Purple Facial Hair

The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope is weighty tome, getting on for 1000 pages, but is mostly an easy read – lots of characters living their lives, all interesting folk and many of whom are deeply morally ambiguous, against a backdrop of political satire and a biting response to the recent financial scandals. Some of it has aged rather well and is certainly relevant to modern day politics.

A warning though: while it is mostly an easy read, there are a couple of aspects of the plot which I didn’t expect and which made me deeply uncomfortable. I suspect that’s what Trollope intended and is no way a criticism of the book, but it’s worth being aware that there are a number of references to domestic violence. The violent fathers and husbands are portrayed very unfavourably, but it does seem to be considered very normal.

And the anti-Semitism…