The Way We Live Now

Darker than the Barsetshire books, but with the same way of getting at the humanity of his characters. Delightfully complex, wickedly funny ... it may look like a long read, but the time just flies right by. ( )

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope
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Most of the characters here embody vices of the era, embroiled in dishonesty and immorality. If they bribe, lie, steal, gamble, swindle and sell their daughters off to the best bidder. If they are women, they have less power over money and land, but have their own set of rules to break. In the midst of this satire there are several virtuous individuals who live with honesty and integrity despite the egregious behavior of most of the other characters. There is no way to like people such as Melmotte, a coarse, apparently extremely wealthy man of uncertain origins (rumours abound) with a daughter of marriageable age who seems to have a mind of her own despite her father’s browbeating and physical beating.
Three stars means I liked this but didn’t love it or really like it. It’s hard to say how much of this is because I read it as a seasonal read, and so usually read five chapters per week unless I got behind a week and had to catch up, and how much of this is because it is difficult for me to truly love a novel so beset by such nefarious sorts. It wasn’t always easy to love even the most pristine, honest characters, but I do have to say that I quite enjoyed, well I don’t want to say who these are, but suffice to say that I did like at least one and grew to like a few others. Trollope certainly didn’t have a good opinion of Americans, and that colours some of this tale, which is set primarily in London, England (not to be confused with, for example, London, Ontario or New London, Ct, neither of which is in this satire.)

If satires are your thing, particularly Victorian ones, this may well be right up your alley. It’s long. In the Oxford University press paperback edition I borrowed from the library (Of course, after all this time, I had to borrow a second copy just like it on my daughter’s card as we can only renew once, so 8 weeks is the limit) each of the two volumes is paginated beginning with page 1, and they were each close to 500 pages.
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A great book for our times. The nineteenth century did a great job with novels about scoundrels and money schemes. For some reason, I wasn't familiar with this Trollope book. I love Trollope, but he wrote so many novels, it's difficult to know where to land. This book was recommended in the top 40 by Susan Hill in another book I'm currently reading (listened on audiobook over a long, lazy weekend with lots of driving thrown in). One interesting story line in this sprawling novel is its American characters. Basically begins and ends with characters from America. I suppose there is something buried there about scoundrels. But basically the Americans aren't totally dished. And they end up surviving. And one of the emerging female characters ends up going to America in company with the strong and interesting American woman (and the American partner in the great raileway scheme in the story). I have to love the railway scheme--a railway from Salt Lake City to Vera Cruz in Mexico. The American woman killed a man and fought a duel in San Francisco. But is a sweetheart in England. But she's on her way back at the end. Definitely recommend. ( )

This was my first Trollope, but it won't be my last. This novel, which is not part of either of Trollope's series, is wonderfully complex but intensely readable. It tells the interlocking tales of several individuals and families, all of whom find themselves connected in some way to the rich financier of the moment, Augustus Melmotte, who mysteriously appeared in London a year or two earlier, and whose wealth, while readily apparent, is equally mysterious in origin. Trollope's strength is in his characterizations of a dozen or more people, and in his ability to interweave the different threads of the plot. He also has a delightful talent for putting a character down in just a simple sentence.

The story starts out with Lady Carbury, a widow reduced in finances, who has just written a book entitled Criminal Queens and is writing to editors of London papers in the hopes they will review it favorably, leading to big sales and thus money for her. She needs money because her son, Sir Felix, is a hopeless wastrel, always getting drunk, gambling, and being irresponsible in every way possible -- but she loves him. She dreams of marrying him off to Marie Melmotte, the daughter of the financier, for her money. (However, Marie's father wants her to marry a lord, in particular Lord Nidderdale.) She also has a daughter, Hetta, who she has no interest in other than wanting her to marry her cousin, Roger Carbury, who lives in the country off the land that others farm for him in the conventional English way; however, Hetta loves another, Paul Montague.

Paul is also in love with Hetta, although they have not told each other of their love. He is in a way a protege and dear friend of Roger's and has been back and forth to the US where he has invested his small inheritance in a firm run by his uncle and a man named Fisker. Early in the novel, Fisker comes to London to enlist Paul in getting Melmotte to invest in, and run the London branch of a new enterprise, a railway to run from California to the eastern coast of Mexico. Paul is dubious both about the new enterprise and about approaching Melmotte, but gives in to Fisker. Under Melmotte's leadership, the railway thrives, although the reader is suspicious that he is just selling shares that have no basis in the actual ownership of the railroad. (In Zola's later Money, railroads and manipulated share prices also were a feature.) Partway through the book, an American, Mrs. Hurtle, who claims to be a widow and who was involved with Paul in the US, arrives in London to stake her claim to Paul, to whom she was engaged.

Another family important in the plot is the Longestaffes, a financially strapped old land-owning family that includes the ne'er-do-well son Dolly (for Adolphus) and the desperate to be married daughter, Georgianna, as well as a blustering father and a cowed mother. They enter into a financial arrangement with Melmotte that does not end well. There is also a strand of the plot involving Ruby Ruggles, the granddaughter of a tenant farmer of Roger's, who catches the eye of Sir Felix; despite being engaged to an extremely reliable (but apparently extremely boring) local man, she ends up running off to London so she can see Sir Felix, staying there with an aunt who is also, in one of the coincidences that seem to crop up in Victorian literature, renting a room to Mrs. Hurtle. There are many other minor characters and plots, but these are the main ones.

All these characters, and the plot, revolve around the remarkable character that is Melmotte: his meteoric rise, which includes hosting a party for the visiting emperor of China and getting elected to Parliament, and of course his inevitable fall. Throughout, Trollope is able to characterize (and satirize) much of English upper class society as it comes in contact with much that it disdains (merchants, bankers, people from other countries, Americans) but nonetheless is attracted to because of the money. The way they lived then is not so different from the way we live, or indeed how people have always lived, although Trollope seems to sense the downfall of the traditional English way of life (or at least the upper class part of it). The people most full of life in this book are the outcasts: Melmotte, Ruby, and Mrs. Hurtle.

In places, the plot seemed almost soap opera-like to me, with a complicated elopement plot, dissolute young men gambling at a club, a fight between Ruby's betrothed and Sir Felix, Mrs. Hurtle's rumored killing of a man who tried to rape her, and more. Despite this, I am very impressed by Trollope's ability to seamlessly weave together a multitude of plots, and to create mostly flawed characters, some of whom I came to appreciate and some of whom I wanted to slap. Unlike more modern novels, Trollope ties up all the loose ends at the conclusion of the book.

One aspect of this novel that I particularly appreciated was that the women are full-fledged human beings, and develop over the course of the book. Marie Melmotte, in particular, starts off seeming wishy-washy but grows into a strong, practical, young woman. Some people have commented on the antisemitism in this book, but it is clearly the antisemitism expressed by the characters, typical of England at the time, and not an expression of Trollope's feelings.

As a side note, the Modern Library edition that I read had notes at the back but they were referenced only by page numbers; this drives me crazy, because I don't know when to look for notes and miss some that are interesting and find there are none for items I wish were annotated.

"The Way We Live Now" is a victorian novel that takes place in the 1870s. Similar to many novels of that era, it is about the changing times… but with an added twist about financial corruption. A victorian “Bernie Madoff" shows up in London flaunting his wealth and creating as much gossip and intrigue as Jay Gatsby did in Fitzgerald’s novel of New York in the 1920s.

In this novel, the villain's name is Augustus Melmotte - a sociopath with a huge ego. His life goals are to be elected to Parliament, have his daughter marry a Lord, and of course, accumulate as much wealth as possible. He is a swindler and total fraud, wooing society with his ostentatious spending, extravagant entertaining, and arrogant demands for respect and acceptance.

Amidst the smoldering financial scandal, Trollope weaves a satirical tale of London’s upper class society. While the snobby landed gentry are breaking with tradition to fuss over the crude foreigner Mr. Melmotte - hoping that will enhance their own financial situation - the young women in London are having romantic trysts and rebelling against the conventional rule of marrying an appointed suitor. As the plot unfolds, each bold move away from tradition is explained away blithely with statements like the old cliche, “Everyone is doing it, so why shouldn’t I?”, and as though their actions could not be helped, “we belong to a newer and worse sort of world.”

After reading Trollope’s "The Eustace Diamonds” several years ago, I commented in my review that I doubted I would read any other Trollope novels. Despite the amusing plot, I was appalled at the blatant anti-semitism. It was difficult to determine if Trollope himself was anti-Semitic or was merely expressing the sentiments of the elite British society. Then I decided to give him another try with what has been referred to as Trollope’s “opus” - The Way We Live Now. Unfortunately, it was more of the same… distasteful descriptions of the Jewish characters who turn out to be the villains of the novel. There were however, equally disparaging remarks about the American characters as well. Perhaps the British elite were narrow-minded, despising anyone who was not from their own ethnic background.

Trollope did excel in character development and provides the reader with an assortment of richly drawn characters. They range from traditional conservative, stoic Roger Carbury… to his spoiled, rude, over-indulged nephew Felix Carbury who spent most of his time drinking, gambling, and chasing women. There is Ruby Ruggles - the vivacious working class orphan who wants adventure. And Paul Montague who gets entangled with an unscrupulous American widow “those crazy Americans” who is rumored to have killed a man.

Perhaps if I had read "The Way We Live Now" at an earlier time in life, I would have given it the highest rating, but after a while, many of the British period novels seem redundant, and my tolerance for the excessively wordy 800 page literary composition about stuffy Brits, untrustworthy greedy Jews, and suppressed women has pretty much waned for now. ( )

Read during Summer 2004

I'm not sure I would have made it through the maze of characters unless I had seen the recent miniseries. A sprawling Victorian soap opera and social commentary, heavy handed at times and it was a bit depressing to have the only morally upright character be the priggish Roger Carbury, obessed with his cousin Hetta and intensely petty about his ward's love for her. I was intrigued to see that Paul Montague, Hetta's love was made much more 'good' in the miniseries, except for one glaring change in his trip to Lowestofe with Mrs. Hurtle. The miniseries pulled out the salient points but the depth in the novel made it a good read that might have been deadly on TV. I'm still not sure I'll dig into Barchester Towers in the near future, though.

The change to Victorian/Edwardian England brought about through the amoral influence of new money. Vices turn virtues - the seven deadly sins are no longer deadly, nor considered evil where selfishness rules. A very long work worth reading. It is good as a retrospective to uncover the beginning of our current poor moral environment. It was meant as a wake-up call, but obviously went unheeded. ( )

I have been interested in Victorian novels for most of my reading life. Early in that life, before I knew what a Victorian novel was, I fell in love with Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre. The other early love of my reading life was for the novels of Charles Dickens that began with a reading of Oliver Twist that so enveloped my imagination that I brought it along in my backpack to Boy Scout Camp in the north woods of Wisconsin. Never mind that there were no merit badges to be had for reading Dickens, or any other nineteenth century author. My life-long infatuation with Bronte and Dickens and my interest in Victorian literature was continued in my teens with the discovery of the novels of Thomas Hardy, especially The Return of the Native. I fell in love with the intelligent Clym Yeobright and his difficult relations with the alluring Eustacia Vye (a love I more recently found that I shared with the fictional Holden Caulfield, perhaps the only thing I shared with him). The sensationalism of Hardy in his novel, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the education of Pip in Dickens' Great Expectations, and others satisfied my teenage reading desires and furthered me on the road of Victorian literature. It was not until my post-college years that I would come to appreciate the intelligent novels of George Eliot and the later Dickens along with those of Anthony Trollope. It has been during more recent decades that I have included reading and rereading Middlemarch, Bleak House, and the Barsetshire novels in my traversal of Victorian literature.

Most recently I have been reading Anthony Trollope's The Way We Live Now, a novel written late in his career. Unlike his early novels, this was a critique of the England of his age, including a broad-based attack on Victorian class, finance, politics and culture. Set in the 1870s it tells a story of two families struggling to adapt to the changing times. The Carburys are one family with Roger Carbury, the squire of Carbury Manor, leading them both morally and financially. The other family is represented by a young Paul Montague who becomes entwined in the shady financial dealings of a confidence man named Augustus Melmotte. Financial collapse entraps all of the families in some way and provides a sense of realism as the story is based on real-life events. In some ways reminiscent of the later Dickens' social novels, Trollope's novel is presented as a more realistic slice of life, foreshadowing the turn toward naturalism near the end of the century. Most of the characters are quite unlikable and there is little incentive to sympathize with them when they are taken in by the vulgar predator Melmotte. While there is humor in The Way We Live Now, it is a sharper and darker humor than that which made Trollope's early novels such a delight to read. However, the novel retains a relevance for our own day when financial scandals are still in the headlines. ( )

