Daughters-in-Law

By Joanna Trollope
Doubleday, $39.99
Reviewed by Nicky Pellegrino

To be honest I had almost given up on Joanna Trollope. It was her novel Friday Nights that did it. Perhaps she’d strayed too far from her upper middle class roots but the characters were cardboard and I couldn’t see how I was supposed to summon up any interest in them.

I’m glad I came back to Trollope though because her new book Daughters-in-Law is brilliant. Acutely observed, meaningful, emotionally truthful and so faithful to the reality of family dynamics that most of us will find something in there we’ll recognise from our own lives.

It’s the story of a mother coming to terms with the fact that she is no longer the most important person in the lives of her sons. Rachel is the wife of a celebrated bird artist and has devoted herself to him, to their rambling Suffolk house and to raising their three sons: serious-minded Edward, difficult Ralph and golden boy Luke.

The novel begins as her last son Luke gets married. Rachel hasn’t realised it yet but her life has changed. She has become a mother-in-law. All her sons belong to other women now: fey artist Petra, pretty but spoilt Charlotte and model of Swedish efficiency Sigrid. She no longer matters as much as she did. It is Rachel’s reaction to this and the way her family in turn react to her that is the meat of this book. And it’s a fantastic read.

Trollope is even and fair with her characters; sympathetic to their foibles and the situations they put themselves in. She has something real and solid to say in this novel and she says it with intelligence and originality.

Early on in her 17-book career Trollope suffered the misfortune of having her novels labelled “Aga Sagas”, a rather sneering term for these contemporary domestic dramas which at their best are wise little slices of real life.

In Daughters-in-Law she takes us inside the four marriages that make up a family. It’s a tour de force of show-and-tell, a novel that’s easy to read but still tackles the difficult subjects. Friday Nights is entirely forgiven.

Footnote:
Nicky Pellegrino, a succcesful Auckland-based author of popular fiction, The Italian Wedding was published in May 2009, Recipe for Life was published in April, 2010, while her latest The Villa Girls, was published two weeks ago and is already riding high on the NZ bestseller list.. She is also the Books Editor of the Herald on Sunday where the above review was first published on 10 April, 2011

http://www.nickypellegrino.com/