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Can You Forgive Her? (English Library) by: Anthony Trollope List Price: £8.99 City Travel Guides Price: £6.74 You Save: £2.25 (25%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 823.8 EAN: 9780140430868 ISBN: 0140430865 Label: Penguin Classics Manufacturer: Penguin Classics Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 848 Publication Date: June 27, 1974 Publisher: Penguin Classics Studio: Penguin Classics Sales Rank: 43848 Related Items:
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Editorial Review: Synopsis: Alice Vavasor cannot decide whether to marry her ambitious but violent cousin George or the upright and gentlemanly John Grey - and finds herself accepting and rejecting each of them in turn. Increasingly confused about her own feelings and unable to forgive herself for such vacillation, her situation is contrasted with that of her friend Lady Glencora - forced to marry the rising politician Plantagenet Palliser in order to prevent the worthless Burgo Fitzgerald from wasting her vast fortune. In asking his readers to pardon Alice for her transgression of the Victorian moral code, Trollope created a telling and wide-ranging account of the social world of his day. Customer Reviews
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 Rating:  - ImpressiveThis is the first book of the so-called 'Palliser-' or 'political' novels by Anthony Trollope, and if the next 5 volumes are as good as this one that would be nothing short of amazing. If you've read the Barsetshire-chronicles, you'll immediately recognize the inimitable Trollope-style, with its painstakingly detailed analyses of the characters' feelings and emotions. And therefore, remote in time as the settings of these novels may be, ever so much is recognizable and relevant even in the 21st century. I found myself constantly thinking 'I would have felt so too', sympathizing with some characters and disliking others because all of them are painted so life-like you'll feel you've met them in the flesh. In this particular novel ... Read More: Rating: - A masterpiece! utterly brilliant!"Can you forgive her" is the best Trollope book I have ever read and although I am far from having read them all, I must have been through at least 12 of them. In "Can you forgive her?" spirited Alice Vavasor cannot reconcile herself to the idea of marrying the man she truly loves because his sedate style of life doesn't agree with Alice's idea that people who have knowledge and opportunity should make something useful of their lives.As a woman she cannot take an active part in political life and is therefore determined to be the helpmate of someone willing to take risks and to serve his fellowmen. She becomes engaged to her cousin whose political ambitions she respects but finds herself distraught at having promised herself to a man she cannot ... Read More: Rating: - Passionate, wise and surprisingly entertainingI started reading the Palliser novels after seeing a review describing them as "still the best description of British political life". They do, indeed, contain a lot of politics - particularly the later volumes, "Phineas Finn" and "Phineas Redux"; and this remains astonishingly contemporary. But the most up-to-date aspect of this extraordinary series of books is the sexual politics, as a series of vividly drawn women and men struggle to find happiness between social convention and sexual attraction. "Can You Forgive Her", which features the headstrong Lady Glencora Palliser and the intense Alice Vavasor both torn between desirable rakes and steady pillars of society, is to my mind one of the best of the series. It's also very funny, alive with ... Read More: Rating:  - Complex charactersAs one reviewer below has mentioned, this book does indeed take a while to grab your attention. For me it took at least 300 pages to really get going but once it did there was no putting it down. Trollope's great trick is to get you to care about people you only half like and partially approve of. He very skillfully shifts your sympathies around from one character to another until by the end of the book you percieve them all fully rounded, with faults and virtues equally. You can even manage a small corner of sympathy for the most clearly 'bad' character in the book George Vavasor. The other great thing about Trollope is his enormous understanding of women, their social position and the choices they face. What would he make ... Read More: Rating: - Trollope begins his Palliser novels.Having almost completed chronicling the ecclesiastical affairs of Barchester in 1864, Anthony Trollope began a further series of six novels, this time depicting the English political scene of his day in general and the members of the Palliser family in particular. This one, the first of the six novels, carries a title that carries no hint of any political content whatsoever. Indeed, the "her" of the title is a perverse young lady, Alice, who refuses for almost 900 pages to marry the man whom all agree is so eminently suitable. Alice is one of at least four women that Trollope presents, all of whom struggle to answer the question, "What should a woman do with her life?" As usual with his female characters, Trollope is a sensitive, sure ... Read More: |
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