Customer Reviews

Marrying the Mistress

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Resident Judge Guy Stockdale decides to end his relationship with his wife Laura after four decades of marriage. The sixtyish Guy plans to wed his mistress of seven years Merrion, who happens to be about thirty years junior to the Judge and is even younger than his children.

Obviously his wife is stunned by his announcement. However, it is his sons and their wives and his grandchildren who react by what they perceive is the family patriarch's callous action of thinking with the wrong body part. One particular son, Simon, finds himself being pulled in several conflicting directions. He does not know whether to emotionally support his mother or his father, but realizes he has no option but to help both of them. His wife wants him to do neither as she does not want to "fund" her in-law's folly. Worse yet, Simon and his children find the former mistress turned fiancee charming to the point Simon would not mind filling his father's shoes. The aftermath of Guy's proclamation is just starting to evolve and the impact it makes on his close circle of relatives is just beginning to emerge.

Joanna Trollope is known for her deep thinking look at middle class England. Her latest novel carries the author's trademark of complex problems encircled by conflicting emotions swirling about real people. What makes this tale work is the fact that Merrion is not a gold digger, but is a spirited nice person and the fact that Ms. Trollope does not provide gift-wrapped solutions with a bow on top. Anyone who enjoys a poignant relationship drama by one of the sub-genre,s best will want to read MARRYING THE MISTRESS.

Harriet Klausner

If anyone had ever told me that I would read a book like this and sympathize with the mistress, I would have laughed. But this is just what happened, and I was totally surprised at my reaction. I guess this is the mark of a good writer--one who ccauses you to see something from a new and different perspective.

From the minute Judge Guy Stockwell makes his stunning announcement that he is leaving Laura, his wife of 40 years to marry his long-time mistress, emotions run rampant in the Stockwell family, but not necessarily in the ways you would expect. His revelation is like a large rock dropped into a small puddle-- the ripples are huge.

I think that Trolloppe is a master of character development--the characters were so well drawn and so fleshed-out. These people came to inhabit my home for several days and I came to know them quite well.

I am glad I finally got around to reading this talented author.

Previous to now I resisted reading Joanna Trollope's books although I don't know why. Then a friend recommended Marrying the Mistress and now I have found a new author to explore further. In the tradition of Maeve Binchy and Rosamunde Pilcher, Trollope introduces us to ordinary people who are faced with changes and new challenges in their lives. And like Binchy and Pilcher, Trollope's characters become like family members who we come to appreciate and love.

Marrying the Mistress begins near London when Judge Guy Stockdale announces to his wife of 40 yeas that he wants a divorce. Not only does he want a divorce but he has already made plans to marry a woman, a 31 year old lawyer, who has been his mistress for the last seven years. As readers we now begin to see this revelation from different perspectives, the judges, his wife Laura, their two sons, a daughter-in law, grandchildren and finally Guy's mistress, Merrion. While sides are drawn over this dilemma, most of the characters would agree that the mistress is quite lovely. But as the plot develops and Guy's wife, at first pitiful and dependent becomes more assured leaving the reader to wonder what will happen next. When a series of startling events occur we watch as these people's lives are further disrupted and the changes in their lives have far reaching consequences.

Joanna Trollope, a resident of England and a descendant of Anthony Trollope, has a keen ear and eye not only for characters, but for their homes and surroundings areas. When the story takes place in Guy and Laura's suburban home we feel as if we are there and can see Laura's wonderful garden and the their dogs barking. And when Guy first meets Merrion during a train ride to London, we are seated next to them and privy to this meeting. Marrying the Mistress is a wonderful read whose characters and their lives reach our hearts and make us think about our own decisions, mistakes and regrets. Now that I've been introduced to Joanna Trollope's writings, I look forward to being further entertained by reading more of her books.

Trollope departs from her usual device of following two paths resulting from a single starting point (the twin sisters in Spanish Lover, etc.) and keeps to her exploration of the consequences of decisions in life---this time showing how those decisions are acted upon by circumstances beyond control of any of the individuals. It is a wonderful read, unconventional, and insightful with well-drawn characters.

There could not have been a better choice to read Joanna Trollope's timely, complex, and fascinating domestic drama than acclaimed English actress Lynn Redgrave. She is articulate, knowing and highly listenable in this tale of a man, Judge Stockdale, who is leaving his wife of 40 years to marry his young mistress.

Readers cannot jump to any prejudiced conclusions as this young mistress is strong, brainy, and has a highly successful career of her own. What's more the Judge's progeny find themselves liking her. Leave it to Trollope to offer the mesmerizing unpredictable!

