Quick little thing

I mentioned I had started reading Anthony Trollope's "Miss Mackenzie"?

It's good. It's really good. I'm enjoying it a lot. It has the arch Trollope humor, lots of sort-of-society foibles. He pokes some fun at various ecclesiastical, full-of-themselves types. There's a fellow that might be a cad, or he might wind up "saving" Miss Mackenzie (not that, I would say, she needs it) from being a spinster.

Fundamentally, the story is this: Miss Margaret Mackenzie has spent much of her life caring for first, her infirm father (her mother being dead) and then an unwell brother. The other brother has, the rest of the family thinks, "come down in the world" by going into trade.

When the one brother dies - the one Miss Mackenzie had been caring for - it turns out the considerable estate he had (I think he was the older brother) went to her, and her alone. Unmarried at 35, this seems a remarkable solution to her "fate" to be a spinster (As a "spinster" some 15 years older than she is, I have to laugh)

So, now, wealthy, she decides she wants more of a life than the back bedroom that she occupied at her brother's, so she moves to "Littlebath" (which I am sure is a stand in for Bath). Takes a furnished house, tries to enter society. Learns that there's a sharp divide between the fairly serious evangelicals (the Stumfolds, though Mrs. Stumfold is considerably more humorless than her husband) and "looser" people (Miss Todd, perhaps? I forget her name. But she is seen as a "wicked" woman because she plays cards).

She is also  - at the point in the book I am in - being "courted" (as an investment, and perhaps romantically) by a Mr. Rubb, the business partner of her remaining brother. And it's not clear yet if he's a cad (though every fiber in me is screaming at her "DON'T INVEST IN THE MORTGAGE ON THEIR BUSINESS; YOU WILL LOSE EVERYTHING") or a decent man.

There's also another clergyman - Mr. Maguire - who would be handsome except for some kind of eye malformation that gives him a "terrible squint" and makes it hard for people to look at him anywhere EXCEPT for his eye.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed Trollope - his "dear reader" tone, which I know some people find off-putting but I love, his arch descriptions, his tendency to skewer those who put on airs or put down others. And how he creates a little world - I can imagine what Miss Mackenzie's rooms at Littlebath look like, and the stuffy overdecorated parlor of Mrs. Stumfield, all of that. It's a lovely escape.

The nice thing about Trollope - at least his comedies-of-manners, which this definitely is - is that nothing too bad ever happens in his books. Oh, characters die, but it's not *horribly* and it's telegraphed from far enough away that it's not a shock. The biggest concern some characters have is making a good "match" (in the sense of marriage) or coming down in the "right" society, hence Miss Mackenzie's indecision between the "upright" Stumfolds - who seem somewhat boring - and the "unworthy" Miss Todd - who seems to be full of fun. Befriending one means she can never associate with the other.

And honestly, with the world in the state it's in? That's the biggest kind of problem I can handle in my novels right now. And with most Trollope, things work out satisfactorily anyway.

And maybe Trollope isn't the most intellectualist writing ever, but at least it is a bit more complex than some things, and I just can't deal with "modern literary fiction" right now.

My copy is a Dover paperback bought used (from good old Babbitt's Books in Normal, IL - I don't even know if they still exist; I know the original owner - the one I knew when I lived there - retired and sold the business). But it's also available free for Kindles: Kindle link and on Project Gutenberg: Gutenberg link.

And I acknowledge that Trollope is not for everyone: some people find him boring or tedious or even a bit too snarky, but honestly, his kind of writing is what I need right now.