This gorgeous novel reflects many of the ideas found in "A Room Of One's Own" by Virginia Woolf, with whom Vita had a famous affair. After the death of her husband, the Earl of Slane, Lady Slane shocks her staid family by asserting her own will, leaving the house she kept with her husband, and settling into a small house in the countryside. Finally after seventy years, Lady Slane is determined to live as she chooses, with a life full of contemplation, dreams, and memories. She reflects on her lost ambition to be a painter, but knows that the life she lived was not without merit or value. She finds passion in the freedom to choose, and this gift she bequeaths to the one member of her family who understands its importance.

I meandered my way to this book through Sarah Ban Breathnach's treasure of self-excavation, Simple Abundance. I had read Anne Morrow Lindbergh because of her recommendation too. AML & Charles Lindbergh were good friends with Vita Sackville-West & her husband, Nigel Nicholson. So I finally got around to Vita Sackville-West & this book. It was so moving, wonderful, unforgettable, that I will reread it. I laughed & cried. I will try to find older copies of this to give away to dear friends, old & new. It's one of those books. I'm 41 & have sacrificed much for the men & children in my life that I nonetheless love so dearly. This book helped me bring those feelings of ambivalence into focus. It also helped me realize I'm relatively young & still have time to live the life I've dreamed of since I was a little girl. Maybe this "child-bearing years" thing was just a detour.

This curiously overlooked novel was revived by a Masterpiece Theater production starring Dame Wendy Hiller, which like this novel was superb. The gentle story of an elderly woman's retirement while her forceful children squabble over unimportant matters is at once comic and poignant. The author has peppered the tale with curious, memorable characters, among them the eccentric art collector who is allowed to eat in portrait galleries because museums hope he will donate to them when he dies; the benign landlord Bucktrout, who sees Lady Slain's desire for peace at home; and the coffin maker who pictures people dead to reveal their true characters. This fine little masterpiece deserves to be read today.

Victoria Glendenning has indeed created a fascinating book filled with a myriad of characters, most of them women who are enthralled with one man (regardless of whom they are attached or married to), a fictional famous British author, Leo Ulm. In Ms.Glendinnings first attempt to write a novel after authoring the lives of famous British women, she provides the reader with some wonderful and fascinating glimpses into English life, their gardens, their homes, their gatherings and their interpersonal relationships.

I marvel that this woman, Victoria Glendinning, a mother of four sons, several successive marriages, degrees, jobs, and homes would find the time to create such magnificent literature. I hope that Amazon and Borders will help me to discover more about how this monumental task is accomplished.

Thank you.

There is a particular genre of British authors - british WOMEN writers who have such mastery over the nuance of man/woman behaviour that one could flatter oneself (if one were as fine a writer as they) that the book you are reading is a transcription of your own diary. In The Grown-ups" Victoria Glendinning, by virtue of her own incredibly discerning eye and ear writes about the kinds of random thoughts that you and I have,but never have the wit - or the will - to record. Speaking,for example, of elevator music she says ""a Chopin piano concerto from hidden speakers sprayed into the enclosed space like air-freshener" Flicks of knife-sharp characterizations, seemingly effortless, fill the book which is populated by a large cast of English semi-upper-class, each etched in acid and insight. I stumbled on this book in a dusty paper-back and am now asking Amazon to find me at least two more copies to give to friends....and am checking the notable biographies she has written of Rebecca West and Edith Sitwell. Ms Glendinning is extraordinarily funny, and deeply gifted.

Despite the criticisms levelled at Trollope for his "authorial intrusions" (see Henry James for example) this novel is always a pleasure to read. The characters take precedence over the plot, as in any Trollopian fiction and this is what makes a novel like BARCHESTER more palatable to the modern reader, as compared to any of Dickens's. Some readers may find the ecclesiastical terms confusing at first but with a little help (see the Penguin introduction for example), all becomes clear. What is important, however, is the interaction between the all-too-human characters and in this novel there are plenty of situations to keep you, the reader, amused.

