Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing)

“It’s a light – and slightly tedious – read for a work normally considered to be ‘literature’.”

This book has been set on my shelves for nearly thirty years, languishing away, unloved. It was by chance I picked it out as my next read. Trollope, for all his fame both in his lifetime and during the twentieth century, is rarely mentioned these days and so he’s never really been on my radar. This book did appear (according to Wikipedia – I have no reason to doubt it) in The Guardian’s 2009 list of 1000 books that everyone should read. I’m not sure I would rank it as a must-read to be honest, for reasons I shall lay out shortly.

Trollope’s imaginary world of Barsetshire, of which this book is the second in his chronicles, is an idyllic Midsomer Murders, traditional-BBC-audience kind of a place. This story deals with the comings and goings of the ecclesiastical world in a town where nothing much happens other than large quantities of gossip about almost nothing.

The story mainly centres around Mr Slope, the new bishop’s even newer chaplain. An odious and pompous man, Slope makes his schemes and attempts to have his way even against the equally pompous bishop’s wife, Mrs Proudie. One of Slope’s ambitions is to win the widowed Mrs Eleanor Bold as his wife.

As you can tell from the names, there’s something of a preachy, allegorical nature to Trollope’s novel. You can look at many of the names and get an instant understanding to the type of character that will unfold in front of you. Just as the worries of Barchester themselves are not to be taken at all seriously, nor are we meant to take the novel itself too seriously. It’s a light – and slightly tedious – read for a work normally considered to be ‘literature’.

For me, I cannot stand Trollope himself, who is effectively a character in his own book. The author interjects himself at regular intervals. Unforgivably, he tells us what will, or will not, happen in the future of the story – utterly unnecessarily and totally loathsome. He breaks the spell of the story by constantly reminding us that this is a novel, a work of fiction that he has conjured up or, at times, that he has manufactured – breaking with or keeping traditions within novel-writing on a whim. He heads off into preachy commentaries about the characters rather than letting us decide for ourselves what to think of them. It is all, frankly, rather ghastly.

And yet…and yet…

Despite spending the first third of the book or more rolling my eyes and finding it all rather tedious and inconsequential, somehow, the characters all began to grow on me. I warmed to Mrs Bold and her father – the nicest of the characters. I got agitated when Slope started to look like he was getting his way. I adored the mischievous nature of Signora Madeline Vesey Neroni – a beautiful but crippled woman who has a siren-like nature with all men she chooses to play with (indeed, she drew me in). And I was rather fond of her brother, Bertie Stanhope who is, in many ways, the most open and honest of all the characters in the book.

The last 50-100 pages were, for me, page-turners. It wasn’t that the storyline had suddenly become exciting. There was no Tarantino-like change in the kind of story. It was just I was totally invested in the characters. I liked them. I wanted to see the good guys exonerated and the bad guys excreted. On the whole, I got my wish. I still had to wade past Trollope’s pointless and humourless interjections, but even those did not spoil my enjoyment of the story as a whole.

And so I have something of a dilemma. I do not rate Trollope’s abilities as a narrator at all. But I can’t deny that his imagination brings forth some cracking characters. I always state that the mark of a novel is how much I care about the characters and by that standard I have to rate this novel highly. But do I care about them enough to read the remaining four books that come after this (or the book that comes before it)? No. Sorry, but I’ve had enough of Trollope’s unnecessary and preachy monologues. I don’t fancy another 200 pages of drivel only to be sucked in by interesting characters so I have no choice but to endure another 200 to find out what happens to them. I’m glad I’ve done this one and, overall, I’d say I enjoyed it. But I guess you can have too much of a ‘good thing’.

My Verdict:

You can buy me a coffee if you like! More accurately, you can help support my work either as a one off or monthly if you really want to show your love…

Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 7.9 million times.

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