Customer Reviews

Friday Nights: A Novel

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I have suspected for years that Joanna Trollope subcontracts out an occasional book, like this one (Brother and Sister also comes to mind). Cardboard characters moving through trite and predictable situations. I read about half, then skimmed the rest to see if it got any more interesting (it didn't). She has written such marvelous books (The Choir, The Rector's wife, Other People's Children, Marrying the Mistress, the recent The Other Family, etc). I can't understand how she can be simultaneously so tone-deaf.

It is Eleanor, a Londonite retired from the National Health Service, marriage less and childless, who notices a couple of single moms in her neighborhood, decides to offer assistance, and thereby starts a Friday night social ritual. Three others soon join the group. Eleanor is their rock: she is imperturbable, largely unsentimental, and helps to supply coherence to these young women's lives.

But after several years, changes disrupt the group's harmony. Paula, one of the young unmarried mothers, is literally given an upscale loft by her guilt-ridden former lover. Then to top if off, she holds a Friday night gathering in her new place and brings in her new boyfriend - apparently a real catch. The enigmatic new man proves to be a very upsetting factor as he manages to insinuate himself into their lives by making various offers, both business wise and more romantically tinged. Suspicions and envy abound, the easy friendliness of the group disappears, and allies are sought to justify actions.

Each character is unique, largely understandable, and portrayed more or less sympathetically. Although the various children seem awfully bratty. The mere formation of the group, its long standing, and the ubiquity of the new man are perhaps a stretch. Furthermore, the recovery of each person is also a bit too tidy - no train wrecks. Nonetheless, the author has a keen eye for the difficulties and changes of life, and yet retains a certain optimism regarding our abilities to adjust and move on. The book is a quick read, however the flurry of interactions once the problems start almost become too much to follow.

Eleanor lived her life as a professional working for Britain's National Health Service. Upon retirement, she finds herself a bored elderly person with a cane and no real interests or relationships. Gazing out her window, she frequently sees two young ladies, separately walking along her street, one with a baby and the other with a small boy. Always alone, the two women seem to need some kind of assistance. On a day when Lindsay and Paula pass each other in front of Eleanor's home, she steps out to offer to babysit. Both refuse, but when Eleanor requests that they come on Friday night, they agree.

The Friday night gathering begins awkwardly. Eleanor learns that Lindsay, the mother of a baby named Noah, was widowed while she was pregnant. Paula, whose son Toby is a toddler, does not live with Toby's father, who is married. Although the young women seem particularly ill at ease at Eleanor's, they agree to return, which begins a tradition of regular Friday night meetings.

As time goes by, the women invite newcomers, all female, to the group. There's Lindsay's quirky sister, Jules, who yearns to be a professional disc jockey. Jules suggests that Eleanor invite a neighbor, Blaise, whose entire life, echoing Eleanor's, revolves around her career. Blaise brings Karen, her business partner, whose life is fragmented and stressful. She not only has two daughters, but she also supports her artist husband, Lucas, who hasn't sold a painting in a long time --- and she resents supporting him.

Year in and year out, the women gather, with the two young boys. They form strong nurturing friendships, an ornate pattern of interlocking relationships. But then Paula encounters good fortune, in two unrelated ways. Her son's father comes into money, so he buys Paula and Toby a luxurious condo. She also meets Jackson, an eligible man, and falls in love. She even brings Jackson to the Friday night gathering. This is a notable occasion; the women don't ever bring men, but Paula would like her friends to approve and rejoice in handsome, wealthy, single Jackson, who wants her.

But Jackson, like a stone tossed into a pool, causes a ripple effect within the Friday night group and is a catalyst for change. Some of the changes are positive. He transforms Toby from an apathetic child to a vibrant football fan, a passion Toby also ignites in Eleanor. However, each adult member of the Friday night group becomes restless in her own way. Jackson makes Eleanor uncomfortable, although she can't explain why. He approaches Jules about helping her in her career path. He drops in on Karen without Paula, plunging unhappy Karen into a quandary. Meanwhile, Lindsay grieves because Paula, busy with her new lover, withdraws from their friendship. As time goes on, Jackson's motives are mysterious, but each woman's life is knocked off-kilter by his presence.

Readers eager for a fast-paced romance or thriller may not enjoy the leisurely pace of this story. However, others will be delighted to watch each character's tale unfold. The women's lives are complex, and it is an enjoyable investment of time to get to know each. As always, author Joanna Trollope gives us a quiet but satisfying tale with excellent, solid characterization, detailed so precisely that we feel we'd recognize these women, and their shifting, complicated connections, anywhere.

--- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon

I am a Joanna Trollope fan, and I liked this book. The characters represented a good range of modern working women, whether satisfied with rather pedestrian jobs, or more ambitious, or having difficulties juggling family and work. And the characters covered the spectrum of working life, from Jules just starting on a career, to the retired Eleanor. I thought the novel developed that aspect of the characters' lives very effectively and realistically; they all seemed like people I have known.

Trollope was at her best with the character Eleanor, whose concise and objective comments cut through to the heart of issues, and whose occasional musings provided the more thought-provoking aspects of the novel, particularly about the place work has in our lives.

My one complaint concerns Jackson. He is described in the book as "opaque" and "enigmatic", and boy, was he ever. A mysterious character can add intrigue to a book, but sooner or later the reader needs a little glimpse into his motives, or a hint of the background which makes him behave as he does. Maybe I missed something, but to me, Jackson simply remained inexplicable, to the point that, by the end of the book, I found it irritating.

But don't let that stop you from getting the book. It is an enjoyable read. With the exception of the baffling Jackson, Ms. Trollope reveals new insights into her characters with almost every page.

JOAHNA TROLLOPE IS A FINE WRITER, DESCRIBING THE WAY THE PEOPLE FROM ENGLAND LIVES, THEIR CUSTOMS, THEIR HOUSES, THEIR FAMILIES, ALL VERY PROPER AND DESCRIBED IN A WAY YOU FEEL YOU ARE LIVING WITH THEM. SHE IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES. THEY ARE SLOW READING SO YOU CAN ENJOY HER AND HER CHARACTERS.

Trollope once again examines the complexities of contemporary lives by telling the story of a group of women that meet on Friday nights and what happens when a man upsets their balance. Each character's individual story is told and woven together to form connections in this group.

Eleanor, the retiree, sees two harried single mothers, Paula and Lindsay, pass by her window everyday. She decides to invite them for a Friday night and the tradition begins. Soon Blaise, Eleanor's new neighbor; Karen, Blaise's coworker; and Jules, Lindsay's younger sister, are included in the gathering. The friends find support and encouragement when they meet. But when Paula introduces her new beau, upsetting things begin to happen.

This is Trollope at her best: examining the way women deal with the issues in their lives and writing about normal people neither good nor evil, making mistakes but remaining optimistic about their future despite uncertainty over decisions.

First, an admission. I have a strong preference for English women writers. Rosamunde Pilcher (The Shell Seekers), Angela Huth (Land Girls), Penelope Fitzgerald (The Gate of Angels), and others come to mind along with Joanna Trollope. Trollope (yes, she's a descendant of Anthony Trollope) has never failed me. In all her books, Trollope focuses on family relationships--what brings people together and what challenges their ties. Her characters are clearly drawn, and she is a master of presenting children as catalysts and real characters.

Friday Nights begins as Eleanor, retired and in her early seventies, impulsively invites two single mothers to her home for a Friday night get together. These two woman, Paula and Lindsay, have seen one another in the neighborhood. Soon the circle expands to include Lindsay's younger sister Jules, an aspiring disc jockey, and Eleanor's neighbor Blaise and her business partner Karen. The women, all with different life goals, skills, and interests, find a warm center in Eleanor's living room until change challenges their relationships.

In this novel, Trollope explores women's relationships, not only with one another, but with men, children, and careers. I became a seventh woman in this circle of six. >From this vantage point, I found myself examining each character for the aspects I identified with. This was one of those books I was sorry to finish. not only because it spoke to me, but because I think that I have now read all fourteen of Trollope's novels. Two of my other favorites are The Rector's Wife and Other People's Children.

Peggy Tabor Millin, Women, Writing, and Soul-Making: Creativity and the Sacred Feminine

In Friday Nights Joanna Trollope mixes in a variety of women's social issues into a contemporary comedy of manners when a group of women meet to share their Friday nights together. Little do these women realize that when a stranger enters their fold that the delicate balance in the form of shared friendships and gentle confidences will eventually become challenged.

Finally retired after years working in the health industry in and around the Fulham area of London, Eleanor has a chance to refect on her life, that has been defined mostly by her work. Although Eleanor doesn't exactly regret the fact that she never married and had children, she's not necessarily prepared to face this consummate gap in her time. Its not until that crucial structure has gone, and that it has taken everyone at work with it, that she suddenly comes to the recognition that there is no domestic life to fall back on. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that she's quite keen to invite two young single mothers, Paula and Leslie over for Friday night drinks, along with pate, French bread, and chocolate.

Soon enough, three other women are attending: Blaise and her business partner Karen, both owners of Workwell, an agency that specializes in persuading organizations to change the way that they work; and Jude, Leslie's younger sister, who loves house music and wants one day to be a popular disc jockey. At the center of the group, Paula has weathered much of life's worries, especially with regard to the well being of her teenage son Toby. Now with a new flat, funded largely by the father of Toby, and her job managing a store specializing in uncompromising dark furniture from Indonesia, Paula is finally at a point where she can finds a measure of security.

