I sometimes wonder - not terribly seriously - if the whole academic industry which has formed itself around Trollope has done this as a face saving exercise to justify the time investment for this brilliant, compelling series of novels (I mean the Pallister sequence), which have never gained the same ‘serious’ reputation as Dickens, Balzac, Dostoevsky. And make no mistake, one can testify seriously to the intellectual merits of the books - only those that are going on outdated critical reputation ever seem to argue they are lightweights - but there still seems a bit of view that by reading them one is somehow taking a less virtuous course than even say some of La Comédie humaine, or Les Rougon-Macquart which they most closely resemble.
I worried about this sort of thing a lot when younger. But coming to the first book in the series I now positively revel in his narrative genius, authorial voice, acute characterisation and humour. It is a page turner in the best sense of the phrase and even in its roots were in a less than successful play - melodrama would be an accurate description - (just read some of the appalling blank verse from the ‘The Noble Jilt’ quoted by Stephen Wall in his Introduction!) what Trollope eventually did with that material is genuinely inspired. ( )

Yes, I forgive her! I forgive all of the heroines in this book. Alice Vavasor, Lady Glencora Palliser, and the widow Mrs. Arabella Greennow all contemplate two potential suitors to marry: the "reliable" and "good" man or the "wild" and "bad" man. All three women had very unique reasons for wanting who they wanted, and I found all of the heroines to be compelling and complex women. This is in stark contrast to how women are often portrayed in Victorian novels where they're usually either the madonna or the whore, coughcoughDickenscoughcough. There's plenty to enjoy here, just not that this book is BLOATED.

On the subject of the heroines, all of the women contemplate what they want to do with their lives, and for Victorian women, that translates into what kind of man they want to marry. Glencora and Mrs. Greennow very much want to marry for love and romance while Alice wants to marry a political man so that her life isn't a drudgery. These are all fair questions! However, my issue is that Trollope doesn't really make it a contest between the two men. For Alice in particular, John Grey is so obviously the right choice while George Vavasor is so obviously the wrong choice. I began to wonder what Alice saw in George. I wish Trollope had taken the tactic Austen and Dickens did which is to present their characters as one way and to gradually reveal their true nature over time. It would be so much more convincing.

That said, the ending was pretty satisfying. Alice got everything she wanted (yay!), and I really liked how Mrs. Greennow engineered her happy ending. I have a feeling she's supposed to be a character Victorians ridicule, but I really liked her. Meanwhile, Glencora feels like she is further ensnared in a bad deal, but I forgive her, nonetheless.

If you want to read Trollope, I recommend giving him a go. The plot is interesting, and there are a lot of little details here that bring the Victorian aristocracy to life. I'm still thinking about some of the themes from that book. What was Trollope trying to say about women with independent fortunes? What was he trying to get across with his comments about who sought out a relationship with aristocracy versus those who didn't? In Trollope's world, what constitutes the perfect Victorian gentleman? These questions will keep up late at night.

Just be prepared for a very bloated book with several unnecessary chapters that could have been explained in a paragraph or two and a lot of hand-wringing on the part of the heroines. My copy was about 625 pages, and that could easily have been cut down a solid 100 pages or more. That said, if you have a lot of time on your hands and don't mind a really slow burn or a novel, Trollope would be the way to go. ( )

"A Room With a View" meets "Pride and Prejudice". ( )

A lovely book. Trolloppe has such a gift for creating the most human characters, that this reader became totally invested in nearly all of them. They were so realistic that I actually pictured them in my mind's eye, moving amid the scenery so thoroughly described. Moreover, he tricks you with some of the characters. For example, at first I didn't like John Grey, Alice's fiance, and I was rooting for her cousin George. But Trolloppe showed us what George was really made of, and then I thoroughly despised him. Trolloppe kept me on the edge of my seat, wondering what the heck Alice was finally going to do. But what a lovely ending.

P. 480 "But a blow! What woman Can bear a blow from a man, and afterwards return to him with love?.....but as for love,--all that we mean by love when we speak of it and write of it,-- a blow given by the defender to the defenseless crushes it all! A woman May forgive deceit, treachery, desertion,--even the preference given to a rival. She may forgive them and forget them; but I do not think that a woman can forget a blow. And as for forgiveness,-- it is not the blow that she cannot forgive, but the meanness of spirit that made it possible."

P.152
The part about the"Gentry" going on a fox hunt was really hard to take. Picture beefy grown-ass men making horses run around all day with them on their back, using a pack of dogs to sniff out an innocent, beautiful fox and trying to murder it.

An entertaining commentary on the disgusting relegation of women to the position of having to get married or, what else are they going to do with their lives? ( )

The first novel in Trollope's Palliser series and this one is more about the vicissitudes of marriage than politics. Will Lady Glencora run off with the handsome fortune hunter Burgo Fitzgerald? Will her cousin Alice Vavasor come to her senses and marry John Grey instead of her odious cousin George? And what about Mrs. Greenow who had to choose between the farmer Mr. Cheeseacre and the handsome, yet impoverished Captain Bellfield.

Unlike Dickens, Trollope knew how to write flesh and blood female characters who the reader can identify with and root for. ( )