Customer Reviews

The Struggles of Brown, Jones and Robinson

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With few readers for Anthony Trollope's greatest novels, it doesn't seem worth a lot of trouble to steer a potential customer away from what is surely his slightest book. But I'll take a moment to do so. Trollope is hardly ever uninteresting; he is a master of creating unique and formidable characters and letting them bang into each other and documenting the results. But this book is indeed a struggle. Possibly the satire is too much of its time, though I doubt it. Even if that were the case though, the mostly whiny and boring one-dimensional characers who inhabit this book are almost without any interest. Satire needs to be a bit over the top; this is tame and plodding stuff.

It is often said that lesser novels make better movies. The nuance, the vastness, the gentle description and evocative detail are often lost in the transfer to film. Masterpiece Theater has filmed a couple of Trollope's finer tales. After the long-ago and far-away 27 episode panoply devoted to the Pallisers, they've scrimped in length and offered pallid versions of great books. Maybe this novel, which, despite its flaws has a some vivid scenes and interesting bits, could, with skillful crafting, make a pleasant TV series. It sure didn't make a good read.