Customer Reviews

Marion Fay

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's quite strange that this book, of all Trollope, is so hard to find. Reviewers didn't like it when it was originally published in the late 1800s, and it never shook its reputation as ultra-tedious. This mystifies me. The melodrama between politically radical Lord Jack Hampton and Marion Fay, a non-aristocratic young Quaker woman who's more of a lady than several of the "ladies" in the book, is flirtatious, accessible and fun (Hampton repeatedly teases Marion that he fell for her when she "poked his fire," i.e. tended his fireplace with a poker--a bolder play with innuendo than Trollope usually engages in). It then turns passionate when Marion won't marry Jack because of a secret trouble involving life-threatening illness. T. uses the situation to examine with great depth and sensitivity the desire to consummate the spiritual union of two souls via marriage. This is the most careful look at what marriage means in T.'s ideal world that I have read in his work yet. He makes it exciting and suspenseful, since we're waiting to see if Marion will really get to poke Jack's fire--or if an unthinkable separation will occur. As in all T., there is a hilarious cast of characters who toe the line that separates the comically pathetic from the dangerously antisocial--for example, will Jack's archetypical evil stepmom just grumble her way through life, or will she scheme to kill Jack? The multiple marriage and family plots are very well integrated, unlike in some other T. novels.

I agree with the other reviewer about this book in everything she said, and I will add that I found it the most romantic of Trollope's novels, with the hero having the deepest real love for the heroine that I have ever read anywhere. The subplots were good, and the character of Crocker was one of Trollope's most comical. The villains were satisfying bad, too.

Lovely, romantic plot, particularly if you like British classics. I wanted to read one of Trollope's lesser known pieces and this was a good start. I would give it 5 stars except for one point - it is much too long. A third of the novel could easily be cut to make it more readable. But at the time it was a custom to do novels in three volumes so I assume he had to add a lot of fill. It is not that those sections are not interesting, but they don't develop the plot and the plot is so intriguing that I was quite impatient to push through to find out more. It gives a nice insight into the British class system of the period (19th century Victorian).

I want to thank Amazon for making this available for FREE and to the other two reviewers whose reviews enticed me to try this one. I am very glad I did. I was actually tormented when at times I was busy and couldn't get to read it as I wanted to find out what was going to happen! So happy to have finished it and know how things turned out.