Buy it from Amazon
| First Written | 1875 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | UK |
| My Copy | library copy |
| First Read | December 15, 2014 |
The Way We Live Now
You either like Trollope or he bores you to tears, and apparently I flip back and forth between camps. This is the most Trollopian thing I've read - it's funny, satirical, and lightly polemical (for its time). But it's also a slow-moving society novel, where you need to pay attention to Victorian etiquette and occasionally google fine details of how the peerage worked.
This one is also a takedown of the literary and financial worlds of the day, and they seem pretty fresh today.
Noted on January 1, 2015
She must have known - she did know - how poor, how selfish a creature he was. But her gratification at the prospect of his splendour obliterated the sorrow with which the vileness of his character sometimes oppressed her.
Quoted on January 1, 2015
The woman was affectionate, seeking good things for others rather than for herself; but she was essentially worldly, believing that good could come out of evil, that falsehood might in certain conditions be better than truth, that shams and pretences might do the work of true service, that a strong house might be built upon sand!
Quoted on January 1, 2015
As the high mountains are intersected by deep valleys, as puritanism in one age begets infidelity in the next, as in many countries the thickness of the winter's ice will be in proportion to the number of the summer musquitoes, so was the keenness of the hostility displayed on this occasion in proportion to the warmth of the support which was manifested. As the great man was praised, so also was he abused.
Quoted on January 1, 2015
Throughout the world, the more wrong a man does, the more indignant is he at wrong done to him.
Quoted on January 1, 2015