Anyone who is familiar with Joanna Trollope's work knows that a theme she has visited in the majority of her books is the rippling effect of one's supposedly private actions on others. In her world, no man is an island, and everybody is ultimately responsible for the effects of his or her life decisions on those who are near and dear.

That's the premise behind "Marrying the Mistress," the story of a dignified and esteemed judge, Guy Stockwell, who announces out of the blue that he intends to divorce his wife of 40 years, Laura, and marry his heretofore secret mistress of 7 years, Merrian. The shockwaves from this decision, which the judge and Merrian had considered very private and personal, affect everyone in their lives, whether they want it to or not.

Thus, Laura, the self-centered, clinging, deliberately obtuse "wronged wife," becomes even more annoying, and drops all of her problems in the lap of her son Simon, a lawyer in his 30s with a wife and three children of his own. Laura plays the guilt card so successfully that Simon becomes hopelessly entwined in his parents' troubles. He cannot extricate himself, and this in turn puts dangerous pressure on his marriage. His wife, Carrie, feels that she now has to fight her mother-in-law for Simon's love and attention--and she is right. Carrie and Simon's older two children, teenaged Jack and Rachel, are terribly affected by their parents' unhappiness, and their younger sister starts to suffer from days-long headaches.

Simon's gay brother Alan, who has finally met the love of his life, just wants everybody to be happy so he can bask in the glow of his new relationship. His role is to continually smooth things over, only to have the "smoothing" rejected or ignored.

Merrion, the mistress, is much younger than Guy. A self-possessed woman in her 30s, she is an up-and-coming lawyer whose intense love for Guy never rings true, at least to this reader. Merrion is much too selfish to give herself to anybody. A supposedly brilliant woman, she is completely bemused by the effect her relationship with Guy is having on his family and on her own widowed mother, and she misses the exciting secrecy of being his clandestine lover rather than his bride-to-be.

At the center of this emotional maelstrom is Guy, whose career as a judge enables him to see all sides of the problem. He feels for his rejected wife, his uptight mistress, his beleagured sons, his grandchildren--even his dogs, who are bewildered by his disappearance from the family home. But Guy is no more likeable than the rest of the characters in this ultimately whiny book.

I read this book when it was first published, and did not like it. Because Trollope is one of my favorite authors, I recently gave the book another try. I still did not like it, as I found myself continually annoyed by just about everybody in its pages, and therefore very unsympathetic to their problems. I know what Trollope was trying to say, but she has said it much better in many of her other books, most notably "A Village Affair" and "The Rector's Wife." I gave the book 4 stars rather than 3 because of Trollope's skill and talent as a writer. But I have to say, "Marrying the Mistress" is hard going.

I actually found myself hating Carrie, although she was clearly supposed to have all the readers sympathy. Guy is 62 and his mistress (who is also self obsessed and self righteous, just like Carrie) is 31. Guys two sons are both around 40. But we are told to believe that all this is the fault of 'evil' mother Laura. Not a believable story, both Guy and his mistress are a joke, and it is by making Laura ridiculous that the author tries to portray them as the wronged ones. No it does not wash, Laura has all my sympathy. Carrie is Guys son Simons' wife. Leave her Simon, leave her......

Trollope has a real gift for evoking complex relationships and this is no exception. The "mistress" is not actually a mistress in the traditional sense, but rather a smart, successful, down to earth professional woman who is younger than her lover, who is married at the time they meet. Neither character is predictable; both are nice mixes of traits both expected and unexpected, creating a nicely textured and nuanced look at love and the way it is, and is not, enough.

I thought this was a good story. Everyone expects to hate the mistress and resent the dad but it's not like that at all. I loved the interaction of characters. Oh, how I could relate to the mother's manipulating ways! This book is real and believable. I would definitely read more Trollope.

This book gives a complexity of how each family member is taken by the news of Guy's announcement to leave his wife of forty years for a much younger ambitious woman. Guy, the family patriarch, has been having an affair for seven years with fellow legal eagle Merrion Palmer. The novel goes back and forth into time detailing Guy and Laura's marriage and his encounter with the mistress. In addition to Guy, Laura, and Merrion, the Stockdale children Simon and Alan wrestle with their father's departure from the marriage.
Reading this book, one would feel sorry for Laura, the suffering wife. But as the reader examines closely into her character, we see a woman who has made herself a shadow of her husband's and leans on to both of her sons which have an effect on their personal lives and significant others.
Merrion Palmer, the mistress, although independent, needs male coompanionship. Guy makes up for what she didn't have--a male figure. Her father died when she was three years old and her mother's second marriage to his best friend ended bitterly in divorce affecting Merrion's views of a family.
This book is not sexually candid, which is good. The details of the affair are easily interpreted and what is shown is a pattern of how marital infidelity affects a family and a community.