Why I must never, ever, ever read (auto)biography again

Just a (hopefully) quick post on what I've been reading, and what I ought not to be reading so that I can read other things I want to read. Anthony Trollope and I are going to have to have a duel, that's all.

I had been enjoying my Victorian Literature project so much that I decided to read Anthony Trollope's An Autobiography in between fat Victorian novels, instead of something more contemporary.

I enjoyed the Autobiography very much, at first, for Trollope seemed to be rather endearing in his stiff-necked hilarity; e.g., finding himself wedged between two men at a gentlemen's club, who didn't know who he was but who were loudly complaining that Anthony Trollope over-used the same old characters in different novels, Trollope announced himself and then promised to kill one of his most famous characters dead the next week—and did! This made me really very happy.

But his hilarity died somewhere along the way, and he spent a lot of space coarsely (and dully, so dully) discussing in great detail the precise amounts of money he earned for each novel he published. I don't object to authors making a living via writing; it sounds rather delightful, in fact; it's that he was so specific about it. People who talk a lot about all the money they've made regardless of profession are tiresome.

What really appalled me, though, was that his commitment to never missing a deadline was so ruthless that he sent things off which he himself believed to be not very good. He was a great reader himself so I find it doubly shocking that he didn't appear to have an inkling of how rude that is to the readers that kept him in business! Trollope, damn your eyes, I thought we were going to be excellent friends. As it is, I'm now rather relieved that it'll be some time before I encounter one of your novels on my Vic Lit list.

This book has—Dear gawd, please, make it briefly!—put me off the Victorians altogether. (My reading comfort is rather like a delicate flower, or small and easily frightened woodland animal; any little upset can cause catastrophe.) Worse yet, my next Victorian novel is supposed to be Thackeray's The History of Henry Esmond; that this was one of Trollope's favourite books of all time is making the problem harder to overcome.

It's not that I disliked Trollope entirely; but that doesn't seem to matter; much about the book was enjoyable, particularly his thoughts on his contemporary authors (although I completely disagree re: George Eliot). It seems that knowing almost anything about authors I like is potentially fatal. I thought it was just that Mishima was a whole packet of crazy unpleasantness; but no, the sad fact is that while I think the New Critics were unmitigated idiots, I actually don't want to really believe that authors actually exist(ed). Except for David Mitchell, of course.

In my non-Victorian lit-reading meantime, I have, of course, turned to my beloved and entirely reliable Ellis Peters for solace and healing. The Confession of Brother Haluin is the 15th chronicle of Brother Cadfael, and it's one of my favourites so far in the series, right up there with The Virgin in the Ice (book 4). Cadfael et al got to be very tolerant but Peters didn't, for a change, overuse her favourite adjective. There was snow and pain and death and remorse and more pain and lust and murder and redemption. A comforting, satisfying read, in part because it wasn't particularly surprising or suspenseful.

Reading Ellis Peters is like getting wrapped up in your favourite blanket and being given a bowl of your favourite comfort food. I'll be quite sad when I'm done the series (just four or five more little books to go).

Much more challenging was Junichiro Tanizaki's uber-famous novel of Japan near the end of the Second World War, The Makioka Sisters. A compatriot of mine in my MA year told me that this novel was like a George Eliot novel. Now, with that I can't agree—but that's because no one, as far as I know, has ever come close to replicating Eliot's profound ability to unpack her characters' characters.

But this by no means should imply that The Makioka Sisters is not an excellent book; it is an excellent book, truly. This story of four sisters trying to maintain old traditions of behaviour and sentiment in a world that's leaving them behind is by turns amusing, appalling, terrifying, and frustrating. And Tanizaki's skill at subtly cranking up the underlying anxiety as the events that lead to Japan's surrender is "set your teeth on edge" effective. Painful, yes; but Tanizaki also somehow maintains the compelling story-telling throughout. Just wonderful.

Finally, I just re-read a Renaissance slice and dice of the first order, a play I hadn't read in probably twelve years and which I did not remember at all: Thomas Middleton's Women Beware Women.

My gawd, it is just so damned good. It is stunningly foul in its portrayal of human desire; people are truly a disgusting lot in Middleton's world view. I've never met such a compelling she-villain (Livia) in my explorations of the Renaissance drama (that I can remember; you can be damned sure I will be seeking out all the Middleton going in case I've missed and/or forgotten more amazingness of this lurid order). I am desperate to see this play performed; a double-header of it and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore might well constitute my idea of heaven on earth.

