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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Tale of Two Marriages,
By James Paris "Tarnmoor" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Prime Minister (The Palliser Novels) (Hardcover)
THE PRIME MINISTER is in many ways the story of two marriages. At the pinnacle of the social spectrum is Plantagenet Palliser, the Duke of Omnium, who has been asked to form a coalition government and becomes Prime Minister of Her Majesty's Government. Married to the ambitious Lady Glencora, now Duchess of Omnium, Planty finds himself to be too thin-skinned to deal with the criticism that inevitably follows when one is at the top. Also, he is not really a people person: the glittering social life that his wife seeks leaves him cold.At the middle end of the social spectrum is an unknown, a handsome, ambitious young man thought to be wealthy who marries into money when he ties the knot with Emily Wharton. Unfortunately, Ferdinand Lopez is not wealthy, and is, in effect, a gambler with his own and other people's money. Emily's father never quite accepts Lopez because "he is not one of us," but is more or less shamed into acquiescence by his daughter. When he refuses to hand over a large marriage portion to his daughter, Lopez begins to unwind and sink under his debts. This is the fifth of the six Palliser series of novels in which Anthony Trollope examines the political life of England at the parliamentary, cabinet, and ministerial levels while introducing numerous characters who criss-cross this series and enter as well into some other of his novels. The real strength of the series is the relationship between the Pallisers themselves. Planty is a bit of a stick-in-the-mud, but straight as an arrow and revered by his fellow party members. Glencora is bright, witty, and ambitious where Planty is dull, taciturn, and plodding. Yet their relationship somehow works. Emily Lopez née Wharton is a little difficult for most modern readers to stomach. She is the ideal of the long-suffering Victorian wife who follows her unloving husband through to the very end, denying herself an iota of pleasure and fulfilment in the process. At the same time, one must realize that Trollope wrote this some century and a half ago when the prevailing morality of the time demanded that sort of irritating passivity in a wife. It is best to read the Palliser novels in sequence, beginning with CAN YOU FORGIVE HER? and proceding on to PHINEAS FINN, THE EUSTACE DIAMONDS, PHINEAS REDUX, THE PRIME MINISTER, and finally THE DUKE'S CHILDREN. While not quite Proust, the 4,000+ pages of the series will take a while to complete, but are well worth the effort.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Trollope,
By
This review is from: The Prime Minister (The Palliser Novels) (Hardcover)
The plot is not quite as intriguing as The Way We Live Now or The Eustace Diamonds, but it carried me along just fine, and of course the writing is classic Trollope- witty, well turned, and highly observant of human nature.
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