I think I’m gonna throw in the towel on this one. It’s not bad, it’s just kinda boring. I like the characters, but if they all decided to suddenly jump off London Tower I wouldn’t really care what pattern the splat was left behind for the rain to wash away.

This book is very British. All the “dramatic tension” is built upon the subtitles of human interaction. For my taste I do find it a little dull, though the characters are well drawn enough to be entertaining, though pretty thin.

I love how nobody has any money yet lives like they do. Everything is on credit or they have gambling IOU’s or are caught up in some investment scheme. And nobody works at all, or if they do something, it’s poorly done. This is, so far, the major distinction between the people he was writing about and people today: today people work all day long yet still don’t have any money (though that’s because they spent it all)

Part of the charm of this novel is the slow way you get drawn into the characters. It’s very well written and though this is no earth-shattering tale, it is very well constructed and fun.

He does expose a lot of the silliness of middle-class life, but he’s not cruel to his characters – they feel like real people.

Trollope must be the least indulgent writer I’ve yet come across. He writes straightforward and with absolutely no adornment. Not that he’s bad, it’s just a very economical and conservative style. And it helps because though the plot isn’t overly complicated, there is a lot going on relationship wise to keep track of.

This must have been the soap opera of its day. I do enjoy it.

Ah, a lecture from an old bachelor to a young man about how to live his life, as if either of them could ever hope to see the world in the same way.

There is something of a generational gap between characters that defines the whole world in the novel quite nicely. It’s very modern in many ways.

It speaks to the skill of the writer that even after over a hundred years we’re still able to quite clearly “get” what he’s poking fun at. Here is an upper-middle class society with ungrateful and entitled children and silly balls and late night gambling and all of it is fake and pointless. Nobody is trying to really live, they just try to keep up appearances.

Great start to the book.