Just read it, trust me; and while you're doing so, try to think of who could do justice to a character like Livia. I can only imagine Angelina Jolie in five years or so, in one of those rare instances in which she doesn't simply phone in her performance.

Also, William C. Carroll's introduction was very compelling; it almost made me miss academia (in part because I met this prof at a conference once and he didn't know me at all but made a point of being really nice to me).

Right then, I'm all caught up. I'm back to The Gone Away World which I put down for awhile but am now rushing madly through again.

More excuses! But you'll forgive me.

A round-up of books I've read very and not so recently and which I've concluded I'm not going to take the time to review individually. Why? Two things: 1) I start an awesome new job in approx. 10 days and want to spend as little time as possible before then on the cpu. 2) Spring is insinuating itself into the blasted deathscape that is Toronto in late winter; I can't help but go outside a lot, especially on days like today - when it's so warm out that my most favourite cuorduroy jacket is deployed sans hat, mitt, or scarf! Vitamin D absorption is nigh.

1) Anthony Trollope, The American Senator.
I really wanted to spend more time on Trollope's look at moral and cultural relativism through the lens of as, as usual, a damned fine story. Suffice to say, it's one of my Trollopian favourites and has helped to confirm him as one of my most beloved authors.

2) Hwang Sok-Yong, The Guest.
The guest, small pox, as a metaphor for American cultural imperialism in the Koreas. A very good book - both writing and plot-wise - in spite of (because of? That would be a first.) Hwang's unabashed didacticism. Also, Hwang is a real-life ass-kicker, which makes the Truth-Telling even more okay/awesome.

3) Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit.
My experience reading this book disturbingly reflected the arc of the novel's plot. I began it during an unmitigated shit-storm (bookstore-closing) and concluded it at a time of unrivalled happiness (added to, but not created by, new job mentioned above). Still, my life is not all even close to being as strange as Dickens's fiction. Dickens, you managed to surprise me with this one - unexpected, and I thank you.

That is all. I'm going outside into the sun again RIGHT NOW.

Bookphilia's triumphant return from Pervertville, or, Anthony Trollope gets called out

I just got home from my trip to Pervertville. This is the first trip I've taken in living memory during which I bought myself no books. I'm still surprised about this, even given my squeamishness as described in my previous post. The trip was very relaxing and enjoyable in every other way and it was while there that I finally completely recovered from my prolonged winter malady - triumph. Also, I began reading Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian on the train home, a book which I've been carrying around and not reading for years, and it is a damned fine novel. TRIUMPH!

Yesterday, I finished reading Anthony Trollope's The Eustace Diamonds, the third novel in his series about the Pallisers. I enjoyed it - but not as much as the first two books in the series - and I didn't enjoy Volume 2 nearly as much as I enjoyed Volume 1. I really admired Volume 1 for the patience with which Trollope explicated the complexities of the novel's villainous and fatally selfish hero, Lizzie Eustace. I was pleased that he was taking the time to do so, because villains are so often 2-dimensional cliches of badness and madness.

But Volume 2 didn't live up to the promise of its predecessor. The explication of Lizzie's character came to a rather screeching halt; both her dialogue and what the narrator said of her became extremely repetitious and therefore rather dull at points. As well, the fact that this novel first appeared in serial form in the Fortnightly Review was only too obvious - for plot details of import were repeated every two chapters or so in fairly obvious and uninteresting ways.

Plot spoiler of sorts!
AND, which I find most problematic about the novel - Frank Greystock is never made to account to anyone, human or divine, for his cruelty to Lucy Morris, because he makes things right in the end. I am as surprised as you are by my moral outrage about this but Trollope took so much time setting up Frank's weakness of character in the face of Lizzie's dubious charms that it seems either rushed or lazy (in any case, frankly outrageous) that he wouldn't also take the time to describe the consequences - or say anything at all about why there weren't any. That Lucy slavishly adores Frank is true - but this fact didn't read like a sufficient reason for Trollope's silence on this. Here's hoping book 4 in the series (Phineas Redux, I believe) is more even in terms of quality!

