Book Review
Dec. 19th, 2010 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariDoctor Thorne
by Anthony Trollope
I find Trollope's novels to be very warm, comfortable examples of 19th century literature. His wit and social commentary aren't equal to those of Austen and Dickens, but he does know how to tell a story. And he does slip in a little bit of humorous critique here and there. Doctor Thorne, the third of the Barsetshire novels, is a good example of his work. It concerns Doctor Thorne, a country physician, and his niece, Mary, whose birth and parentage are the stuff of an old scandal. Nonetheless, she grows up a close companion to the Greshams, who are the local gentry. She and eldest son and heir, Frank, eventually fall in love and pledge to be married. The novel tells the story of their attachment and the obstacles thrown in their path by the disparities of wealth and birth. Of course, it all works out in the end, but in this book the pleasure is in how your get there, not the destination.
I was especially delighted by the way Trollope writes a disastrous dinner party in which the guest of honor is a drunken boor. Trollope creates a wonderful combination of cringing suspense and comedy. There is also some sly social criticism in the way Trollope exposes the hypocrisy and priggishness of his upper-class characters. The whole book is in a way a statement against the over-valuing of money and birth as well as a mocking of rigid codes of propriety regarding personal relationships and marriage.
by Anthony Trollope
I find Trollope's novels to be very warm, comfortable examples of 19th century literature. His wit and social commentary aren't equal to those of Austen and Dickens, but he does know how to tell a story. And he does slip in a little bit of humorous critique here and there. Doctor Thorne, the third of the Barsetshire novels, is a good example of his work. It concerns Doctor Thorne, a country physician, and his niece, Mary, whose birth and parentage are the stuff of an old scandal. Nonetheless, she grows up a close companion to the Greshams, who are the local gentry. She and eldest son and heir, Frank, eventually fall in love and pledge to be married. The novel tells the story of their attachment and the obstacles thrown in their path by the disparities of wealth and birth. Of course, it all works out in the end, but in this book the pleasure is in how your get there, not the destination.
I was especially delighted by the way Trollope writes a disastrous dinner party in which the guest of honor is a drunken boor. Trollope creates a wonderful combination of cringing suspense and comedy. There is also some sly social criticism in the way Trollope exposes the hypocrisy and priggishness of his upper-class characters. The whole book is in a way a statement against the over-valuing of money and birth as well as a mocking of rigid codes of propriety regarding personal relationships and marriage.
