Framley Parsonage

Readers have many choices as to which is the best of Anthony Trollope's nevels. The Pallisers, as a group are all favorites, and most readers like Phineas Finn the best even though he makes sense only if you read the preceding novels in the series. For stand-alone novels, modern taste seems to prefer The Way We Live Now, and I admire it very much. Framley Parsonage is within the group of novels about the imaginary county of Barsetshire. This is a deceptive story. It appears to be the story of a country clergyman who stupidly helps out a friend by guaranteeing a loan. Very soon the story becomes the hopeless love story of a young woman who knows that she can't marry the local lord. Then you are involved with the London antics of a marble-hearted beauty. Then, switch, a rich spinster asks a poor doctor to mattu her for the comforts she can afford to give him. And switch again, the Lord wants to marry the maid, and she refuses. And then, the proud mother of the Lord asks the maid to kindly marry her son. This deceptively calm story has all the convolutions of a modern soap opera. It entirely anticipates the technique of soaps, and was in fact, a novel that was published in installements of three chapters each over a hundred thirty years ago. Quite aside from the extrordinary technique of this novel, is the charm of the characters. Not one is an unreleaved villain, and not one is without the selfishness that most humans have mixed with their virtues. Every character here has dimensions that a modern novelist can envy. This under-rated book deservives new recognition as among the best of Trollope. The print in the paperback edition is a trial of squinting and adjusting the lights, so prefer one with larger type faces.