Way We Live Now Book

Consisting of 100 chapters and nearly a 1,000 pages in length, this satirical saga was one of the last great Victorian serials, and it was savaged by critics when it first began being periodically published in 1875. After years in the British colonies, Trollope returned to London and the South East only to be shocked by what he saw was the immorality and dishonesty that had seemed to go hand-in-hand with the growth of capitalism. He put together this, his longest work, taking no prisoners, satirising business, politics, religion, the literary world, the media, the upper classes etc. and he also did not hide way from writing about prejudice, snobbery, domestic abuse, gender-based double standards, white collar crime and what is essentially male privilege!

This book is tremendous, the characters although emblematic of certain traits are still well rounded and very lifelike, and I felt as much pity, as I did horror, at even some of the worse characters. The attack on the idle rich is scathing, showing a world of buffoons swanning around smoking, boozing and gambling their lives away, and all this when they're not out there trying to get rich heiresses to fall in love with them. There are at least eight(!) entwined major story lines, but the coup de grace is the story line centred around one of the richest men in London trying to swagger his way to respectability, by lavishing money everywhere, seeking a place in Parliament... by using underhand white collar crime, and that's when he isn't busy trying to force his daughter to marry into aristocracy for his own betterment.

But what really makes this such a tremendous read is the whole being the sum of so many parts and being so meticulously and tightly plotted. You start off reading about these 30-40+ people from the mostly entitled past where millions live in deep poverty, and by the end of the book not only do you know each and everyone of them, you care about them! 10 out of 12, Five Star Read.

The killer thing is that nearly every thing he wrote about then, is pretty much still going on - white collar crime involving huge amounts of funds, that everyone goes along with as long as they get their cut; the insularity of the church; domestic abuse; gender-based double standards; privilege; the literary elite and paid for reviews; laddishness... Indeed the only thing that has changed in 150 years is that patriarchy has much less power in some house holds!