Other People's Lives

Brought along Trollope's The Duke's Children with no great assurance that I'd be able to make much progress. Delighted to find myself moving swiftly through the volume, despite other demands on my time. As usual there's much momentum in the storyline(s) such that I'm genuinely keen to find out how it all works out. Unusually for Trollope it's not so easy to figure out where the various plots are going.

In fact, I'd rate this one as Trollope on top form. It's heavy on engagingly intelligent and vivacious female characters - even though he kills Cora off in Chapter 1, wonderfully ruthlessly, with the certitude of a great writer (for once.) I'd rate Lady Mabel a particular triumph, so far, though I'm wondering, at the two-thirds mark of the novel, if Trollope intends to turn her into a bit of a villainess after missing her opportunity with Silverbridge and developing understandable envy towards Isabel Boncassen. The chapters in which she sort of turns Silverbridge down and then realises she's blown her chances are masterly. And Trollope is also on top form dealing with the various messes that Silverbridge gets himself into, with the loss of seventy thousand at the Leger being grippingly excruciating. And who else but Trollope would give you the exact amount lost and precisely how the money gets paid?

There are moments when Trollope comes close to the perfection of Jane Austen in his handling of personal entanglements, and I can't think of higher praise than that.