the same author as The Time Machine if it weren't for the name on the cover. Most obviously because of the subject matter, but the general structure of the book and the sentence-level writing style also felt very different—Wells is clearly a versatile writer! Kipps is a rags-to-riches story that follows the life of Arthur Kipps, a draper's apprentice living in obscurity on the coast of Kent who unexpectedly inherits a fortune, detailing his subsequent efforts to adapt to his new position as a well-to-do gentleman. It's a very funny book—Wells is fond of wry commentary on his characters' foibles, and the opportunities for satire on the class system are made the most of—and in places it felt a little like a light-hearted version of Great Expectations. But there are some more serious ideas in there too, including a couple of points where the criticism of social structures takes a detour into outright socialism. These were interesting, but they weren't always handled as well as they could have been, and as a result the book felt fairly unbalanced and afraid to commit itself, both in its ideas and in its plot. The meandering and reverse turns, particularly in the last third or so, seem to undermine any attempt to make a serious point about the situation; the socialism, interesting as it was, is rather left hanging, and the book never really reaches a conclusion on the central questions of wealth and one's place in society. The plot mirrors this thematic uncertainty, and the ending in particular felt very unconvincing.

Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope (1857). The second of the Barsetshire Chronicles—I read and was lukewarm about The Warden, the first in the series, a couple of years ago, but I enjoyed this one a lot more. It follows the personal dramas and political conflicts surrounding an Anglican cathedral at a time when the Church of England was going through a great deal of upheaval and change, with various sides calling for reform from a variety of angles. The book opens with the appointment of a new bishop: Dr Proudie—or rather, Mrs Proudie and the Proudies' chaplain Mr Slope, who between them are really in charge—represents the low-church evangelical tendency, while another newcomer, Dr Arabin, is an Oxford Tractarian. They clash with each other and with the established Barchester characters, and political wrangling over church appointments blends with personal and romantic dramas such as the important question of who will marry the eligible young widow Eleanor Bold. All of this is really fascinating, and what's most remarkable about the whole thing is the extent to which Trollope manages to avoid taking a clear side on the political and theological conflicts that he portrays in such vivid detail. His obvious dislike of reform was most of what put me off The Warden, but his position here is clearly more complex and ambivalent than straightforwardly reactionary. And unlike Kipps, the ambivalence doesn't make the novel feel indecisive—instead, we get to see the complicated case for and against various types of social and religious change, and it ends up making a fairly strong argument of its own.