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Summary
Summary
When a man and a woman get married, things can get complicated. When they have children from previous marriages, "complicated" can become the understatement of the year. Joanna Trollope explores this truth, and reveals the laughter and tears, the tension and the tenderness, that live behind the statistics and stereotypes about stepfamilies-in her most involving and compelling novel yet.
Author Notes
Joanna Trollope was born in Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, England on December 9, 1943. She graduated from Oxford University. She worked on Chinese affairs in the Foreign Office in London for two years, and then became a teacher. In 1980, she became a full-time author.
Her first books to be published were a number of historical novels written under the pen name Caroline Harvey. These were followed by Britannia's Daughters: Women of the British Empire, a historical study of women in the British Empire. The Choir was her first contemporary novel. Her other works include A Village Affair, A Passionate Man, The Rector's Wife, Girl from the South, The Soldier's Wife, and Balancing Act. She was appointed OBE in the 1996 Queen's Birthday Honours List.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A skilled artisan of nuance and insight reveals a vigorous new edge as she explores the painful and contentious arena of stepfamilies. Here Trollope focuses on three women and two men who wrestle with new family configurations, along with their six children, ranging from eight to 28. When Josie marries Matthew, she already has experience as both a mother and stepmother, and she feels prepared for the impending battles with Matthew's difficult and bitter ex-wife, Nadine. But her patient determination crumbles as Matthew's three children turn sullen, mutinous and downright nasty to Josie and her eight-year-old son, Rufus. "Has it ever struck you that stepchildren can be quite as cruel as stepmothers are supposed to be?" Josie asks her sister-in-law, who later observes, "Everyone seems to expect so much of women it nearly drove you mad." Things seem at first to be a lot easier for Josie's ex-husband, Tom, an architect who has two other children besides Rufus (Tom's first wife died suddenly when his children were small). In no time Tom has a fiance, the calm and reasonable Elizabeth, whom Rufus (who visits Tom regularly) seems to like rather well. It is Tom's 25-year-old daughter, Dale, who can't bear to see her father passionately in love. The narrative moves back and forth between Josie and Elizabeth as the latter finds her new life in sudden turmoil; the spare, dramatic revelation of Dale's psychological hold on Tom injects Hitchcockian suspense. Though Trollope's wry intelligence supports the plot, her command of raw emotional contentÄher portraits of the children, for exampleÄis equally impressive. The urgency of her vision adds clout to this affecting drama. Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selections; Penguin audio; author tour. (Apr.) FYI: Berkley will publish The Best of Friends in March. Trollope will be Writer in Residence at Victoria magazine during 1999. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
From acclaimed Britisher Trollope (The Best of Friends, 1998, etc.), a bittersweet tale of the painfully divided affections created whenever a stepfamily is formed. An adroit choreographer of the baffled dance of the contemporary English family, Trollope now details the confusions caused as old marriages end and new alliances solidify. When Josie Carver marries Matthew Mitchell, a deputy-school principal, it's a second marriage for each. Both have children from their first: for Josie, it's eight-year- old Rufus, while Matthew has three'Becky, 15, Rory, 12, and 10-year old Claire. The previous marriages were mutually unsatisfactory. Josie, married to widower Tom, with grown children of his own, found him decent but dull. Matthew, hitched to volatile, self-absorbed Nadine, tired of coping with her eccentric behavior. But, though stepmothers are traditionally regarded as malevolent forces, stepchildren can also behave badly. And while the Mitchell trio found mother Nadine difficult to deal with, loyalty demands that they now make Josie's life difficult (as well as their father's). In fact, Tom's adult daughter Dale deliberately destroys his new romance with thirtysomething civil servant Elizabeth'because Dale never got over the death of her own mother when she was a child. The parents are also tugged by loyalties to their children. Josie's new marriage undergoes increasing strain as Nadine blackmails her children emotionally, the children fail at school, and Becky runs away. When Matthew's three move back with him, Josie feels not just even more stressed but alienated from Matthew (who takes his children's side instead of supporting her). Still, Nadine's emotional breakdown and a professional crisis for Matthew bring the family closer together, and Josie's Rufus begins to feel as much a part of the new family as his half-siblings. Family ties affirmed with warmth and wisdom. (Literary Guild Selection)
Booklist Review
In fairy tales, stepmothers are envious, selfish, and scheming. Yet real life, Trollope's new novel reminds us, rarely works out as predictably as children's stories. Sometimes the stepmother has the hardest time of all. Trollope, the popular British author of such best-sellers as The Best of Friends [BKL M 1 98], has a gift for creating realistic, middle-class characters, engaged in recognizable dilemmas. Her latest work opens with a wedding--a second marriage for both parties. This leaves two ex-spouses and a handful of children frowning in the wings, eager for opportunities to make trouble. The struggles for domestic peace are hard fought, hard won, and, in at least one case, not won. Everybody behaves badly; adults act like children and vice versa. There's not much that's particularly fresh about Trollope's material, but perhaps that is why her fans seek her out. Reading Trollope's work is like spending an afternoon with a friend, sharing problems over a pot of tea, and provokes in the reader the ultimately satisfying response of, yes, I've felt that way, too. --James Klise
Library Journal Review
Best-selling English writer Trollope, who has a following here as well, has the knack of rendering people's lives with infinite clarity and truth. Here she plumbs the effects of divorce and remarriage on children, as Josie and Matthew marry and try to create a family with her son and his three children. This is no Brady bunch, but the emotionally messy world of children (and adults) is so palpably real that the reader will know them as well or better than their own children. Those who have read Trollope (e.g., The Best of Friends, LJ 5/15/98) know that her endings are never simple, happily ever after, and one outcome here seems similar to that in The Men and the Girls. Nevertheless, her writing and characterization place her far above the commonplace. Highly recommended.Francine Fialkoff, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.