Do yourself a favour and take a trip back into Nineteenth century where technology is just a blink in everyone's eye. What you will discover, however, is that human beings have not really changed, just the conventions have.

I rushed home every day after work to read a little more of this Trollope comedy. The book starts out with the death of a bishop during a change in political power. The new bishop is a puppet to his wife Mrs. Proudie and her protégé Mr. Slope. Along the way we meet outrageous clergymen, a seductive invalid from Italy, and a whole host of delightfully ridiculous characters. Trollope has designed most of these characters to be "over the top". I kept wondering what a film version starring the Monty Python characters would look like. He wrote an equivalent of a soap opera, only it doesn't take place at the "hospital", it takes place with the bishops. Some of the characters you love, some of the characters you hate, and then there are those you love to hate. Trollope speaks to the reader throughout the novel using the mimetic voice, so we feel like we are at a cocktail party and these 19th century characters are our friends (or at least the people we're avoiding at the party!). The themes and characters are timeless. The book deals with power, especially power struggles between the sexes. We encounter greed, love, desperation, seductive sirens, and generosity. Like many books of this time period however, the modern reader has to give it a chance. No one is murdered on the first page, and it takes quite a few chapters for the action to pick up. But pick up it does by page 70, and accelerates into a raucously funny novel from there. Although I didn't read the Warden, I didn't feel lost and I'm curious to read the rest of this series after finishing this book. Enjoy!

This is the second of the six Barsetshire novels, and the first great novel in that series. THE WARDEN, while pleasant, primarily serves as a prequel to this novel. To be honest, if Trollope had not gone on to write BARCHESTER TOWERS, there would not be any real reason to read THE WARDEN. But because it introduces us to characters and situations that are crucial to BARCHESTER TOWERS, one really ought to have read THE WARDEN before reading this novel.

Trollope presents a dilemma for most readers. On the one hand, he wrote an enormous number of very good novels. On the other hand, he wrote no masterpieces. None of Trollope's books can stand comparison with the best work of Jane Austen, Flaubert, Dickens, George Eliot, Tolstoy, or Dostoevsky. On the other hand, none of those writers wrote anywhere near as many excellent as Trollope did. He may not have been a very great writer, but he was a very good one, and perhaps the most prolific good novelist who ever lived. Conservatively assessing his output, Trollope wrote at least 20 good novels. Trollope may not have been a genius, but he did possess a genius for consistency.

So, what to read? Trollope's wrote two very good series, two other novels that could be considered minor classics, and several other first rate novels. I recommend to friends that they try the Barsetshire novels, and then, if they find themselves hooked, to go on to read the Political series of novels (sometimes called the Palliser novels, which I feel uncomfortable with, since it exaggerates the role of that family in most of the novels). The two "minor classics" are THE WAY WE LIVE NOW and HE KNEW HE WAS RIGHT. The former is a marvelous portrait of Victorian social life, and the latter is perhaps the finest study of human jealousy since Shakespeare's OTHELLO. BARSETSHIRE TOWERS is, therefore, coupled with THE WARDEN, a magnificent place, and perhaps the best place to enter Trollope's world.

There are many, many reasons to read Trollope. He probably is the great spokesperson for the Victorian Mind. Like most Victorians, he is a bit parochial, with no interest in Europe, and very little interest in the rest of the world. Despite THE AMERICAN SENATOR, he has few American's or colonials in his novels, and close to no foreigners of any type. He is politically liberal in a conservative way, and is focussed almost exclusively on the upper middle class and gentry. He writes a good deal about young men and women needing and hoping to marry, but with a far more complex approach than we find in Jane Austen. His characters are often compelling, with very human problems, subject to morally complex situations that we would not find unfamiliar. Trollope is especially good with female characters, and in his sympathy for and liking of very independent, strong females he is somewhat an exception of the Victorian stereotype.

Anyone wanting to read Trollope, and I heartily believe that anyone who loves Dickens, Austen, Eliot, Hardy, and Thackery will want to, could find no better place to start than with reading the first two books in the Barsetshire Chronicles, beginning first with the rather short THE WARDEN and then progressing to this very, very fun and enjoyable novel.