Perhaps, in some degree, politically powerful

I always think it’s interesting when a novel’s aboutness isn’t entirely, or even primarily, focused on the character for whom it is named. Phineas Finn, the second novel in Anthony Trollope’s 6-part series on the Pallisers, is one such novel. It’s not that Phineas isn’t present, for of course he is; indeed, his experiences and thoughts make up at least half of the contents of the first volume of the novel. But because it is one of the Palliser series, it is also a novel heavily steeped in the political concerns of mid-19th-century England. The “official” topic of this novel is whether or not to extend the vote, but the issue of women’s participation in politics is pushed insistently to the fore, and not only that – it’s linked intimately to women’s particular social position.

Phineas Finn
Phineas Finn is a young, talented Irishmen elected to the British parliament at the tender age of 24. His financial straights, his attempts to make his name by speaking in the House, and his proposal to Lady Laura Standish comprise the bulk of the narrative surrounding him in the first volume. Phineas is talented and exceptional, it seems, but Trollope doesn’t spend a great deal of space directly explicating his personality. He does note rather tersely that Phineas is “a young man not without sense, – not entirely a windbag” (p. 8). Trollope’s wry but gentle criticism of Phineas’s imperfections let us know that while the young MP is not perfect, he is also neither incompetent nor malicious.

He makes errors, but they don’t appear to be major errors for he pays very little by way of consequence for any of them. Yet, Trollope’s skillful juxtaposition of Phineas’s unthinking ease in life with the careful and complicated steps, mental and actual, Lady Laura Standish and Violet Effingham must constantly negotiate clearly highlight that as a young man possessed of a particular level of education, not to mention good looks and charm, he possesses a freedom – both to achieve and to screw up – that is simply not within the purview of a young woman, regardless of how well placed she is socially or how much money she has.

Lady Laura Standish
Lady Laura is without money but of a particular class. She is aware of the advantages of her position, and uses them to her advantage. Her physical presence speaks to both her privileges and her priorities:

She would lean forward when sitting, as a man does, and would use her arms in talking, and would put her hand over her face, and pass her fingers through her hair, –after the fashion of men rather than of women; –and she seemed to despise that soft quiescence of her sex in which are generally found so many charms. (p. 33)

In spite of this apparent dearth of traditional feminine charms, Laura is sufficiently attractive to both Phineas and Mr. Robert Kennedy, another MP, to beg her hand in marriage.

In the meantime, Lady Laura seems to know what she’s about. Although a woman and entitled neither to run for political office nor to vote, she has clear ideas about how she might nonetheless exercise political power:

It was her ambition to be brought as near to political action as was possible for a woman without surrendering any of the privileges of feminine inaction. That women should even wish to have votes at parliamentary elections was to her abominable, and the cause of the Rights of Women generally was odious to her; but, nevertheless, for herself, she delighted in hoping that she too might be useful, –in thinking that she too was perhaps, in some degree, politically powerful[.] (p. 89)

Laura sees this political power as manifesting primarily in her stewardship of her father’s and Phineas’s political careers, and indeed, she is implicated in both their political successes. What I find curious about this passage is Laura’s adherence to more traditional views of women’s social roles even as she imagines extending that role into the masculine realm of government. It’s not initially clear if she’s simply a rather complex representative of her era, or if she doesn’t have sufficient knowledge of herself.

As it turns out, it’s more the latter, although she certainly doesn’t come to any conclusions about wanting the vote for herself or other women of her class. Rather, she realizes that while she may mentor a young man like Phineas and cajole her doting father into political action, she is, without money, limited in what she can do from her privileged position of “feminine inaction.” She, thus, makes the entirely logical choice to marry the rich Robert Kennedy and not the financially challenged Phineas – and in very short order, finds herself deeply dissatisfied:

Those two hours…with her husband in the morning became very wearisome to her. At first she had declared that it would be her greatest ambition to help her husband in his work, and she had read all the letters from the MacNabs and MacFies, asking to be made gaugers and landing-waiters, with an assumed interest. But the work palled upon her very quickly. Her quick intellect discovered soon that there was nothing in it which she really did. It was all form and verbiage, and pretence at business. Her husband went through it all with the utmost patience, reading every word, giving orders as to every detail, and conscientiously doing that which he conceived he had undertaken to do. But Lady Laura wanted to meddle with high politics, to discuss reform bills, to assist in putting up Mr. This and putting down my Lord That. Why should she waste her time in doing that which the lad in the next room, who was called a private secretary, could do as well? (pp. 208-09)

Lady Laura sees too clearly that while “She had married a rich man in order that she might be able to do something in the world…now that she was this rich man's wife…she could do nothing [but] sit at home and look after his welfare” (p. 304).

