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2.0 out of 5 stars
Spare yourself, Jun 22 2004
I love British novels, I love Southern novels, and normally I love Joanna Trollope. She's on my top 10 list. But with this novel, she flops.
A ruthless American editor could have saved it, but clearly it didn't have one. It's obviously written by a British novelist who has visited Charleston, but not for long enough to get the hang of how Americans really talk. At one point a blue-blooded young Charlestonian man says, at a moment of great emotion, "Yo, *man*!" Yo, please!!!Joanna Trollope clearly saw Charleston in terms of its inhabitants' English roots--the furniture, the holiday celebrations, etc. That's all fine--*but they don't see themselves that way.* No Americans do, not even Anglophiles. I can imagine polite Southerners pointing out similarities to an English guest. Apparently she fell for it. What also might have saved this novel is if it had a British narrator, and if most of its characters were transplanted Brits. As it is, the continual intrusion of British English, coupled with rarely-on-target American English, is incredibly annoying, and detracts completely from the novel's good points. Rosamunde Pilcher is largely successful with her Americans, primarily because she gets them onto her turf. Unfortunately, Trollope bit off far more than she could chew. Spare yourself the grief and read one of Trollope's many excellent novels, such as The Rector's Wife or A Spanish Lover.
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