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A review by lynneelue
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
2.0
I didn't hate this... it was just 284 pages too long. Really you get everything you need by reading the book's back copy.
This was my first introduction to Anthony Trollope, and his writing style was fine and light--it was just the content that bored me out of my mind. I liked his hyperbole allusions. For example, there is a party, and the courting of the young men and women at the party is described as a battle. That was unique. The description of a successful journalist is made out as describing a god who lives on Mount Olympus, "compound[ing] thunderbolts for the destruction of all that is evil" (179). That was fun, except that it halted the plot entirely just to describe him for an entire chapter. (Another entirely random chapter, aptly titled "A Long Day in London," is spent describing how the warden waits around until his appointment. These two random chapters are my favorite in the whole book.). Two other successful reformers had fun names, Dr. Pessimist Anticant and Mr. Popular Sentiment--I love when authors do this.
The plot didn't resolve any of the problem that this book was made to describe. Maybe that was the point. But after all the effort from the reform petition and articles and lawyers involved, the case is dropped, the nice warden cowardly resigns, and the bedesmen don't get what they'd wanted in the first place. And the warden's daughter marries the reforming bedesman ringleader, sort of as an afterthought. It was all so anticlimactic.
This was my first introduction to Anthony Trollope, and his writing style was fine and light--it was just the content that bored me out of my mind. I liked his hyperbole allusions. For example, there is a party, and the courting of the young men and women at the party is described as a battle. That was unique. The description of a successful journalist is made out as describing a god who lives on Mount Olympus, "compound[ing] thunderbolts for the destruction of all that is evil" (179). That was fun, except that it halted the plot entirely just to describe him for an entire chapter. (Another entirely random chapter, aptly titled "A Long Day in London," is spent describing how the warden waits around until his appointment. These two random chapters are my favorite in the whole book.). Two other successful reformers had fun names, Dr. Pessimist Anticant and Mr. Popular Sentiment--I love when authors do this.
The plot didn't resolve any of the problem that this book was made to describe. Maybe that was the point. But after all the effort from the reform petition and articles and lawyers involved, the case is dropped, the nice warden cowardly resigns, and the bedesmen don't get what they'd wanted in the first place. And the warden's daughter marries the reforming bedesman ringleader, sort of as an afterthought. It was all so anticlimactic.