Violet Effingham
Trollope does not allow us to draw a pat object lesson from Lady Laura’s case, however. Her friend Violet Effingham is a charming young woman who, like Lady Laura, is the subject of a great deal of marital interest. In particular, Lady Laura’s profligate brother, Lord Chiltern, has repeatedly asked Violet to marry him without success; Lady Laura, in her brother’s interest, applies a steady dose of pressure on her friend to accept. Lady Laura and her brother both believe that enough pressure upon the petite and pretty young lady will gain this end, but the fact is, “With all her seeming frolic, Violet Effingham is very wise” (p. 157) – with regards not simply to whom she might marry, but also in considering whether or not to marry at all. Violet isn’t blinded by any grand political notions about what her marriage might do or mean; on the contrary, she clearly sees the differences that gender makes and keeps that practical reality before her at all times. Violet and Laura engage in one of several arguments concerning Lord Chiltern:

"I prefer men who are improper, and all that sort of thing. If I were a man myself I should go in for everything I ought to leave alone. I know I should. But you see, –I'm not a man, and I must take care of myself. The wrong side of a post for a woman is so very much the wrong side. I like a fast man, but I know that I must not dare to marry the sort of man that I like."

…………..

"… I should like to be your sister. I should like well enough to be your father's daughter. I should like well enough to be Chiltern's friend. I am his friend. Nothing that any one has ever said of him has estranged me from him. I have fought for him till I have been black in the face. Yes, I have, –with my aunt. But I am afraid to be his wife. The risk would be so great. Suppose that I did not save him, but that he brought me to shipwreck instead?"

"That could not be!"

"Could it not? I think it might be so very well. When I was a child they used to be always telling me to mind myself. It seems to me that a child and a man need not mind themselves. Let them do what they may, they can be set right again. Let them fall as they will, you can put them on their feet. But a woman has to mind herself; –and very hard work it is when she has a dragon of her own driving her ever the wrong way." (pp. 95-6)

Lord Chiltern would very likely bring Violet to ruin, as Lady Laura should well know as paying off his gargantuan gambling debts is what made it necessary that she marry someone with money in the first place! Violet knows her own mind and the implications of her position in the world and holds herself close, in spite of her friend’s emotional pressure. While I haven’t read the second volume of Phineas Finn yet, and so don’t know how Violet’s story will play out, I would be very surprised if she “ruined” herself with a disastrous marriage to Lord Chiltern or someone like him.

Both she and Lady Laura feel forced to be calculating when considering marriage but Lady Laura’s calculations lack the distinctly practical consideration of what it would mean to live with someone as dry and upright as Robert Kennedy; she is blinded by his political activities and imagines something much more noble for herself than what she gets. Violet imagines – nothing precisely, it seems, except what disasters may ensue with the wrong choice. And yet, when confronted about a possible fancy for Phineas, she is able to identity the more positive counterpoint to the disaster she so constantly and carefully avoids:

"I think you like my friend, Mr. Finn," Lady Laura said to Miss Effingham...

"Yes, I do. I like him decidedly."

"So do I. I should hardly have thought that you would have taken a fancy to him."

"I hardly know what you call taking a fancy," said Violet. "I am not quite sure I like to be told that I have taken a fancy for a young man."

"I mean no offence, my dear."

"Of course you don't. But, to speak truth, I think I have rather taken a fancy to him. There is just enough of him, but not too much. I don't mean materially, –in regard to his inches; but as to his mental belongings. I hate a stupid man who can't talk to me, and I hate a clever man who talks me down. I don't like a man who is too lazy to make any effort to shine; but I particularly dislike the man who is always striving for effect. I abominate a humble man, but yet I love to perceive that a man acknowledges the superiority of my sex, and youth, and all that kind of thing."

………………

"I suppose you do not mean to fall in love with him?"

"Not that I know of, my dear. But when I do, I'll be sure to give you notice." (pp. 200-01)

Laura is the one lauded for her intelligence, but Violet is the sharper of the two. She possesses clear ideas of what women may realistically do with themselves but also of what she wants; further, her assurance that she’ll give Laura “notice” if she begins to fall for Phineas suggests her awareness that Laura’s views on Phineas are not entirely disinterested, even after she’s married Robert Kennedy. Violet is not blinded by her own ideals; if she possesses an ideal, it is one simply of not being forced into decisions she is neither willing nor ready to make.

