The Other Family [Import] [Hardcover]

Joanna Trollope (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2010

From the superb storyteller and quintessential women's fiction author Joanna Trollope comes a moving and wonderfully observed new novel about two families who must confront love and loss as an inheritance hangs in the balance.

The trouble with dying is that you're not around anymore to explain what you meant to the people who love you…

Richie Rossiter, a crooner and piano man still popular with his loyal fans, is anyone's idea of a lucky man. In his forties, he abandoned his first wife and son in Newcastle for a young woman who believed she could bring him stardom in the south. Not only does Chrissie rejuvenate his career, she gives him twenty-three years of happy domestic life and three lovely daughters.

But then he dies suddenly, and at his funeral Chrissie and her daughters cross paths with Richie's other family for the very first time. And the uneasy truce that has held over the years between Richie's past and his present loves breaks down into open animosities, fanned by certain bequests he has made and certain secret loyalties he has kept. Grief, loss, jealousy and love rewrite the relationships of both families in ways Richie never could have imagined.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

An unexpected line in a will leads to complications and new beginnings in Trollope's eminently readable latest (after Friday Nights). The novel opens outside London with the sudden death of Richie Rossiter, a once-popular pianist whose star has been on the wane for some time. Chrissie, Richie's partner for the past 23 years, is shocked to learn that Richie has left his piano and his early musical estate to his other family—Margaret, the wife he never divorced, and their son, Scott, now an aimless bachelor. Soon after, Chrissie's youngest daughter, Amy, becomes fascinated with her father's original family and his humble roots, leading to a tentative friendship with her half-brother that may result in new opportunities for both of Richie's families. At times, the grieving characters—particularly Chrissie—seem excessively distraught about trivial matters, but Trollope's keen ear for dialogue and her pointed development of secondary characters keep the novel on the safe side of overwrought, while the hopeful if too tidy conclusion highlights the sometimes surprising possibilities that can emerge in the wake of grief. (Apr.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

When popular crooner Richie Rossiter dies, his longtime partner, Chrissie, is left bereft and angered that she never got Richie to divorce his first wife and marry her, providing security for her and their three daughters. In addition, money becomes a serious issue since she was his manager. Then she learns that Richie amended his will to leave a treasured piano and the rights to songs he wrote early in his career to his first wife, Margaret, and their son, Scott. Chrissie, who refused to ever fully acknowledge Richie’s first family, is left to wonder whether he actually loved her, while Margaret finds herself enormously relieved to discover that she was remembered. The prolific Trollope skillfully engineers a heartwarming story of renewal and hope as she brings the two families closer together. Scott reaches out to Chrissie’s youngest child, providing her with both comfort and a link to her dad’s childhood in Newcastle. Hurt feelings and issues of abandonment vie with the impulse to forge ahead and to heal in this intelligent and moving novel of modern family life. --Joanne Wilkinson --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Random House Canada (March 2, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307357473
• ISBN-13: 978-0307357472
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,514,922 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Joanna Trollope has been writing fiction for more than 30 years. Some of her best known works include The Rector's Wife (her first #1 bestseller), A Village Affair, Other People's Children, and Marrying the Mistress. She was awarded the OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honors List for services to literature. She lives in England.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The perils of modern family life..., May 10, 2010

By 

S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Other Family: A Novel (Paperback)

Trollope's forte is what I think of as domestic dramas: in her dozen or more novels, her characters (usually women of a certain age, from their 30s to the 50s or 60s) confront some kind of crisis in their lives that forces them to re-examine all they had taken for granted. Her focus is the family, in all its myriad permutations. She has a keen eye for both the poignant and the absurd, yet never allows her narrative to topple over into sentimentality or banality. These are stories of messy lives and human frailties -- not literature a la Jane Austen, certainly, and at the same time, these are the same kind of people and the same kind of outwardly-seeming banal domestic situations that Austen tackled in her time. Trollope, when she's in top form, has a keen eye for character that propels her novels from 'chick lit' territory into something better.

Happily, in this novel, she seems to back in form after several disappointing (to me, at least) novels. (I never managed to finish her last, Friday Nights.) The focus of the story is Chrissie, who lives in London with her long-time partner, Richie Rossiter, an older man and an aging pop star that women of a certain age still swoon over, and their three daughters. She wears a wedding ring -- one that she bought for herself, since Richie doesn't want to divorce his first wife, Margaret. (Although he was happy to leave her behind in Newcastle when he headed south with Cassie in search of new horizons and new audiences, decades earlier.) Left behind also was Richie's son, Scott, who becomes the focus of Margaret's life. Margaret also wears a wedding ring -- a real one -- but has no husband to go with it. And then Richie dies suddenly of a heart attack (this is where the book begins), leaving two unanticipated bequests to his old family and a large hole in the center of his new family.

In Trollopian tradition, Richie's will ends up forcing the two families together in a way that both resist and resent, and requires all of them to find a new way to exist. Without realizing it, all five have slipped into ruts of various kinds, and in an effortless way, Trollope points this out while allowing each to make the first tentative discoveries and take the first steps toward change.

It's a predictable kind of novel if you've read her books before, but still satisfying and an enjoyable weekend read. It's a solid 4-star book, extremely well-written. Nothing revolutionary, but recommended to anyone who has enjoyed some of Trollope's better novels (mostly her earlier books; my favorite remains A Spanish Lover: A Novel)

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not best book she ever wrote..., April 12, 2011

By 

Book Maven - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Family: A Novel (Paperback)

I am about halfway through this book and I'm not planning to finish it. I have read almost every prior book Joanna Trollope wrote and have liked them a lot...but not this one. I don't find the characters engaging--they're too one-dimensional, too undeveloped, too flat. I just don't care enough about any of them to bother to finish the book.

The story has the potential to make a good novel, but it misses the mark. The intertwining of the two families and how they all reacted to Richie's death could have been an engrossing tale, but it just doesn't get off the ground. There needs to be a little more introspection and a little less whining and self-pity.

But I'll probably read her next book. She's capable of brilliant writing. Nobody writes a masterpiece every time.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars GAH!, September 20, 2011

By 

Kayla (Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Other Family: A Novel (Paperback)

I couldn't even make it through three chapters and was bored. After the first chapter of boredom I told myself to stick it out and it would get better, but I just couldn't get myself to read this book when I have a list of other books I want to read!