The best things about this book are also the worst things about this book. For starters, Glendinning uses a truly 19th century voice in the telling of this 19th century story, but relies on 20th century sensibilities at the same time.

The author wants us to empathize with Charlotte's dilemma of having to choose between conforming to the everyday, accepted practices and norms of 19th century womanhood (as best embodied in the depiction of Charlotte's mother) and rejecting the old world for a new world where women can be more than wives and mothers (as exemplified by Miss Pauline). The problem is that Charlotte is not nearly independent enough to make this choice on her own. She must rely on the men in her life to help her with this decision.

Unfortunately for Charlotte, the men in this novel and throughout her life never seem to be able to sway her in any one direction. Each of them is obsessed with his own endeavors, whether it be electricity, wealth or apples and is never much of a catalyst or inhibitor for Charlotte, leaving her aimless and with no direction.

Which brings me to the inherent flaw in this novel. While Glendinning wants us to think that she's written a coming of age tale about this 19th century heroine, what she's really done is given us a portrait of a dependent, weak and frail female who is solely motivated by the men who pass in and out of her life, like an electric current slithering through cables, at the yank of a chain.

This book is powerful, intelligent and ultimately leaves you hanging. It would be great for a book club.

This interesting novel contrasts strength and timidity, old and
new, happiness and pain, and of course darkness and light.

I was intrigued by Charlotte's strong, strange Aunt Susannah,
her creepy, reactive father, stoic, attractive Peter Fisher,
and the rich and appealing George Godwin.

Charlotte eagerly tastes life and love, and learns and is
taught all sorts of new, interesting ideas and considerations,
some quite ahead of their time.

The narration of this story is well-descibed and evocative,
and Charlotte was a believable character. Recommended.

Glendenning's follows an excellent life of Trollope with a soso effort on another writer who spent a lot of time in both Ireland and England- Jonathan Swift. The book is a curious effort... she calls it a portrait but its more an impressionistic portrait then a realistic biography. She dismisses the standard biographical form with an 8 page summary of Swift's life in chapter one. Her style than is more thematatic than chronological and for the newcomer to Swifts life this is confusing... Stella appears and then disapears for many pages...Glendenning is best discusing Swift's literary life in London from 1710-4 when he hung with Pope and Dr. Arbuthnot. These pages are informative as is the discussion of Swift's relationship with William Temple, his benefactor. Overall, Glendenning's effort is tiresome. She does not appear to have much sustained interest in Swift or to really have enjoyed his books.

This is an ordinary biography about an extraordinary man. Swift is the author of some of the greatest satires ever written -- funny, vicious, scatological -- full of the strength of conviction and powered by a great command of the English language. A lot of that comes through in this biography by Victoria Glendinning, but a lot of it does not.

One of the main annoyances with this book is that there is too much of the biographer in it. The biographer talks about the process of her research. She peppers the book with many instances of "I think" and "I believe", often without any indication of why she thinks or believes these things. The reader is sometimes left concluding: why does her perception of things have any more credence than anyone else's? How has she proved her case?

Glendinning's analyses of some of Swift's work also often seem a little thin and obvious. Granted, she does not have the space to provide in-depth literary criticism, but the assessments she does provide are so thin sometimes that the reader feels he could do without them altogether. The same applies to her mini-critiques of the former biographers of Swift.

The book is not all bad though. The writing style is good and plain, and she does not engage in too many speculations based on slender biographical data. She does not "make things up", does not try to paint the (imagined) scene just so the reader can have "atmosphere". The book is readable and the most of the basic facts about Swift's life are there.

The book ends on a bad note with the last chapter, however, with Glendinning engaging in some generalizations about Swift's life and about literary art which come off as very judgmental and facile.

This is no day by day chronicle of a life. Rather, a gerneral view and personal description, 'what Swift is to me'. Once this premise is accepted, the book reads easily, the style is great,the few pictures helpful. The author can be seem to be opinionated or not, but she is always in the background. I had a great time reading this,and I knew very little of Swift beforhand. Now I would like to travel to Dublin, so I guess the book achieved at least something...