Customer Reviews

Orley Farm

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Orley Farm is Trollope at his best (as good as the Barsetshire series), which means some of the best characterizations in the English language. Trollope's people are real; the beleaguered Lady Mason, charged with forging a will; the aged lover Sir Peregrine Orme; Madeleine Stavely, deeply but practically in love; the shallow, fickle Sophia Furnival and others are 3-dimensional figures that live and breathe. His satire of the so-called "justice" system is the best kind of satire: he just describes the court proceedings as they really are. The result is as up-to-date as today's newspaper. It is no wonder that Trollope's revival in popularity is continuing to grow.

Orley Farm is Trollope at his most profound, and his most entertaining. It is difficult to ascertain what is best in this novel: the subtle, incisive examination of how legal systems cannot be impartial and, more fundamentally, how humankind looks after its own regardless of right and wrong; or the episodic journey with some of Trollope's most memorable (and always three dimensional) characters - the 'wrong' but completely empathic Lady Mason, the fiercely honourable Sir Peregrine Orme, the virile young Peregrine Orme and, most memorably, the gentle overwhelmed but staunchly loyal Mrs Orme - undergoing the pangs of Trollope's drama amidst ancient piles, undulating hedgerows and sequestered English fields.

Orley is simply timeless. Just as in the Palliser series, the characters are the people all around you, in the office, in the news, and on the tube. Trollope's ability to understand the subtle differences that shape the mind of men and women is simply uncanny. If you are a truth seeker, this is a book for you. Anyone with exposure to a legal system with its basis in the English common law will understand the perceptive analysis it is subjected to in Orley Farm. The distinction between evil deeds and the often sympathetic humans that are their authors is one that modern American culture often forgets to make. Orley Farm is here to remind us. As a trusts and estates lawyer, I can not believe that I practiced for fifteen years before someone told me about this gem.

Trollope was a master of the domestic situation. There is a scarcity of dialogue in Orley Farm, but the detailed explanations of the emotions, surroundings, and background of each character offers so much more than dialogue ever could. Anthony Trollope's Orley Farm is by far the best fictionalized trial drama that I have ever read. One would be hard-pressed to find another like it.

I would offer the warning to those who dislike long, tedious readings that this work would not be for them. It is nearly 850 pages with very little action/dialogue. It more a study into the human psyche as it relates to guilt, pity, law, and the moral implications of all these things.

with Trollope, but this one is particularly overweight. A great deal is made - by Trollope and others - about the lack of suspense, which is said to make the novel 'realistic' (versus 'sensationalist'). Why? Anyway, we know from the beginning that the heroine forged the will, or rather the codicil (always a worry, the codicil). This means she spends 800 pages wallowing in terror and guilt. Others around her gradually find out; she wallows deeper and deeper with never a change of tone. This woman is TIRESOME. So is the bee in Trollope's bonnet about the adversarial legal system. As ever when nearing a political issue, Trollope uses it to bring in characters and set up oppositions, but he has no idea what to do with an idea, that is with an issue to be thoughtfully discussed. Given that this book slowly reaches a criminal trial, and that there is really no other serious plot, it becomes annoying to be told repeatedly that lawyers defend clients they don't believe in, and witnesses are badgered. The alternative hinted at - that the law should try to reach the truth - is awe-inspiringly feeble. Once the heroine is found 'not guilty', another non-surprise, and her son gives back the property fraudulently acquired, she is dropped with no gallantry into a fuzzy future in which she may, perhaps, the author hints, have one or two pleasant days. Though the book is treated by critics as a work about guilt and redemption, nobody seems redeemed, or changed in the least. How could they be, given the rigid Trollope rules of conduct.

So why did I read it? Because of the richly populated, vividly conjured Trollope world - and also of course for the exciting hunting scenes. Which in some sense is the whole book. But if the heroine is the fox - and to support this, there is a thrown off line about foxes tails resembling womens' tails (you'd have to be a Victorian male to know what THIS means) - she spends an awful long time in the woods.

