Such a nice family spat
Bestselling writer’s latest promises a roller-coaster ride but never gets past a polite stroll.
The publishers breathlessly announce that this is “the twentyfirst novel from bestselling author Joanna Trollope!”. It's about Rose and Tyler, who are in love, in their sixties, with five adult children between them.
Trollope has status: she’s an OBE, a trustee of the National Literacy Trust; she’s chaired the Whitbread and Orange Awards.
Here, she writes with kindness and gentility. No sex. No swearing, bar the odd
“bugger”. Cups of tea and polite family discussions abound.
Which is all fine, of course, but it means that the novel, pitched as a “roller-coaster” romance, really reads more like a quiet potter out to the letterbox. The drama that should be there is missing.
Her story is, at heart, about how money can curdle family relationships. Plenty to work with, then. And Trollope
Who really says “apposite” when they’re chatting – or, especially, arguing – with their family?
has zero time for the notion that money shouldn’t matter a jot, or the cliché that women are naive and flighty about their finances. I liked that.
But it lacks the zing and juice of a real family barney. Or a love story, for that matter. Nobody seems to really care how things panned out; there is no suggestion that family ties will be cut or even permanently poisoned. The stakes stay frustratingly, strangely low.
Meanwhile, odd things are going on with the writing. Here is a silly example that bugged me: one of the daughters makes a stack of chips – we’re talking crisps, not hot chips – then takes lots of little bites out of it, as if it were a sandwich. Fine. Points for detailing method of chip consumption. But chips don’t work like that: the whole sandwich would shatter at the first bite.
Other quirks jolted me out of the story’s pleasant amble, in particular Trollope’s habit of dropping lovely but unnatural-sounding words into dialogue. She only does it with the dialogue, mind, not the narrative. And she has all her characters do it. It clangs, every time. Who really says “portentous”, “reprimanded” and “apposite” when they’re chatting – or, especially, arguing – with their family?
This over-egging happens so frequently that it became an unintentional running joke, culminating when the ex-husband exclaims to Rose: “You were so docile once, so easy and sweet and now – well, now the word virago comes to mind.” Does it?
Gawd.