Penguin Classics Phineas Redux [Paperback]

I purchased the Palliser Series of books by Anthony Trollope -- Can You Forgive Her; Phineas Finn; The Eustace Diamonds; Phineas Redux; The Prime Minister; The Duke's Children. I have read the first four books in the series and will comment briefly on Phineas Redux, my favorite so far.

The reader who does not wish to read the books in order of composition would lose little by not having read Can You Forgive Her and The Eustace Diamonds. However, not to have read Phineas Finn would create some slight proplems because Finn's behavior in that first book is often mentioned in the second. Even so, it is possible to read Phineas Redux as a stand alone novel and derive much pleasure from the experience.

If we remove the boring Pariliamentary debates concerning the disestablishment of the Church of England, what remains is one of the most delightful of all English novels. Trollope is a great writer and he is at the top of his form in much of Phineas Redux. Particularly moving and convincing is the story of Lady Laura Kennedy, who loves Finn but is married to Robert Kennedy, a man she comes to hate and despise. She leaves Kennedy and takes up residence in Dresden to put herself out of the reach of her increasingly desperate and derranged husband. Finn once loved Lady Laura enough to have proposed to her, but she chose Kennedy and ended any chance she might have had to marry Finn. Even so, her love for Finn remains strong and true. In the end, he rejects her and marries Madame Max Goesler, whom Lady Laura hates with a passion. This is a sad and moving story; Trollope is at the hight of his powers in the telling of it.

The centerpiece of the novel is the trial of Finn for the murder of Mr. Bonteen, Finn's enemy. Trollope creates no mystery here. We know Finn is not guilty and we are given to believe that another enemy of Bonteen, the Reverend Mr. Emilius, is responsible. Bonteen's murder is a hanging offense. Finn is certain he will be hanged; his courage almost fails him; the trial comes close to breaking his proud and indomitable spirit.

Trollope must be considered one of the most entertaining of all English authors. Reading The Palliser novels and Phineas Redux in particular gives tremendous pleasure and satisfaction. The books are so well written that we feel we are a part of them. At the end of an evening's reading when we put down the book for the night, we can't stop thinking about the various characters and events. We start thinking about what we would say to Finn and friends if we were given the chance. This involvement with plot and characters keeps us coming back for more and Trollope has much more to give us.

The entire Palliser Series of novels has been turned into an excellent mini-series available on Amazon which I reviewed and, like the books, highly recommend.

First, if you haven't read "Phineas Finn," be sure to read it first. "Phineas Redux" certainly can be enjoyed without knowing the earlier novel, but it would mean so much more if you saw how Phineas's character and his relationships with others have developed from the first.

"Phineas Brought Back" (as the title means) really brings back Phineas Finn with a vengeance. The handsome, sincere young Irishman has always been a favorite with the ladies. In the first novel he was wounded by a jealous rival; in this one he is fired at by another and has his name scandalized in a newspaper. The high point of the novel is his trial for the murder of a political enemy.

Trollope's genius for character development is superb in these 2 novels. Phineas grows from a naive political novice into a highly capable government official, but his conscientiousness keeps him from playing party politics and causes problems with other members of his party. Phineas maintains his total honesty, a trait which frequently is to his detriment in the real world. His reactions to his imprisonment, trial, and acquittal are exactly right, so perfectly true to the character which Trollope has built up through hundreds of pages.

At the end of the novel, Phineas is still Phineas, but he is a much wiser and sadly disillusioned man. However, he receives the reward of a splendid mate, a woman who is truly worthy of him and whom he now has matured enough to appreciate. If only he had married her when she proposed to him in the first novel! But then none of his engrossing problems would have occurred.

This is one of Trollope's most exciting novels, a true page-turner in the trial sequence. As always, every characterization is extremely well done by one of the world's greatest authors.

Combined, PHINEAS FINN and PHINEAS REDUX constitute one of the great yarns in Anthony Trollope's large catalog of novels. As art, they are not masterpieces and do not quite match up against his very best books, but as entertainment, they are unsurpassed. Together, they are easily as enjoyable as any that Trollope wrote. All of the major characters of the former novel are back with a vengeance, and a far more satisfying end to the Phineas Finn saga is provided than that provided by the first novel.

By all estimations, PHINEAS FINN, while a thoroughly enjoyable novel, ended badly. So badly, that Trollope felt compelled essentially to delete the ending of the former novel, and provide a new ending in the form of a novel to correct the error of his ways. In his AUTOBIOGRAPHY, Trollope expresses his extreme dissatisfaction with the ending of that novel. Happily, he more than atones for his literary sins with the sequel.

This novel, like its predecessor, is set against the background of a great political reform. In the former, it was suffrage (i.e., how many people would be given the right to vote), in this one, the disestablishment of the Church of England (i.e., breaking the tie of mandatory local taxes to support the Anglican Church). Perhaps for this reason, Phineas Finn's Catholicism, which was not alluded to in the former novel, is made much of. The same cast of parliamentary characters are brought back for this new controversy. One curiosity is that sometimes Trollope refers by name to the achievements of members of parliament such as Gladstone, Disraeli, or John Bright. What is odd about this is the fact that Gresham is pretty transparently based on Gladstone, Daubeny on Disraeli, and Trumbull on John Bright.

Far more than the Barsetshire novels, a large number of increasingly familiar characters flit in and out of the various political novels. The major characters of one novels are found as minor characters in another. As one works through the novels in the political series, one sees such characters as Glencora Palliser, Joshua Monk, Mr. Rattler, Lord Fawn, Lord and Lady Cantrip, Lizzie Eustace, and a myriad of other characters. One of my favorite Trollope characters is prominent in PHINEAS REDUX, Madame Max Goesler. Dark in her features, thin, beautiful, extremely wealthy, widowed, extremely self-possessed, sharply intelligent, efficient, and very much a woman of action, she seems very much to be a woman before her time. One of the most remarkable things about Trollope, who was in many ways the epitome of the Victorian world, was his obvious love for strong, intelligent, exceptional women. Although there are many such women in Trollope's novels, Madame Goesler is easily the one I find most compelling.

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