Categories: uncategorized
Date: 16 January 2007 14:29:58
Joanna Trollope has a new book out in paperback, Second Honeymoon. You may have seen it prominently displayed at a ridiculously low price in your local supermarket, or been faced with advertising hoardings at stations imploring you to buy the thing. Me, I was alerted by the hoardings and then able to purchase (& I only do it with Mike Gayle or Joanna Trollope books) at a ridiculously low price in the supermarket.
Anyway, I have decided to give 2 reviews of the book. The first one is the general review, the second one explains why Joanna Trollope is intelligent fiction.
Review One:
If you're looking for an excuse to snuggle up under the duvet with a mug of hot chocolate and a good book it's an excellent read, with a light but interesting plot. It's simple enough to follow when brain is not working at full wattage and yet engaging enough for you not to feel that you're being brain dead. Bit less sex and bit more fidelity than the usual Trollope offering (only one cad, and his affairs are not chronicled!), but usual exploration of middle class relationships is there in bucketloads. Oh and this one swaps village Aga for bohemian urban.
Review Two:
Trollope explores a range of issues in this one; "the empty nest syndrome", "the crisis of masculinity", "the level of out of control debt run up by twentysomethings", "the dependant relationship", "the graduate job crisis", and a huge host more in a deceptively light plot. It is a book which explores contemporary middle class life in depth and in detail, looking at the types of "normal" families of babyboomers which sociological studies and so forth tend to ignore as they seek to look at underachievement and minority groups. The portraits her pen paints of Matthew and Russell in particular give a vivid insight into that most marginalised of groups: the middle-class, white, heterosexual, suburban male.