Meanwhile, Linsday with "her white knuckle grip on life" tries to rise above her ramshackle childhood. Recently widowed with her son Noah to care for, she envies Paula's extraordinary energy, this life force and this urge that she has to thow herself into things even at the risk of drowning. When Linsday was suddenly widowed a few years ago only Paula was there. Her wayward sister Jules certainly offered no support or consolation and the memories of those hard years constantly make her flinch and cringe.

True to form Karen and Blaise are hard workers and have done their best to make their fledging business a success. Lately however, Karen has become ever more distracted with domestic life, with her two young girls, Poppy and Rose, and her artist husband Lucas who refuses to shoulder many of the financial burdens of the household. Blaise, by contrast, feels herself becoming ever more focused on her career, her different approach and attitude to work pulling her further apart from Karen rather than fusing the two of them together. From the very first page it is established that Blaise has far wider horizons than Karen whose loving family responsibities ultimately are her shackle.

When the author introduces a new character, Paula's new beau, the personal and enigmatic Jackson, this brittle dynamic is subtly altered and although these women would never admit it, there relationships with each other are destined to change. At first, Jackson's affability and charming ways seem an easy fit for the group - he's sympathetic towards Eleanor's hip pains, is even interested in financing Jules's bourgening music career even as he seems to want to make Paula happy by forging a companionable relationship with Toby. Indeed he wants to get to know the rest of the group in an easy and undemanding way that proves to be a powerful combination.

Jackson is a man not obviously encumbered by his personal past, and his curiously imaginative efforts to make himself one of the group are endearing at best. Soon enough, however, his presence is causing these women to question their marriages and their lives, their feelings for themselves, and more importantly for each other. Even as Eleanor sees something opaque about him, something quite puzzling that she can't quite put her finger on, the rest of the women are suddenly beginning to turning against each other, all of them floundering about in a swamp of ill-defined anger and resentment.

Clearly though the women have no choice but to keep soldiering on. Paula remains at the novel's heart, unquestionably enamored of Jackson, mainly because he liberates her from all "the little ropes of anxiety and self-discipline," that has kept the poor and battered Linsday tethered to a life of self-imposed orderliness. Indeed, all of Trollope's women - and men - are constantly battered by life's hopes and dreams, their identities defined by their marriages or their families - or in Eleanor and Blaise's case - their work. Meanwhile, they must all face the hard realisation that sometimes getting out of the situations they have made in life is difficult at best and impossible at worst.

Certainly, the wise and consoling Eleanor remains the den-mother of her brood friends as they move around in a type of dance, some leaving the circle and some returning to it. Continuing with her smartly held observations on the lives, loves, and travails of the British middle class, Trollope's themes of work, marriage, and family - while not unique - add much flavor to this novel. The result is a perfectly stewed brew of contemporary English manners involving a variety of appealing characters that have flung themselves into their particular emotions and into the lives of others, regardless of the inevitable outcomes. Mike Leonard June 2008

I've loved every Joanna Trollope book there is (and I've read them all several times) but this one lacked a few things.

The book did hold my interest and I enjoyed almost all of the characters but I was baffled by the character of Jackson. There was almost no description of him at all and it made it impossible to see why one woman would fall in love with him and why the others would let him infiltrate their lives.

The premise of the book, a close knit group of friends that starts to come unravelled when confronted with change was a good one but the change should have taken shape in a form other than this odd and annoying non character.

They were women, of different ages and stages of life, who formed an amazing but unlikely sisterhood. The diverse group--that numbered only six--included women who were single, married, divorced, and widowed; unemployed, working at home, working away from home, and retired; with and without children. They came together on Friday nights drawn to the pleasures and promises of female friendship.

In Joanna Trollope's latest novel Friday Nights (Bloomsbury, 2008), Eleanor, a retiree who lives alone, spots two younger women from her bay window: one a newly widowed mother and the other, a single mom by virtue of her love affair with a married man. As an antidote to the loneliness she senses in them and her own life of solitude, she invites them to her parlor. Before long, the warm get-togethers, lubricated with wine, become a cherished constant in their busy and dynamic lives.

Through her characters, Trollope explores some of the universal emotions experienced by female friends including love, loyalty, passion, and jealousy as well as the difficulties in mastering the challenges of the work-life balance, aging, and balancing time between female friends and the men in our lives.

I was so drawn to these women on the other side of the pond that I felt like sharing Friday nights with them. This book joins a genre of novels published in 2008 that explore female friendships in groups. Others include: The Wednesday Sisters by Meg Waite Clayton, The Professors' Wives Club by Joanne Rendell, and The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs.