Customer Reviews

The Way We Live Now (Oxford World's Classics)

5 star:		(5)
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Often considered Trollope's greatest novel, this satire of British life, written in 1875, leaves no aspect of society unexamined. Through his large cast of characters, who represent many levels of society, Trollope examines the hypocrisies of class, at the same time that he often develops sympathy for these characters who are sometimes caught in crises not of their own making. Filling the novel with realistic details and providing vivid pictures of the various settings in which the characters find themselves, Trollope also creates a series of exceptionally vibrant characters who give life to this long and sometimes cynical portrait of those who move the country.

Lady Carbury, her innocent daughter Henrietta (Hetta), and her attractive but irresponsible son Felix are the family around which much of the action rotates. They are always in need of money and Lady Carbury writes pap novels to support the family (and Felix's drinking and gambling). In contrast to the Carburys, and just as important to the plot, are the Melmottes. Augustus Melmotte, who has come from Vienna under a cloud of financial suspicions, has acquired a huge estate for himself, his foreign wife, and his marriageable daughter. Boorish, but determined to become a leader of society, Melmotte provides moments of humor for the reader, though he is scorned by an aristocracy which is nevertheless beholden to him for his investments.

When Melmotte becomes the major investor in a plan to build a railway from California to Mexico, Paul Montague, a handsome businessman who has invested in a railroad in America, arrives in town. A ward of Roger Carbury, cousin of Felix and Hetta, he soon finds himself in love with Hetta--and in competition with Roger for her hand. Felix courts the Melmottes' daughter for her fortune, and she falls in love with him while he dallies with a local domestic worker. Investors dash to buy shares in the Mexican railway, with their investments ending in the sticky hands of Melmotte, who has bigger plans.

Often addressing the reader directly, Trollope fills the novel with action and subplots which illustrate a wide variety of themes, often depicting his characters satirically to illustrate the social, political, and financial ills of the day. Ahead of his time for his depiction of the lively, intelligent woman whose role is defined (and limited) by her social and financial position, Trollope creates a number of resourceful women--and a number who are willing to do almost anything to marry a wealthy man. As is customary in Victorian novels, the good are rewarded here, and the evil are punished, but Trollope's characters, unlike those by Dickens, for example, usually control their own destinies. Broad in scope, thoughtful in construction, complete in its depiction of 1870s' England, filled with wonderful characters, and absolutely engrossing to read, The Way We Live Now is one of the great novels of the nineteenth century. Mary Whipple

The Warden, #1, Barsetshire Chronicles

Barchester Towers, #2, Barsetshire Chronicles

Doctor Thorne (Barsetshire Novels), #3

Doctor Thorne (Barsetshire Novels), #4

The Small House at Allington, #5

The Last Chronicle of Barset (Penguin Classics), #6, Barsetshire Chronicles

This is one of Trollope's best books, it involves several storylines, and they are each very interesting and kept my interest all the way through--it has so much to say about life and society that is still true today, and is full of wonderfully believable characters--I can't say enough about this book, except to hope more people will read it and discover Anthony Trollope--I can't see why he wasn't more highly regarded, he is so much better than Dickens in my opinion--in fact I can hardly read Dickens!!

Considered Trollope's masterpiece this book centers around a brillant cast of characters with inter-connecting lives. It deals with many social and political issues of the time period across all classes. One of my favorite things about Trollope's books this one especially, is that he always portrays his women honestly and gives them strong independent voices. He really understands and accurately portrays all of the feminine issues of the day. All of his characters, men and women have faults and none of them are perfect so it is easy to become so involved and committed to them. I loved this book tremendously and I would have given it all five stars and more but I was a bit disappointed with the ending. Rogar Carbury is one of my favorite male characters that I have been introduced to recently and I wished he could have gotten a better ending. It was well worth the read even though some people might be a bit daunted by its size.

Despite 135 years of "progress," Trollope's novel remains as topical today as it was then. Stock scams, public relations manipulations, social climbing, successful scoundrels, MacMansions...you name it and you will find it in the pages of this acid-dipped tour through the worst of English upper-crust life so mirrored by the recent real estate bubble of our own. As often in Trollope, the "good guys" may be just too good for words, but the bad guys are simply fabulous! Put aside an hour a day for about a month, and you will be well rewarded.

In "The Way We Live Now", Trollope essentially denounces the "get rich quick" mentality beginning to permeate the English wealthy and upper middle classes in the mid to late 19th century, as evidenced by rampant speculation in public corporations about which the public typically knew very little. Exactly the same scenarios were playing out in the U.S. at the time and eventually, as we all know, corporations came to dominate the public consciousness in the 20th century and continue to do so today, with corruption and greed often accepted as being synonymous with high standing in a corporation. The events described in this novel would have rocked the entire nation of England for years had they really occured back then. Today, these kinds of events have become almost commonplace around the world with dozens of major corporate scandals revealed over the last ten years. It surprises few today when yet another scheme/corporation fails and erases millions or even billions of dollars in shareholder wealth. The mortgage speculation of American banks was the last big set of scandals but you can count on more coming, with companies in Europe leading the charge.

Trollope's heroes (Roger Carbury, Paul Montague, et al) are generally unwilling to engage in such risky speculation and/or simply don't get excited by it, and wish to make their livings traditionally. Trollope's antagonists (Augustus Melmotte, Felix Carbury, et al) are driven by their desire for wealth and some even become consumed by it, ultimately paying a heavy price. Interwoven through this well-developed story of the traditionalists vs. the get-rich-quickers are a couple bizarre love stories and other family drama.

The first half of the novel kept me glued. The characters were realistic, narrative & dialogue were both superior, and the plot was exciting. Trollope here is at the top of his game regarding style and plot development. I preferred this first half to Trollope's own "Barchester Towers".

The second half didn't quite manage the suspension of disbelief the first half did. Trollope clearly didn't quite have the end fleshed out when he began this serial novel. He ended up kind of painting his characters into situations from which unconvincing plot devices were needed to resolve their plights. Some things became too predictable. But I must say that though the second half may have been a relative disappointment, it's still written better than 99% of novels written today. It's certainly worth the read as it wraps things up nicely (maybe too nicely).

Read the drama for fun, but pay attention to the message and perhaps take action from it. As they say, whoever wins the rat race is still a rat. A rat working for shareholders like Joe Sixpack and the large institutional investors. But since the institutional investors are often public companies too, at the end of the day any public corporation is in fact run by Joe Sixpack. I wonder how excited I should be getting about making it to the top of a company that works to help my boss Mr. Sixpack, whom I've never met, get a better return on his investment?

Read it and learn from it. Nuff said.

Although I had read several earlier Trollope novels, I did not know of this 1875 book, which some consider his masterpiece, until seeing a DVD of the BBC TELEVISION ADAPTATION of 2001. Simply in terms of plot, the latter may be superior. For one thing, the role of the great financier, Augustus Melmotte, especially as played by David Suchet is even more dominant. In creating this larger-than-life Victorian precursor of, say, Bernie Madoff, a man for whom credit builds on more credit to create a monstrous bubble of emptiness, Trollope was referring to scandals of his time, but the character is a magnificent creation in his own right. Not for nothing did Auden praise Trollope as "the novelist who best understands the role of money." Not that money has ever been far from the minds of any nineteenth-century English novelists, not least the romantic Jane Austen: "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife." In this novel, there is scarcely a romance or would-be romance that is not affected at some level by considerations of money, though Trollope grades his sympathies very neatly in inverse proportion to the nakedness of the financial motive.

In terms of romance, the BBC adaptation is unquestionably better. Hetta Carbury, who Trollope himself later described as "weak and vapid," is brought to splendid life by Paloma Baeza. Her lover, Paul Montague (Ciaran Hinds), so weak in the book that Trollope must constantly apologize for him, is given a real profession and emerges as an activist on the side of justice and integrity. On the other hand, Trollope remarked that "the interest of the story lies among the wicked and foolish people," and he was right, succeeding especially with the halfway characters who may be foolish, but are not downright wicked. Good though the performances are in the video, Trollope's own treatment of the American adventuress Mrs. Hurtle (whom he repeatedly refers to as a wild cat) and Melmotte's daughter Marie are far richer and more nuanced. Marie especially, who does indeed start out foolish, develops into one of the more interesting female characters in nineteenth-century literature; I kept reading eagerly ahead to find out what would become of her (since this was left open in the adaptation); I can't say that I was especially satisfied, but I certainly cared.

One source of interest in the book that you don't get from the adaptation at all is Trollope's commentary on current events. Apart from one brief use of the phrase in the movie, there seems almost no reason for its title, but in the book "The Way We Live Now" is almost the main subject. There is not a chapter goes by without reference to recent shifts in morality and social acceptability, or to changes in the spheres of politics, the church, publishing, and of course finance. The old ways are represented by two country dwellers in Suffolk, some miles from London. Roger Carbury, the fortyish local squire, is the touchstone of all that is right and clear-thinking, though he is not above some bitter jealousy when he is beaten in his suit for his cousin Hetta's hand. His neighbor John Crumb, the local meal merchant, is shown as so stolid as to be "incapable of two concurrent ideas," yet he also is goodness personified, and this tortoise does win his particular race. Trollope also contrasts a whole host of drones and fops, impoverished aristocrats, and hypocritical snobs against the new middle classes, men of commercial substance (or at least apparent substance) who manage the affairs of the nation. But of especial interest to American readers will be the importance he gives to that young country in counteracting the hidebound ways of English society. Trollope's Americans may be a little brash and lack polish, perhaps, but they have a more egalitarian social system, and they get things done. Sometimes it takes a wild cat to do it: "Mrs. Hurtle, for all her faults," he concludes, "was a good-natured woman." And he doesn't just say so; he shows it!

Viewed purely as a narrative, this long book may overstay its welcome at 100 chapters. But as a witty account of the mores of its time and an early view of transatlantic relations, it is eminently worth reading.

I listened to tis book on audio, all hundred chapters of it. It started well, full of verve, biting satire, and originality. But after about half way it began to tail off. It became humdrum, repetitive, lacking in originality. by the end I was thinking, I suppose I'd better keep goint to the end to find out who marries who - not that I really care too much any more.

Like many books at that time, The Way We Live Now was published in episodes - sort of like a modern soap opera. This explains the enormous numbers of chapters. Presumably by the time the first chapters were being published the writer hadn't written the end of the book - probably hadn't even decided what the ending was going to be. And it shows. Towwards the end I had the impression that even the writer himself was getting bored, just wanting to get through it and finish the contracted number of episodes before thankfully laying down his pen.

Overall a disappointing end to a promising beginning. Barchester Towers is far better, in my opinion!

I thought the description sounded really interesting and I'd heard so many good things about it. But in the end, I was disappointed. It was like a cross between Charles Dickens and George Eliot for me, and I am not a fan of those authors. For one thing, the book was way too long. There were some parts of it and characters that I liked (Roger Carbury and Mrs. Hurtle) but even storylines I was into in the beginning felt draggy to me towards the end.

I found both Paul Montague and Hetta Carbury to be rather insipid and weak. I came to like Hetta a little more by the end as she was able to stand up for herself a little, but I never understood what she saw in Paul. And what did Mrs. Hurtle see in him either? I found her backstory fascinating and wanted to know more about her. I would definitely have chosen Roger Carbury if I were Hetta.

I have ordered the book; the DVD was enjoyable I thought the acting was tremendous. I could not understand the need for Melmotte's wife. She seemed quite rigid and unresponsive until the very end where I felt she had some emotions.

The footnotes are incorrect in this novel, which I am enjoying immensely. Some of the pages that have stars indicating a footnote in the back of the book are not listed. Some of the words have broken type.