An absorbing portrayal of a woman who is charged with forging a will. The reader doesn't know whether or not the woman is guilty until the middle of the book, and although the author indicates that we shouldn't have been surprised the revelation, I certainly was. The novel also has multiple subplots all of which are excellently carried on. We learn about the lives and interests of lawyers, country gentlemen, 'commercial men' (traveling salespeople) and the women in their lives.

One of the great novels of 19th Century fiction, with characters you will learn to appreciate and understand; not the kind of sensationalist fiction of Collins or Dickens, but a real probing into morality, responsibility and compassion. Set aside your summer, or perhaps your winter in front of the fireplace...do not pass this up.

UPDATE about the Kindle Edition -- I have the free Kindle Edition and it is excellent quality in terms of formatting, navigation, and spell-checking. I just wish that all publishers who charge significantly more for their books would put the level of effort and quality control into their electronic versions.

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I love Anthony Trollope. His writing style is very readable compared to Dickens or Tolstoy. His subject matter is oriented towards subjects which are still relevant today -- politics, money and power, women's rights, relationships. His character development and imagery makes it feel like you are there. His books aren't "pretentious" but just plain good stories that you an relate to -- even though they take place in the 1800s.

One of the reasons I like them is it reinforces that many of the personal, moral, and emotional struggles you think about in your day-to-day life are exactly those that individuals have been pondering since the beginning of time. I think that we like to think that the problems we face are unique to our generation, our country (the US), our times, our families. When you read something like Orley Farm or the other Trollope books, you realize they are not and that there is still a lot to be learned from these "old guys".

In addition, if you are looking for a good "escape" and a window into how the "other half lives", Trollope novels also give you that vehicle. You can imagine yourself as part of the British Aristocracy living in a life of influence and power -- which can be a lot more interesting than being part of middle class suburbia working every day just to make enough money to pay Uncle Sam, get health insurance and hopefully have enough paid time off to afford a 1-week beach trip every year.

When I first read "Orley Farm" about 15 years ago (it was my second Trollope novel -- I've since read over 25 of them including the superb Barsetshire and Palliser series), it instantly became one of my all-time favorite books and Anthony Trollope was soon to become my favorite novelist. All of his fans know how he can create such realistic characters and make such pithy and still relevant observations about people and the upper/middle class human condition. Obviously, "Orley Farm" must be considered one of his best stand-alone novels. However, on re-reading the novel, I had a problem.

Initially, let me say that I still consider it to be a near-great book and Trollope rarely tops the number of dead-on observations he made about people here. My problem is that the major plot makes no sense, and the secondary plot is extremely frustrating to read in modern times. First, let's consider the major plot of the alleged forgery (SPOILER ALERT!!!!). Are we to really understand that a sheltered woman like Lady Mason could forge not one, but three signatures so accurately as to fool writing experts (which undoubtely would have been retained in both trials) as well as the signers themselves? The same person who apparently had never forged another signature in her life? I don't think so.

As far as the second major plot is concerned, I don't know about others, but it really started to annoy me that in 19th Century Victorian England, a man and a woman who were on the verge of getting engaged would spend virtually no time together, would not even kiss each other, and would refer to each other formally by last names until that magical post "pressure of the hand" moment when the woman finally agrees to become the man's wife. Perhaps it really was like that back then, but I can't tell you how many times I rolled my eyes in the scenes where Felix and Madeline would oh so tentatively try to express their feelings for each other. Sometimes I would literally shout out loud, "Oh for God's sake just run away to some remote part of the estate and roll in the hay a bit!!"

Still a great novel, but I liked it better on my first reading.

Orley Farm is characteristic of 19th century serial novels insofar as it provides the reader a great deal of enjoyment dampened by quite a bit of extraneous dross. There are numerous enjoyable plot twists, a few surprises and whole chapters that could be edited out without sacrificing a smidgeon of understanding on the part of the reader.

Main characters are often little more than caricatures of virtue or vice. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does temper any real development or evolution on most of the protagonists' part. Masons, Ormes, Furnivals, Stackleys and Duckwraths lolligag their way toward denoument, with good, not surprisingly, triumphant over evil. It's all very pleasant, but not much more than a good read.

For me, Trollope's Can You Forgive Her?, with its stubborn battle of wills between protaganists and an ambiguous ending was far more satisfying.