One of the best books I've read this year, see my full review at: http://livritome.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/trollopes-the-way-we-live-now/ ( )

Classic Trollopian view of greed, envy, and lust in Victorian England. Rather depressing overall, but nevertheless a great novel by one of my favorites. ( )

I loved it. I read Trollope's Barchester Chronicles twenty or so years ago and was greatly entertained by their parody of English country life. This book I picked up because it was #1 (!) on a _Newsweek_ list of "What to read now" that was published last summer. An inspired choice!

The shady financial dealings described herein -- which are a parody of English life ca. 1870 -- make an interesting parallel for the highly-leveraged economic house of cards prevalent in today's "developed" world... ( )

4½ stars- Wonderful satire of life in 1870s England for impoverished lesser nobility. Trollope does such excellent characterization that even knowing what a scoundrel Melmotte is, you still can admire his pluck in facing the City & members of the House of Commons after it becomes common knowledge that he is in trouble.

I think that Trollope must have himself believed that
"'Taking society as a whole, the big and the little, the rich and the poor, I think that it grows better from year to year, and not worse. I think, too, that they who grumble at the times, as Horace did, and declare that each age is worse than its forerunner, look only at the small things beneath their eyes, and ignore the course of the world at large.'"
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Although this book includes the required Victorian love story, The Way We Live Now focuses more on the actions of Augustus Melmotte, a foreign financier who is turning heads of London society, with his amazing wealth and ability to make money. But actually, Melmotte is swindling investors by selling shares in a non-existant railroad company. This is such a timeless classic, not only in the large cast of characters with funny and endearing personality quirks, but also in the relevance this story holds, especially with the recent global financial crisis. Definitely a enduring and enjoyable classic. ( )

Such a treat to read. Many characters. Many predicaments. But all brought together so deftly. And I never once got that compensatory urge to pitch the book against a wall in lieu of smacking the whiny little mouths within. This book also explained the recent financial crisis to me as Trollope deftly mapped out the workings of invisible money in many invisible hands. ( )

Back in grad school, I watched the BBC version, which is also excellent (David Suchet, you amazing, amazing man!). I decided to read this chunkster (1024 pages!) and I’m so glad I did. It is so rich with complex characters and wonderfully intricate-yet-gloomy plot that weaves itself into this gorgeous satirical tapestry. There are few characters that are truly likable, but each has their good and bad points, making them all very realistic, even if you don’t necessarily want any of them as friends.

Many people find books from the 19th century hard to get through, but I think Trollope is one of the most accessible. Even though the book is long, it’s not that difficult to read, and the complex plot is surprisingly easy to follow. I find Dickens’ characters to be more Good and Bad, whereas Trollope’s characters are multifaceted and intricate. One of the things I like about Trollope’s writing is how he moves from character to character — it keeps the book from being bogged down by one point of view.

The best part about this book is that the title and themes apply to 2012 as much as they did to 1875 — we live in such a similar world, full of people trying to make a fast buck at the expense of other people. Everyone looks out for themselves, makes decisions based on their immediate desires, and many pay the consequences (though…not enough to be 100% satisfying.)

Also, Paul Montague: MAN THE HELL UP.

Read my full review here: http://letseatgrandpa.com/2012/07/14/book-review-38-the-way-we-live-now-by-antho... ( )

Not one of Trollope's most funny books, and lacking in particularly lovable characters, this is still a wonderful big satire of society, and unfortunately timeless. ( )

Bought June 2012 ( )

