Well, okay, one reader has spoken. Probably she does not represent an eager horde of Trollope lovers, jostling each other impatiently as they await my thoughts on Marion Fay. But let's talk about Marion Fay anyway.
It's a late Trollope novel, published in the year he died. Some of its elements are memorably thoughtful and mature. He does a marvelous job showing us how an ordinarily ambitious stepmother might become a wicked stepmother, at least temporarily. He builds on questions he first raised at the end of the Palliser Chronicles; here, too, two children of a widowed nobleman want to marry outside their class. But for the most part the young people are more skillfully drawn here, and we understand more of what they are thinking.
I say "for the most part" because I'm not sold on the characterization of Marion Fay herself. She's like a refugee from a Dickens novel -- a little too perfect for plausibility. And her strand of the plot is a little too Old-Curiosity-Shop for me; I thought it veered into mawkishness, which is not a flaw I have observed in other Trollope novels.
Another flaw I'd never noticed in Trollope's other books: I wasn't a fan of the pacing. It seemed to me that perhaps he decided in advance to write it in three parts, but when he got to part 3 he realized he'd painted himself into a corner, with too many chapters and not enough plot remaining. Chapter 45: Lord Hampstead Experiences Angst. Chapter 47: Lord Hampstead Writes Letters About His Angst. Chapter 49: Lord Hampstead, Now With More Angst. It's not as if each one of the 900+ pages in The Last Chronicle of Barset is awash in richly plotted excitement, but at least the reader never has to pause and think very hard about whether she already read this chapter because it's so much like the one that came before.
Despite its shortcomings, I'm glad I read Marion Fay. Lots of interesting contrasts: the post office clerk's strength of character versus the nobleman's weakness, the machinations of the loathsome and lazy CoE clergyman versus the straight shooting of the dutiful Quaker characters. Trollope sends up the nobility, showing us their enthusiastic reactions to a newly conferred title; he sends up civil service workers in his snapshots of office life. It wouldn't be at the top of my list of favorite Trollope novels, but overall I enjoyed the time I spent with Lady Amaldina Persiflage's friends and relations.
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