The Way We Live Now

Marie Melmotte wants to marry the beautiful Sir Felix Carbury but Mr. Melmotte wants his daughter to marry Lord Nidderdale. Ruby Ruggles wants to marry Sir Felix Carbury too but she is betrothed to John Crumb. Roger Carbury wants to marry his cousin Hetta but she wants to marry his friend Paul Montague but Paul Montague is already engaged to Mrs Winifred Hurtle. But where is Mr. Hurtle? Is he dead or is he alive and living in San Francisco?

But amongst all the romantic shenanigans, this big, fun satirical novel has a dark heart. Written in 1873, Anthony Trollope had arrived back in London after 18 months in Australia and was appalled at the greed and dishonesty that financial scandals had exposed. He says in his autobiography:
“If dishonesty can live in gorgeous palaces with pictures on all its walls. and gems all in its cupboards, with marble and ivory in all its corners, and can give Apician dinners, and get into parliament, and deal in millions, then dishonesty is not disgraceful, and the man dishonest after such a fashion is not a low scoundrel.” 

A Farewell to Arms

I read this hot on the heels of War and Peace – could two books be any more different? After Tolstoy’s poetic prose and wise, rambling essays, the simple, seemingly unsophisticated style of Hemingway felt brutal.

Written in 1929 this largely autobiographical novel is written in the first person as Lieutenant Frederick Henry remembers serving as a paramedic in the Italian army during the first world war. There is a  world weariness about it, as he recalls the actions of a group of men, his desertion from the army and his growing romance with Catherine Barkley, an English nurse.