Books
She’s middle-aged, middle-brow and middle-class, but that’s enough compliments
by Paula Morris
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Situations and types, however, don’t make for a page-turning read, and Trollope is sometimes criticised for her topic-takes-all approach. At times in Brother and Sister, the glorious cause threatens to overwhelm the cast, dividing the characters into two opposing teams – scarred-by-adoption and scarred-by-proxy. But the author insists she’s passionate about telling a story (“Once the situation is firmly in my head, I make sure it doesn’t take over the narrative”) and resists what she describes as “cosy, predictable fiction with happy endings”.
Certainly, she has a gift for creating nuanced characters of all ages – if not of all races – and her best books, like Marrying the Mistress and Other People’s Children, are wry, well-observed evocations of the messiness and hypocrisy of middle-class life. Unlike some popular writers, Trollope doesn’t patronise her characters or lean too hard on plot, and she’s not afraid of digging into dark
corners, revealing all the unpleasant, unspoken resentments lurking in the homes of the unsalted-butter-and-
sauvignon-blanc set.
After all, why confine yourself to Aga-owners when so many more people have a chopping board, a corkscrew and a lavender-scented laundry basket full of emotional problems? Whether the setting is rural or urban, this is true Trollope country: the supper table, the school run, the “grisly party, full of the exaggerated, strained jollity of middle-aged people pretending that they weren’t middle-aged”.
She believes that the “human condition is fascinating and complicated”, but Trollope’s large-scale success depends on devising emotional twists in situations that resonate because they’re familiar. Even when she ventures offshore – to the American South, for example, in her last novel – her readers still feel at home.
Familiarity, however, breeds a certain amount of critical contempt. “My sales figures are a problem for a lot of reviewers,” comments Trollope archly. So is her readership: however many letters Trollope claims to get from male readers, this is women’s fiction, subject to the same sneers as women’s television and magazines. And Trollope’s focus is relentlessly domestic; even when a book is set in London, the door is closed on all the urban grit because she’s most intrigued with what goes on in private. As a writer who has claimed to enjoy defending unpopular social categories – like the “other woman” and the stepmother – she knows that the most intense battles take place over dinner or during strained telephone conversations, or at times simply within someone’s unhappy head.
Critics who enjoy chastising Jane Austen for Not Mentioning the War turn their attention to Trollope every year or two and dismiss her as middle-aged, middle England and middle-brow. She used to worry, she says, that reviewers were contriving an “unbelievably false image” of her work as too tidy and twee. Unsurprisingly, she resented being cast as fiction’s prim maiden aunt – not as brainy as A S Byatt, racy as Jilly Cooper or hip as any number of ageing lads. Because, rather than radiating a reassuring quality, Trollope’s novels revel in conflict and uncomfortable situations. They subvert our expectations, sparkle with detail and dialogue, and reveal the shifting dynamics of contemporary families. Also, her characters behave rather badly, and that’s why they’re such a pleasure to read about. If there’s nothing more frustrating than other people’s children, there’s nothing more compelling than other people’s problems.
Brother and Sister won’t disappoint the most ardent Trollopians, but the more picky among us will find it rather second-tier. Many of the book’s British reviews characterised Brother and Sister as a series of earnest case studies bogged down in therapy-speak and heavy-handed psychological commentary. The criticism isn’t entirely unjustified.
Trollope’s child characters are usually pitch-perfect, but poor 12-year-old Ellen sags under the weight of too many plot-heavy lines. “I’m fed up … with Mum [being] so out of it because of you,” she shouts at David, “that she goes from being so much of a mother we can’t breathe to absolutely no mother at all!”
David’s wife, Marnie, is even worse. “You’ll find experience dictates your knowledge,” she tells Ellen. “And validates it.” True, Marnie is both smug and Canadian – but this doesn’t mean she has to talk like Dr Phil.
Trollope suspects that some of this criticism may be informed by the very British suspicion of what one character calls “all this soul-baring”, but Trollope insists that “even the English talk about being in denial or seeking closure now”. And anyway, grumpy reviews are a
permanent dark cloud hovering over her literary landscape. “My mother said to me: there’s possibly nothing left to say about your books! A lot of reviewers have run out of steam. The snippier comments were invariably female and middle-aged. They’re seeking originality in their reviews.”
Do reviews matter? “The sales have taken no notice of the reviews,” says Trollope. But does she take notice? “If I get a critical review from somebody I admire, like Fay Weldon, I’ll take it very seriously. If it’s a kind of staff reviewer who is longing to write a novel themselves, it’s rather a different category. I’ve learnt to distinguish between what is valid, constructive criticism that I can use to improve the next book, and what is to do with a reviewer’s personal baggage. I read them much more cursorily now. The dear readers have made sure I don’t need to.”