This is without doubt the most readable book by Anthony Trollope that I have yet come across and I found it really enjoyable. I had read the Barchester Chronicles and some of the Pallisers series, but the difference here was that I was not constantly being tripped up by my lack of knowledge of Anglican Church affairs or the inner workings of the Houses of Parliament. Politics do feature in the book but not in any dominant way.
The Way We Live Now is very much a character driven book and Trollope has created some very strong individuals including some splendidly well drawn women. I loved the bold American, Mrs Hurtle, who is inexplicably attached to the rather weak Paul Montague and then there is Marie Melmotte, helpless pawn of her father's matchmaking plans, but with a mind of her own. We meet Mrs Carbury, forced to scratch a living by her pen and desperate to establish her children in the world. The men are less vivid with the exception of Mr Melmotte whose dilemmas have elements of almost Shakespearean tragedy .
Trollopes themes of corporate greed and corruption in high places speak very strongly to the modern reader and the ambition and range of the book mark it out as one of his best, and well deserving of it's high reputation. On the plot level, characters' financial affairs and various romances keep the reader on tenterhooks about the outcomes until the very end of the novel. Something of a sour note is struck by a level of anti-semitism expressed by some people , perhaps reflecting the time at which the book was written, but unpleasant to read. However it must be said that Trollope deals fairly with Ezekiel Brehgert, a Jewish banker who is by far the most honourable character in the book (with the exception of the old-fashioned Roger Carbury) and who deals with people in a dignified and level headed way.
Of those books by Trollope that I have read, this is the one that I would recommend to someone coming fresh to his work, quite definitely a good read. ( )

Trollope's analysis of greed in Victorian England. A wise author in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Melmotte, the villain, could be drawn from Bernie Madoff. Life definitely imitates art. Trollope lacks the social outrage of Dickens, but he doesn't fall nearly so much into the stereotyped characters. Both great ( )

One of my favorite books. Ever. ( )

At the heart of this novel is mysterious, charismatic Melmotte, the 'Great Financier'. His origins are unknown, his dealings felt (and, in time, known) to be shady to the point of illegality. The other central character is Felix Carbury, an unpleasant, idle young man who attempts to marry Melmotte's daughter, Marie, for her money. Melmotte, though, wants his only child to marry someone with a title.

Felix, his mother's treasure, loves no one. Marie loves him. No one loves Melmotte - he is considered vulgar, and he is universally unpleasant to everyone he knows - including his daughter, whom he beats when she disobeys him, and even goes so far as to forge her signature.

The novel revolves around money - the making of it, the losing of it, the marrying for it. Finally Melmotte over-reaches himself: having achieved one of his ambitions of being an MP, he is revealed for the swindler he is, and kills himself. His death is the making of Marie: she has her father's business acumen without his dishonesty. When she decides to marry the American, Fisker, it is on her terms. She is hard-headed but not bitter - sensible in her attitude to money, and to life, now that she's recovered from her infatuation with Felix. Felix, however, remains at the end of the book quite as awful as he was at the beginning, but at least he is packed out of the way in Germany, leaving his mother free to marry Mr Broune. Lady Carbury's and her daughter's marriages are the only genuine love matches in a book dominated by people whose morals have been corrupted by money. [Nov 2004] ( )

Most of these Victorian novels are badly in need of an editor, and this one is no exception. It's repetitive, and a bit on the soap opera side. Austenesque in its subject matter, but without the lively banter. Instead, what humor there is is dry; one might find the foolishness of multiple characters entertaining, if it were not for the xenophobic and anti-Semitic tendencies so often found in English literature of this era. Too much is made of its continuing relevance regarding financial misbehavior; it does not redeem the book so much, and in fact it's very much a period piece. The language is formal, stilted, and carefully crafted -- a product of its day. ( )

Considered Trollope's masterpiece this book centers around a brillant cast of characters with inter-connecting lives. It deals with many social and political issues of the time period across all classes. One of my favorite things about Trollope's books this one especially, is that he always portrays his women honestly and gives them strong independent voices. He really understands and accurately portrays all of the feminine issues of the day. I loved this book tremendously and I would have given it all five stars and more but I was a bit disappointed with the ending. Rogar Carbury is one of my favorite male characters that I have been introduced to recently and I wished he could have gotten a better ending. It was well worth the read even though some people might be a bit daunted by its size. ( )

My first Trollope, and certainly one of his best. ( )

It is truly surprising how much of The Way We LIve in 2010 is the same as The Way We Live in 1875. Trollope's great social satire is about money, and the pervasive way capital and the seeking of it warps and forms the lives of all, those in the City, those in the clubs, in the country, in publishing, politics and newspapers, and those seeking the proper marriage. But my favorite little modern touch is Trollope's note that young women smell of pachouli, which I thought was a feature only of my day.

It's a bit long, in the spacious way of the Victorian novel, but marked by some remarkable portraits and acts of sympathy for characters who are flawed at best.