I finished reading this yesterday. Anthony Trollope is a lesser-known Victorian period author. Or at least lesser-known today. He was a big deal back in his day. I recently decided that Victorian literature is my favorite. And I am happy to have found another good Victorian author to read.
This was a good book and very well written for my tastes. Trollope can get wordy at times but so do many of the authors from the Victorian period. If you can write well then write all you want I say. Who am I to say you shouldn't have written so many pages/chapters? This book was just over 800 pages and was exactly 100 chapters. I enjoyed most of it. The first 200 pages were slow-going as the story was trying to get established and the last 100 pages were a slight let-down. But the other 500 pages in the middle were definitely very solid.
This book had a slew of characters with intertwining story lines dealing with corruption and dishonesty in both the professional and personal lives of many of the characters. It felt very Charles Dickens-ish but instead of dealing with the poor, lower-class it dealt with high society knavery.
The title to this book is perfection. Despite being written in the 1870's, I felt like the book may as well have been about how we live today. So it was an accurate title for how they lived then and continues to be an accurate title for how we live now with the greed, scheming, lack of morals, selfishness, etc.
Although I liked it, I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone. You have to enjoy reading old, classic, lengthy novels.
Here are several lines that I liked:
"[C]ensure from those who are always finding fault is regarded so much as a matter of course that is ceases to be objectionable."
"[S]he had in her countenance a full measure of that sweetness of expression which seems to imply that consideration of self is subordinated to consideration for others."
"Even the attempt to plough the ground was a good work which would not be forgotten."
"[S]he had become punctual as the hand of the clock."
"'[P]ray, don't put it off; you don't know how many slips there may be between the cup and the lip.'"
"The horror of every agony is in its anticipation."
"There is nothing like wiping out a misfortune and having done with it."
"Men will hardly go to heaven... by following forms only because their fathers followed the same forms before them."
"The world perhaps is managed more justly than you think"
"There is no duty more certain or fixed in the world than that which calls upon a brother to defend his sister from ill-usage."
"A liar has many points to his favour, - but he has this against him, that unless he devote more time to the management of his lies than life will generally allow, he cannot make them tally."
"One seems inclined to think sometimes that any fool might do an honest business. But fraud requires a man to be alive and wide awake at every turn!"
"Those who depart must have earned such sorrow before it can be really felt."
"He had so often lied to her that she had had no means of knowing whether he was lying then or telling her a true story."
"[I]njustice must of course be remedied by repentance and confession."
"It was her pride to give herself to the man she loved after this fashion, pure and white as snow on which no foot has trodden."
"It wants two men to make a quarrel."
"[I]f he loved the girl it was his duty as a man to prove his love by doing what he could to make her happy.... What did love mean if not that?"
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