Name: The way we live now
Rating: 3.875 (8 reviews)
ISBN: 1870587219

Anthony Trollope

Skilton

The way we live now

The Way We Live Now (Wordsworth Classics)

Midveil

It took me 6 freaking months to finish this elephantine tome about greed, connivery, and marital aspiration... And I would have gladly spent another 6 months doing so. Since I've long exhausted Jane Austen, Trollope is an adequate if not more grim faced and money obessed substitue. (Felix Carbury, I'll be yer Ruby Ruggles anyday!)

Edwin Lang

Mrs. Hurtle, one of my favourite characters in Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, is a married, possibly widowed, American, who has come to England to claim Paul Montague as her husband. Montague resists, assisted by the insistence of his friend, mentor and father-figure, Roger Carbury, as he has fallen in love with a younger British girl, Hetta Carbury, whom unfortunately Roger himself wishes to marry. Mrs. Hurtle for her part, is an older woman, still very beautiful but one that she knows is beginning to fade. She persists in the pursuit of her beloved, and fails as we know possibly from the very start, but emerges nonetheless as something of a real heroine both for her adventuress spirit and for her kindness. But even the nominally bad people, like Augustus Melmotte, a key character in the book, are treated fairly by Trollope. While consistently described as a fraud and swindler, he is further described as a powerful man, ‘a look of power about is mouth and chin’ (and) although it redeemed his face from vulgarity, overall, he looked unpleasant, untrustworthy, purse-proud and a bully’. It is the essence of the story that the powerful and aristocratic wanted to be with him and share in his wealth. Only when doubt set in was he utterly abandoned. Initially I was somewhat appalled by how easily the characters, reasonably good men such as Paul Montague, and men in his class such as Sir Felix Carbury who were not good at all, were willing to use people to their own ends. Or, were oblivious. It is like they had the mentality of teenagers, wholly caught up in their angst. Montague for example was essentially betrothed to Mrs. Hurtle, and when in America, broke and ill, relied on her for his recovery and subsequently became her lover, friend and confidant. Overall then they were people who overlooked the pain of anyone who came their way, with the exception ironically of Mrs. Hurtle herself who did act kindly and thoughtfully in spite of the pain and drama in her own life. She was like that almost-nameless aunt who helped us when we were too young to appreciate it and then forgotten in the drama of our own lives. This was not just a book about ‘Ill-gotten wealth’, and thus about men like Augustus Melmotte, the fraud, thief, forger, that almost all of Britain falls for but more about people – in this tale it is the aristocrats of 1873 – who like Felix Carbury, claim more than what they are truly worth even though they have never done (or intend to do) a day’s work. Of these Mrs. Hurtle says, ultimately, and referring of course also to Paul Montague, one whom she still loves: ‘I hate swells. What is the use of them. They never mean a word they say. They are never more than half-awake and don’t care in the least for anybody’. In spite of all this it seems that for Trollope every character, even relatively minor ones like the silly and simple Ruby Ruggles who falls in love with the beautiful villain, Sir Felix Carbury, seems important and is treated fairly and with great respect. ‘When a man does not see his way clearly, you have to bind your character to another man’s character, and if it be sufficiently good, it will carry you through.’ One thing consistent through this long tale, is that no one is alone for long, except perhaps Augustus Melmotte who became too ensnared in his misdeeds and pushed everyone away. It seems whatever predicament one faces, say with Lady Matilda Carbury facing bankruptcy over her son Felix’s profligacy, she is buoyed up by a friend, and Trollope lauds this sense of community as well as the virtue of passive endurance: sometimes there is no alternative but to suffer for the sake of another. One somewhat odd sub-theme I think is that people want to be British. What Mrs. Hurtle also really wants, and perhaps this is in part fueling her passion for Paul Montague, is that she wants British life, the quiet security of living in the British countryside away from the hurly-burly of American life, or even the vibrancy of London life. To its credit America accepts everyone, as say does Christianity, with an openness and faith in the person’s ability to achieve and a belief in their inherent value; but it seems British life has to be earned and can be easily taken away. What is Australia (or early Canada for that matter) but rejected British. Melmotte and his family, and even beautiful, intelligent and kind Mrs. Hurtle could not make it in England. There is a sense then that British life is in its essence OK. It may need fixing in many places of course, as Dickens and other Victorian authors portrayed but it was and remains a system and a people that remained worthy of what humans are called to be. Perhaps because my own father emigrated to Canada from England, that I have retained an admiration for all things British, as I suspect many of us do. Would James Bond be the Bond we admire and love were he not a British commander? Would Dr. Who, albeit an alien, be famous on any soil other than that of the British – and while he loves all humanity, does he not have a special place in his two hearts for the British? Edwin

Jeni Enjaian

I do not understand all the four and five star reviews of this book. It's a decent book but nothing outstanding. On top of that it has (in my opinion) a lot going against it.
My biggest beef with this book is the fact that Trollope uses so many words to say so little. At over 800 pages this book is one of the longest I've read this year and close to one of the longest I've read ever. (It's definitely in the upper tier.) However, the narrative went nowhere, at least no place that could not have been predicted from the first chapter.
There are far too many characters, many of them introduced and dismissed with little introduction or discussion at their dismissal. Despite the fact that this book is over 800 pages long, Trollope spends far too little time on any one character for a reader to identify with any of them.
I did not like this book. Clearly, other people do. That being said, I cannot recommend this book to anyone except those who want to read through the classics.

The way we live now

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