Anthony Trollope

[Botbot]

I'm feeling the need to discover Trollope. Any recommendations for which one to start with?

I was recommended to start with the political novels - can you forgive her, phineas finn, eustace diamonds, phineas redux, the prime minister....

i've read the first 2 and will read the next in the series later this year. good, but not great. not a patch on dickens!

I enjoyed Barchester Towers years ago. But give me Bleak House any day....

I did all the Westminster series last year (started as jury-service reading, & kept on), never having read any Trollope before (but having read all of Dickens such that I wanted something new).

Very different thing from Dickens - doesn't, and deliberately I think, have that myth-making (surreal, poetic, coincidences & archetypes) quality Dickens has - so if you like & want that you will be disappointed.

Trollope is emphatically realistic - myth-busting, if you want to make an exaggerated comparison: you find out what it is really like to have an emergency Cabinet meeting, how people are really chosen to get political office, how you might really behave if you were a woman with a slightly compromised social position & a man propositioned you. I loved the books, but felt that you shouldn't be allowed to read them till you were in middle age & ready for the insights into nuts & bolts of existence.

Thanks everyone.

Bink, your description makes me think I'll enjoy them. I really want to, just because there are so many books - a whole new stack to work my way through. And I'm definitely reaching the right age...

So - I think I'll start with Can You Forgive Her?

[heads off to Amazon]

Or library? Mine all came from there. They can overwhelm your bookshelves a bit ...

A favourite bit is this, of an ambitious, shakily solvent financial hustler, whose power is his ability to browbeat people: "He had learned to carry his empire in his eye."

Usually do Amazon second-hand (paying 1p + postage) and then pass on to charity shop. That means it can loaf around in enormous 'to-read' pile for as long as I like...

I like the quote!

Barchester to start with I reckon.

Yep, I read the Barchester Chronicles first.

If you go for the Barchester Towers series remember the first one, The Warden sometimes puts people off, the cast of characters expands as the series progresses. But I think the Pallisers series is the right one to start with if you are not a younger person. Apparently Andrew Davies is adapting it for TV at some point so worth reading before then.

Bit off topic but on Woman's Hour this morning, the presenter trailed an upcoming serialization of a Trollope book which she called "The Way We Live Right Now".

I haven't read it myself but I'm sure it's just "The Way We Live Now", no? My grandma used to read a lot of Trollope so the titles are stowed in my brain. I know it is petty but I thought it was a funny mistake -- makes it sound like a magazine strapline rather than a Victorian novel

[removes pedant's hat]

In any case, if you are interested I think it begins on Monday on Radio 4.

It is indeed The Way We Live Now! And a very fine book it is too.

I heard that and wondered if I'd misheard- you're right it sounds SO wrong.

'The way live right now' is on Woman's Hour. I'm only half listening, but I'm guessing its a reworking as I just heard Serena Williams arse and I don't think Trollope wrote about that!

No, indeed Lil, I am quite sure that he did not.