The Way We Live Now (Penguin Classics)

The Way We Live Now (Penguin Classics)
Augustus Melmotte is a fraudulent foreign financier who preys on dissolute nobility - using charm to tempt the weak into making foolish investments in his dubious schemes. Persuaded to put money into a notional plot to run a railroad from San Francisco to Santa Cruz, the capricious gambler Felix Carbury soon becomes one of his victims. But as Melmotte climbs higher in society, his web of deceit - which also draws in characters as diverse as his own daughter Marie and Felix's mother, the pulp novelist Lady Carbury - begins to unravel. A radical exploration of the dangers associated with speculative capitalism, this is a fascinating satire about a society on the verge of moral bankruptcy.
Customer Review: Europeans of mysterious origins and other people a gentleman should avoid
Technically an excellent novel but, unlike the wonderful Barset chronicles, we read of dark dreary cynical people in a decaying English society. I for one was quite happy to turn the last page and leave this world. We find Trollope's usual ingredients here: imperfect people finding themselves in morally ambiguous situations, the moral calculus by which these situations are resolved, Trollope's profound understanding of how important money is (and his surprising insights on liquity and high finance!) the artful manner in which the author speaks directly to his audience, the realistically if mechanically developed plot. But there's hardly anyone to like here. Not Felix Carbury, the closest thing to an evil man I've found in the Trollope novels I've read, not his mother Lady Carbury, not the financial magnate Augustus Melmotte, not the good but intransigent Roger Carbury, not his rival and former friend the meek and mousey Paul Montague. How on earth he found two women to love him I can't imagine. We sympathize with Melmotte's daughter Mary but can hardly come to like her, there not being much to either like or hate in her. There'd be Mrs. Hurtle whom we might like if the thoroughly disapproving Trollope gave her half a chance. But he doesn't; she is American after all. In the end, I break my rule of giving five stars to widely recognized classics, for two reasons. First the ending of each subplot is too engineered and too formulaic even for a 19th century victorian classic. Trollope virtually admits this much by having the editor Mr. Broune tell Lady Carbury how novels ought to always end, and then proceeds himself to follow his character's advice. Perhaps he was warning readers not to expect too much. Second I found the novel profoundly racist in a manner someone like Trollope should never have allowed. Moral relativism is one thing but an apology for immorality is quite another. It's one thing to compromise with a racist world and say "we can get this much now, that's good" and quite another to say "they've gotten enough, let them be satisfied and let us yield no more". In his treatment of Jews, Americans, and Europeans of mysterious ancestry Trollope shamefully sets himself amongst the latter. Explicitly Trollope sympathizes with these people and shows them to be noble and good, but he then ties up the various stories hinting it's better not to mix blood lines. If Trollope wanted to offer more than cynicism in this moral tale, then Melmotte's Jewish friend should have gained his English bride and Mrs. Hurtle should have found marital bliss in England. I suppose that wouldn't have pleased Trollope's paying readers the 1870s... Vincent Poirier, Tokyo
Customer Review: Good...
No need to buy this book, it is interesting enough to read it off your computer screen. I think that says a lot. Very contemporary and thus has survived passage of time, contains a lot of anti-Semite statements which when compared to a Dickens or a Thackeray seemed excessive.