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A review by kristinana
The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
4.0
So, it took me pretty much all summer to read this book, which means Trollope probably wrote it faster than I read it. Ok, that’s a slight exaggeration, but he did only take eight months to write it. That’s, like, more than 100 pages a month. The man was a writing machine.
This is only the third Trollope I’ve read (Barchester Towers and The Prime Minister were the other two and yes, yes, I do know it’s weird that I only read book two of the Barsetshire Chronicles and book five of the Palliser series; blame my grad school advisor). I’ve often wondered why no one seems to read Trollope these days (more on that in a moment), and I do think that reading The Way We Live Now would be satisfying for anyone interested in the Victorian novel or a generous, leisurely-paced story.
The thing I think was best about this novel was how thoroughly and convincingly Trollope is able to inhabit each character’s perspective. Even the vilest characters have their own point of view, and Trollope seems able to convince me of those characters’ motives and grievances; I would find myself often understanding and even sympathizing with characters even when I knew they were wrong or irrational. Someone once told me that Trollope really loves his characters, and I believe it. As a consequence, he does psychological realism really well; in fact, I would say he is on par with the best Victorian novelists in this regard. It was disappointing to see the female character diminish into romantic gushiness and nearly all the best characters expelled from the community toward the end, but those things are fairly typical of a Victorian ending.
So why don’t people read him anymore? Well, it might just be the length of the novels, but I think it’s something else. This novel, perhaps considered his masterpiece, is beautifully done and fun to read, and his characters, especially the female characters, are mostly more psychologically complex and realistic than, say, those of Dickens. But in addition to a certain stylistic bravado Dickens has that Trollope doesn't, it also lacks that weirdness, that ability Dickens has to make things creepy and strange, his interest in compulsion and masochism that makes those novels, in turn, so compulsively readable. Trollope lacks the wildness of a Bronte, too, though Marie Melmotte seems transplanted from a Bronte novel, which is why she’s so great. I would say Trollope is more like George Eliot than Dickens or Bronte, but even then, there is a lack of profundity to his work that makes Eliot’s so gorgeous. Like Gaskell, another little-read Victorian novelist, Trollope fills out the Victorian literary landscape and perhaps even exemplifies what people think of when they think of Victorian literature, but without the things that really make the writing stand out.
In any case, I still loved the novel; it was a really enjoyable read with memorable characters. My favorites were Marie Melmotte, who claims her father can “cut her to pieces” but she won’t give up her (feckless) lover, and Lady Carbury, for whom “if there was anything in life she could not forgive it was romance.” And the satire of contemporary economics could almost have been written today. There was quite a bit of repetition—perhaps reminding serial readers about where they left off—but I still enjoyed the pace. I would recommend it to anyone who likes Victorian novels or history. Personally, I plan to read more Trollope.
This is only the third Trollope I’ve read (Barchester Towers and The Prime Minister were the other two and yes, yes, I do know it’s weird that I only read book two of the Barsetshire Chronicles and book five of the Palliser series; blame my grad school advisor). I’ve often wondered why no one seems to read Trollope these days (more on that in a moment), and I do think that reading The Way We Live Now would be satisfying for anyone interested in the Victorian novel or a generous, leisurely-paced story.
The thing I think was best about this novel was how thoroughly and convincingly Trollope is able to inhabit each character’s perspective. Even the vilest characters have their own point of view, and Trollope seems able to convince me of those characters’ motives and grievances; I would find myself often understanding and even sympathizing with characters even when I knew they were wrong or irrational. Someone once told me that Trollope really loves his characters, and I believe it. As a consequence, he does psychological realism really well; in fact, I would say he is on par with the best Victorian novelists in this regard. It was disappointing to see the female character diminish into romantic gushiness and nearly all the best characters expelled from the community toward the end, but those things are fairly typical of a Victorian ending.
So why don’t people read him anymore? Well, it might just be the length of the novels, but I think it’s something else. This novel, perhaps considered his masterpiece, is beautifully done and fun to read, and his characters, especially the female characters, are mostly more psychologically complex and realistic than, say, those of Dickens. But in addition to a certain stylistic bravado Dickens has that Trollope doesn't, it also lacks that weirdness, that ability Dickens has to make things creepy and strange, his interest in compulsion and masochism that makes those novels, in turn, so compulsively readable. Trollope lacks the wildness of a Bronte, too, though Marie Melmotte seems transplanted from a Bronte novel, which is why she’s so great. I would say Trollope is more like George Eliot than Dickens or Bronte, but even then, there is a lack of profundity to his work that makes Eliot’s so gorgeous. Like Gaskell, another little-read Victorian novelist, Trollope fills out the Victorian literary landscape and perhaps even exemplifies what people think of when they think of Victorian literature, but without the things that really make the writing stand out.
In any case, I still loved the novel; it was a really enjoyable read with memorable characters. My favorites were Marie Melmotte, who claims her father can “cut her to pieces” but she won’t give up her (feckless) lover, and Lady Carbury, for whom “if there was anything in life she could not forgive it was romance.” And the satire of contemporary economics could almost have been written today. There was quite a bit of repetition—perhaps reminding serial readers about where they left off—but I still enjoyed the pace. I would recommend it to anyone who likes Victorian novels or history. Personally, I plan to read more Trollope.