Scan barcode
A review by tome15
The Last Chronicle of Barset by Anthony Trollope
5.0
Trollope, Anthony. The Last Chronicle of Barset. 1867. Chronicle of Barsetshire No.6. Edited by Sophie Gilmartin. Penguin, 2002.
As Trollope says goodbye to characters his readers have been involved with for a dozen years, he serves up a full meal of his brand of low-key realism. There are several stories of romance and young love, requited and unrequited. He also dissects several longtime marriages, some successful, some not so much. There are no perfect heroes or heroines here—even the best are flawed, and even the worst have one or two redeeming qualities. He does not show us any gruesome murders, but there is one suicide that takes place decently off stage. There are no starving orphans, but there is poverty. He never lets us forget that his society is one without any kind of social safety net. Middleclass families can be ruined, and the condition of an unmarried woman without money or family is desperate. So when a father threatens to stop the allowance and write out of his will a son who wants to marry a woman whose father has been accused of stealing twenty pounds—that matters, and Trollope makes his readers feel and understand the stakes. You do not have to read all five of its predecessors in the series to follow along, but the first two or three would certainly help. The Trollope Society has an excellent web site that provides thumbnail descriptions of characters you might have missed of forgotten.
As Trollope says goodbye to characters his readers have been involved with for a dozen years, he serves up a full meal of his brand of low-key realism. There are several stories of romance and young love, requited and unrequited. He also dissects several longtime marriages, some successful, some not so much. There are no perfect heroes or heroines here—even the best are flawed, and even the worst have one or two redeeming qualities. He does not show us any gruesome murders, but there is one suicide that takes place decently off stage. There are no starving orphans, but there is poverty. He never lets us forget that his society is one without any kind of social safety net. Middleclass families can be ruined, and the condition of an unmarried woman without money or family is desperate. So when a father threatens to stop the allowance and write out of his will a son who wants to marry a woman whose father has been accused of stealing twenty pounds—that matters, and Trollope makes his readers feel and understand the stakes. You do not have to read all five of its predecessors in the series to follow along, but the first two or three would certainly help. The Trollope Society has an excellent web site that provides thumbnail descriptions of characters you might have missed of forgotten.