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Title: Phineas Finn by Anthony Trollope, W. J. MacCormack ISBN: 0-460-87497-7 Publisher: Everyman Paperback Classics Pub. Date: 01 August, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.9 (10 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: More great stuff by an underrated Victorian novelist
Comment: PHINEAS FINN is a book of many virtues and one unfortunate flaw. The flaw lies in the ending, of which I can say nothing here without giving away a bit of the plot. Let me just say that the ending is a bit of a "tack on." Trollope himself confessed in his AUTOBIOGRAPHY that he botched the ending, and explains that when he decided to write a second novel starring Phineas Finn, he awkwardly had to correct the mistakes he made in the ending of the previous book.
The virtues of the book lie in part in its presentation of the social complexities of the British upper class in 1860s. While a political history of the period could explain the various ins and outs of the major pieces of legislation dealt with at the time, Trollope shows us how many individuals at the time actually felt about these issues from the inside. In this way, Trollope performs a service that no historian ever could. Virtually all the major political figures of the time, from Gladstone to Disraeli appear under thinly veiled aliases.
But the true heart of the book is Trollope's great characters. I absolutely love Jane Austen. She is one of my two or three favorite writers. But sometimes I find the enormous propriety of her characters to be a tad tiring. In these way her characters, as magnificent as they otherwise might be, sometimes seem a little less than fully human. Trollope's characters, on the other hand, often fail to act with complete propriety. They do improper things, and feel improper emotions. Our hero falls in love with one woman, then another, feels attraction to another, and falls in love with yet another, and in general fails in his role as a great romantic hero. A woman marries someone she doesn't love, yet retains feelings for another, and suffers from the threat of a bad marriage. Another woman is attracted to two men, and must decide which. Two close friends love the same woman. I find all this emotional complexity to be extremely compelling.
Trollope's most compelling and interesting characters are nearly all female. In the book, Lord Chiltern seems cardboardish and unbelievable, the title character likable but not terribly vivid. But whenever Lady Laura, or Madame Goesler, or Violet Effingham take the stage, the novel comes to life. This is not unique to this novel. In nearly all his books, Trollope's most compelling characters are female.
If we could give half stars, I would give this one four and a half stars because of the weak ending. But I will stick with five rather than four, partly because the rest of the book easily makes up for the weakish ending, and one can view the excellent PHINEAS REDUX as the real ending of the novel. Either way, I heartily recommend the novel.
Rating: 4
Summary: For those who are patient readers
Comment: I find it hard to explain my fondness for Trollope to my friends - one of them, an ex-English major, makes gagging sounds when I talk about my love for long, Victorian novels. I guess you have to have patience, and like long, drawn-out books that can take months to read (I do.) I didn't love Phineas Finn in the same way that I loved Barchester Towers - a book I wished never ended - but it's still enjoyable. One hallmark of Trollope's style is to make long digressions into the lives of characters - some of them not central to the book- but that is what makes him interesting to me. Phineas Finn is nominally about the rise to power and the fall from power in Parliament of a young Irishman. It also concerns his search for "love" (or at least a woman who will marry him), and it goes into the travails of several of the female characters. The one part that American readers may have difficulty with is the details of Parliament and how it works - I was very confused by it. But, all in all, I enjoyed the book. For me, reading Trollope is like looking into a very detailed snowglobe - there's a whole little world going on there that you can just sit back and watch. Trollope sometimes speaks directly to the "dear Reader", which may put some off, but which I find charming. He also has a very subtle humor that shows up in his comments about certain of the characters.
Rating: 4
Summary: The Lady That's Known as Max
Comment: The chances are that "Phineas Finn" will not be the first or the second or even the third Trollope novel that you read. Several Barsetshire novels and "The Way We Live Now" are likely to get pride of place. This is probably fair enough. But that fact says more about the merits of the other books than of any defect in "Phineas Finn." It isn't perfect, but it is a very satisfying novel, indeed - perhaps the best "political" novel since Disraeli's "Sybil," It is "political," that is, not in the sense that it tackles big issues, as "Sybil" does - "Phineas Finn" gives a once-over to voting rights, tenant rights and the Irish but it's all somewhat perfunctory. No: it is "political" in the sense that it is about the lives and fortunes of a public man, and of those who offer help or hindrance on the way.
The core elements of the plot are fairly familiar: callow youth sets out to conquer the world and finds out that it's trickier than it looks. Impetuous young woman enters into marriage full of high hopes only to find out that she is stuck with a bad deal. But then, you don't read Shakespeare for plot. I wouldn't say that Trollope is Shakespeare. Still, it is impressive how much by way of character and situation both writes can milk out of a structure that is almost haphazard.
Other commentators have also noted that the ending to "Phineas Finn" is weak, but I don't see that as a crippling vice: I'm hard put to think of a really good novel whose ending is not weak.
One of the many notable facts about the cast of characters is its great range: we have the home folk in Ireland. We have a marvelous portrait of Finn's landlord, the law-copyist, and his employer, the successful barrister - in each case, along with their wives. We have a narrow-minded country squire and a feckless young playboy. And we have a sketch, brief and incomplete but still convincing, of the grandest peer in the realm.
Aside from the sheer breadth of reach, the other thing to be said about the cast is the extraordinary range of interesting women. Phineas, devil that he may be, catches the fancy of at least one back home in Ireland and three more in London. Trollope is often good with women and here in particular he shows remarkable sympathy and comprehension of what they are up against. And not least of the three is, of course, the remarkable Madame Max Goesler, who is surely in contention for recognition as the most remarkable Trollope character at all-for a lady named Max with a touch of a moustache, she is a Victorian sexpot.
It would be fun to read this in comparison with Henry Adams' "Democracy" another novel of politics in more or less the same period, though on another continent. Meantime, I'm clearing time to read the rest of Trollope's "political" novels, in the hope that he maintains the high standard that he has set here.
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Title: Can You Forgive Her (The Penguine Trollope, vol. 17) by Anthony Trollope, Stephen Wall ISBN: 0140430865 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 June, 1975 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope, W. J. McCormack, Blair Hughes-Stanton ISBN: 0192834665 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 December, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Phineas Redux by Anthony Trollope, John C. Whale, F. S. L. Lyons, T. L. B. Huskinson ISBN: 0192835599 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Duke's Children by Anthony Trollope, Hermione Lee, Charles Mozley ISBN: 0192835386 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Prime Minister by Anthony Trollope, David Skilton ISBN: 014043349X Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 April, 1996 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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