Lady Glencora Palliser
Where this issue of women and marriage and politics really coalesces, I believe, is in one short speech made my Lady Glencora Palliser. The Pallisers are notably much less present in this the second Palliser novel than they were in the first, but Lady Glencora has a crucial conversation with the more traditional Mrs. Bonteen at a political event in which Trollope makes clear that the connection between women’s limited freedoms, so aptly described by Violet, are not just inherently political. Rather, without considering gender, any political action that purports to support equality is simply empty rhetoric:

"Making men and women all equal," said Lady Glencora. "That I take to be the gist of our political theory."

"Lady Glencora, I must cry off," said Mr. Monk.

"Yes; –no doubt. If I were in the Cabinet myself I should not admit so much. There are reticences, –of course. And there is an official discretion."

"But you don't mean to say, Lady Glencora, that you would really advocate equality?" said Mrs. Bonteen.

"I do mean to say so, Mrs. Bonteen. And I mean to go further, and to tell you that you are no Liberal at heart unless you do so likewise; unless that is the basis of your political aspirations."

"Pray let me speak for myself, Lady Glencora."

"By no means, –not when you are criticising me and my politics. Do you not wish to make the lower orders comfortable?"

"Certainly," said Mrs. Bonteen.

"And educated, and happy and good?"

"Undoubtedly."

"To make them as comfortable and as good as yourself?"

"Better if possible."

"And I'm sure you wish to make yourself as good and as comfortable as anybody else, –as those above you, if anybody is above you? You will admit that?"

"Yes; –if I understand you."

"Then you have admitted everything, and are an advocate for general equality, –just as Mr. Monk is, and as I am.” (pp. 126-27)

Lady Glencora is a curious character to choose to have speak such words, and yet in the Palliser world, she’s the only one who would and perhaps could. That she nearly left her husband for a former lover in the previous novel shouldn’t discredit what she says here for in Phineas Finn, she doesn’t appear any longer to be bridling against her position as Plantagenet Palliser’s wife; indeed, she seems entirely comfortable in the political circles in which he functions. Further, in the first volume this novel, Lady Glencora is the only Palliser allowed to speak; her husband is fairly frequently present, but Trollope doesn’t give him any dialogue. Lady Glencora is the voice of liberalism here and she is an eloquent and logical one.

So, is this book as certain as Lady Glencora is about equality being a meaningless term unless it applies to both men and women? I don’t think so. Lady Glencora is outspoken about this particular issue in part because she can afford to be – she is incredibly rich, her husband is a universally admired politician, and she’s always remarkably charming. In other words, she has nothing to lose. Further, Trollope further undermines such a proto-feminist interpretation of things near the conclusion of the first volume thus:

It was manifestly a meeting of Liberals, semi-social and semi-political; –so arranged that ladies might feel that some interest in politics was allowed to them, and perhaps some influence also. (p. 355)

This is a rather quietly crushing moment (I feel everything Trollope does is quiet, even crushing; it’s one of the reasons I love him) but I don’t think it negates the observations about the interconnections between the personal (specifically via gender) and the political above. I think, rather, that Trollope is engaging in a close and fearless explication of a political culture in transition, and particular the ways in which the individuals involved both contribute to and stifle (often simultaneously) such transition through their personal values, fears, and inability to comprehend the implications of the history they’re living.

Of course, very few real people are capable of fully comprehending the historical moment in which they live, and I think knowing this is part of what makes Trollope so gentle with his characters. And it’s also part of why I love Trollope. More anon, on Volume 2 of Phineas Finn.

Where the work begins

Can You Forgive Her? is the first of Anthony Trollope's six Palliser novels, of which I will be reading the next five, and in relatively short order. A Victorian novel set against the backdrop of English parliamentary politics may not sound promising but, in fact, it adds a great deal of nuance to the personal struggles of Trollope's various characters.

Not that his characters, at least in this novel, wouldn't have been nuanced anyway; in my short experience of his writing, I would like to proclaim that Trollope may have been one of the masters of characterization in the mid- to late-19th century. All the characters seemed really alive and entirely distinct from one another, and like real people, kept undermining my expectations of them by showing themselves to be entirely complex and full of contradiction.

