Reviews for A passionate man

The average rating for A passionate man based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-06-03 00:00:00 Stephen Villa The writing was good, but the story was not one that I enjoyed. There is this nice suburban family; father is a doctor, mother is a part-time school teacher and home maker, there are three young children. They suffer from 'living in a village neurotic syndrome' meaning they are bored and worried about the "littleness" of their lives. On the advice of and following the example of the Scottish grandfather who sent his son Archie away to school, they also send their nine year old son away to boarding school which gives young Thomas more problems than just the village malaise that effects the adults. Then the same very proper Scottish grandfather, who is very close to his son Archie, falls in love. Archie doesn't like this, he feels left out. When the new woman, Marina, comes to the house to meet everyone; they all fall in love with her. Then the grandfather dies and the whole shebang goes all Prince of Tides. We are supposed to buy the premise that Archie having an affair with this woman was just what the family needed to wake it up and send it out of its complacency. My opinion of that premise? Utter and complete rubbish. And the way that the wife Liza is portrayed takes her from competent and happy wife to making her a ghost of her former self, a woman who no longer believes her skills and love are worth much, her husband views her as a pitiful person. We are supposed to believe that the marriage will be better after the upheaval. After all, they are chucking the village and moving to Scotland. ..........and this fixes things because moving to Scotland does what?? I pretty much hated it, as I expected I would. Bumped up to a 2 star rating because the writing, especially scenes with the children, was good.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-01-02 00:00:00 Ann-Margret Wicklund I've read Joanna Trollope's novels for years and generally think I liked the earlier ones more than the later books. When I was adding all my reading & book records to Goodreads & LibraryThing recently I was surprised to find this book popping up as unread as I thought I had read all of the earlier books at least. I expected to suddenly remember the story part of the way through and realise that I had read it before but I'm pretty certain this one was new to me. Or completely forgotten which is just as good! Despite reading all of them I always start off these books thinking they are going to be rubbish... they are full of characters who appear at first glance to be rather stereotyped examples of the upper middle classes, people with big houses, good jobs, stable relationships, long family histories verging on the aristocratic, perfect children effortlessly kept in private schools etc. But what I enjoy is that things are never quite as they seem and that Trollope plays with the stereotypes and rather makes fun of her characters along the way. She nearly always writes about women and despite the title this book is mostly about the women surrounding the men. I never did figure out which man was supposed to be the passionate one, there are two obvious possibilities as far as I can see; and Liza Logan, wife of one of them, and daughter-in-law of the other was a far more interesting character than either. Published in 1990 this feels rather like a period piece now.