Plot Spoilers in Abundance!
Alive Vavasor is the protagonist potentially in need of readerly forgiveness, for she has a tendency to make marital engagements and then break them. Of especial need of forgiveness is the way she continues to try to push away John Grey, the man she actually loves. Why she fears to marry someone she adores and who adores her is not as mysterious as, say, Isabel's shocking marital choice at the end of The Portrait of a Lady, but it's also not the simple matter that Alice's friends make it out to be.

Alice is frequently accused of having been spoiled for being allowed too much independence in her upbringing, for she finds herself frequently trying to avoid allowing her relatives to make all of her life choices for her. Making her own choices is important to Alice but it doesn't account for why she breaks her engagement with Grey for that was her choice, entirely; it does, however, in part account for why it takes her so long to reconcile herself to reforming the engagement.

No, I think she rightly feels that Grey, as much as he loves her, will in some metaphysical or spiritual way, consume her. In the end, she happily reconciles herself to this but it's not a painless reconciliation. She knows she's giving up something about her identity that is essential but the unhappiness that life without him would be is ultimately too much of a price for her to pay.

This is one of the things I loved about Can You Forgive Her? - there are conflicts and there are resolutions but those resolutions are neither easy nor, in fact, entirely complete. Trollope, I think, was more interested in the processes of complicated human interactions than in leading his narrative to the conclusions thereof.

This messy verisimilitude is best seen in the marriage of Plantagenet Palliser and Lady Glencora. Glencora has been forced by her family and friends to abandon Burgo Fitzgerald, the man she really loves, for a politically and monetarily advantageous union with Palliser. She struggles constantly with her dissatisfaction, with the coldness of her marriage, and with her husband's apparently sole focuses of interest - becoming Chancellor of the Exchequer and begetting a male heir - the latter of which, after almost a year of marriage, is quite terribly not forthcoming.

Burgo, because he is lazy, irresponsible, and profligate (as well as beautiful and irresistible) tries to convince Glencora to run away with him - and she almost succumbs to the temptation! Alice tries constantly to talk sense into her but it's Palliser's revelation of something of his unknown depths to her that keeps Glencora from making such a fatal move. Having revealed all her true feelings about Burgo and her marriage to Palliser, he responds thus:

Softly, slowly, very gradually, as though he were afraid of what he was doing, he put his arm around her waist. 'You are wrong in one thing,' he said. 'I do love you.'
She shook her head, touching his breast with her hair as she did so.
'I do love you,' he repeated. 'If you mean that I am not apt at telling you so, it is true, I know. My mind is running on other things.'
'Yes,' she said, 'your mind is running on other things.'
'But I do love you. If you cannot love me, it is a great misfortune to us both. But we need not therefore be disgraced. As for that other thing of which you spoke, - of our having, as yet, no child' - and in saying this he pressed her somewhat closer with his arm - 'you allow yourself to think too much of it; - much more of it than I do. I have made no complaints on that head, even within my own heart.'
'I know what your thoughts are, Plantagenet.'
'Believe me that you wrong my thoughts. Of course I have been anxious, and have, perhaps, shown my anxiety by the struggle I have made to hide it. I have never told you what is false, Glencora.'
'No; you are not false!'
'I would rather have you for my wife, childless, - if you will try to love me, - than any other woman, though another might give me an heir. Will you try to love me?' (Vol. II, p. 190)

I did not expect this from Plantagenet, especially as he married Glencora for her money and the political ambition it would help him realize. Further, the combination of sentiment and sense in this interchange is part of what shocks Glencora into a silence reflective of how much more she could have in her marriage than she has hitherto imagined. I feel that in a Dickens novel, the answer to the question of trying to love would be definitive - yes or no, but definitive, and our readerly concern with the conflict would be pretty much at an end. With Trollope's characters, the work doesn't end here; rather, it's at this point that it only really begins!

If Can You Forgive Her? is representative, Trollope was the complete package - highly skilled in characterization, a great writer, and the creator of compelling plots. I read this book for about 5 hours straight on Sunday, which is a feat I don't often accomplish anymore. But it was just that good.

My mother asked me recently why Trollope isn't so widely respected amongst Victorians; I didn't have an answer as I hadn't heard that Trollope was in the dog house. But here's an article by Rohan Maitzen of Novel Readings which provides an excellent response to that question, not to mention more incentive to read Trollope if you haven't already.