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Product Description
Review
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
“A sensitive and entertaining novel. . . . Once again with The Other Family, Trollope delves into ordinary life and reveals its uniqueness and humanity.”
— The Vancouver Sun
“May just be Trollope’s best work yet.”
— The Chronicle-Herald
“She writes as observantly as ever. There are always those brilliant brief glimpses of some detail which ring wonderfully true and pinpoint a person or a place exactly.”
— Susan Hill, Spectator
“Trollope is a diligent researcher and a thorough technician – two admirable qualities in a novelist. She understands how the framework of fiction should be made, and her novels are excellent as a result. . . . A satisfying, well-constructed novel.”
— Daily Telegraph
“Trollope is brilliant at swooping on a modern dilemma and showing it from every angle. . . . Inventive, surprising and fascinating.”
— The Times
Praise for Joanna Trollope:
"As subtle as Austen, as sharp as Bronte, Trollope's brilliant!"
— Mail on Sunday
"Trollope…reminds us why so many women love her: she is absolutely brilliant at writing about men."
— Daily Telegraph
“Trollope is brilliant at swooping on a modern dilemma and showing it from every angle. . . . Inventive, surprising and fascinating.”
— The Times
“A writer at the height of her powers.”
— Women’s Journal
“Joanna has held up a mirror to millions of women around the world, and they’ve seen themselves, their lives, their relationships and their desires staring back.”
— Good Housekeeping
“Every Trollope has its fascinating moral wrinkle. She has a glorious instinct for sensing which emotional conundrums her readers will find most palatably perplexing. And then she writes so beautifully.”
— Evening Standard
“Simply reach for any novel by Joanna Trollope: To do so is to put your finger on the very pulse of Western Civilization — its passions, its concerns, its trends.”
— The Globe and Mail
“We grow attached to her characters whose weaknesses — and triumphs — are our own.”
— The Gazette
From the Hardcover edition.
“A sensitive and entertaining novel. . . . Once again with The Other Family, Trollope delves into ordinary life and reveals its uniqueness and humanity.”
— The Vancouver Sun
“May just be Trollope’s best work yet.”
— The Chronicle-Herald
“She writes as observantly as ever. There are always those brilliant brief glimpses of some detail which ring wonderfully true and pinpoint a person or a place exactly.”
— Susan Hill, Spectator
“Trollope is a diligent researcher and a thorough technician – two admirable qualities in a novelist. She understands how the framework of fiction should be made, and her novels are excellent as a result. . . . A satisfying, well-constructed novel.”
— Daily Telegraph
“Trollope is brilliant at swooping on a modern dilemma and showing it from every angle. . . . Inventive, surprising and fascinating.”
— The Times
Praise for Joanna Trollope:
"As subtle as Austen, as sharp as Bronte, Trollope's brilliant!"
— Mail on Sunday
"Trollope…reminds us why so many women love her: she is absolutely brilliant at writing about men."
— Daily Telegraph
“Trollope is brilliant at swooping on a modern dilemma and showing it from every angle. . . . Inventive, surprising and fascinating.”
— The Times
“A writer at the height of her powers.”
— Women’s Journal
“Joanna has held up a mirror to millions of women around the world, and they’ve seen themselves, their lives, their relationships and their desires staring back.”
— Good Housekeeping
“Every Trollope has its fascinating moral wrinkle. She has a glorious instinct for sensing which emotional conundrums her readers will find most palatably perplexing. And then she writes so beautifully.”
— Evening Standard
“Simply reach for any novel by Joanna Trollope: To do so is to put your finger on the very pulse of Western Civilization — its passions, its concerns, its trends.”
— The Globe and Mail
“We grow attached to her characters whose weaknesses — and triumphs — are our own.”
— The Gazette
From the Hardcover edition.
Product Description
From the superb storyteller and quintessential women's fiction author Joanna Trollope comes a moving and wonderfully observed new novel about two families who must confront love and loss as an inheritance hangs in the balance.
The trouble with dying is that you're not around anymore to explain what you meant to the people who love you…
Richie Rossiter, a crooner and piano man still popular with his loyal fans, is anyone's idea of a lucky man. In his forties, he abandoned his first wife and son in Newcastle for a young woman who believed she could bring him stardom in the south. Not only does Chrissie rejuvenate his career, she gives him twenty-three years of happy domestic life and three lovely daughters.
But then he dies suddenly, and at his funeral Chrissie and her daughters cross paths with Richie's other family for the very first time. And the uneasy truce that has held over the years between Richie's past and his present loves breaks down into open animosities, fanned by certain bequests he has made and certain secret loyalties he has kept. Grief, loss, jealousy and love rewrite the relationships of both families in ways Richie never could have imagined.
From the Hardcover edition.
The trouble with dying is that you're not around anymore to explain what you meant to the people who love you…
Richie Rossiter, a crooner and piano man still popular with his loyal fans, is anyone's idea of a lucky man. In his forties, he abandoned his first wife and son in Newcastle for a young woman who believed she could bring him stardom in the south. Not only does Chrissie rejuvenate his career, she gives him twenty-three years of happy domestic life and three lovely daughters.
But then he dies suddenly, and at his funeral Chrissie and her daughters cross paths with Richie's other family for the very first time. And the uneasy truce that has held over the years between Richie's past and his present loves breaks down into open animosities, fanned by certain bequests he has made and certain secret loyalties he has kept. Grief, loss, jealousy and love rewrite the relationships of both families in ways Richie never could have imagined.
From the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
A good read,
By
This review is from: The Other Family (Hardcover)
I have read several novels by Joanna Trollope and have always liked the crispy quality of her books, combined with a competent psychological insight. What I liked about this one is what most negative reviews seem to reflect: an often irritating "bunch" of people (save a couple of them), two families who have to face the death of Richie, a talented musician who dies in the very first page of the book. The two groups of people are Richie's first and second family. Richie left his wife Margaret and young son up North when he fell in love with Chrissie, with whom he had, later on, three daughters. All the children are now grown-ups.Understandably, everyone is shaken to the core about his sudden death and the years of total silence between the two families now resonate loudly for several reasons. Doubts, misplaced loyalties, old resentments and all sorts of negative feelings have to be faced. But is everyone willing or ready to face them? No. Not everyone. I admit that I found some of the characters a trifle annoying, should I say a bit unlikeable? In primis: Chrissie and two of her daughters -excluding the youngest one, Amy-, not to mention Richie himself -sorry if he died but there you go-. But that is exactly what I appreciated about this book: every person is different and JT was able, as usual, to convey the essence of each character in a very suitable way. Everything is credible. The second family with a very upset Chrissie now having to handle her feeling of loss and three somewhat spoiled daughters, each in pain and with their own problems. And the first family, whose sense of loss is different but certainly not painless. An entertaining book, upsetting at times, but definitely a good read.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.7 out of 5 stars (42 customer reviews) 18 of 21 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
The perils of modern family life...,
By S. McGee - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Other Family: A Novel (Paperback)
Trollope's forte is what I think of as domestic dramas: in her dozen or more novels, her characters (usually women of a certain age, from their 30s to the 50s or 60s) confront some kind of crisis in their lives that forces them to re-examine all they had taken for granted. Her focus is the family, in all its myriad permutations. She has a keen eye for both the poignant and the absurd, yet never allows her narrative to topple over into sentimentality or banality. These are stories of messy lives and human frailties -- not literature a la Jane Austen, certainly, and at the same time, these are the same kind of people and the same kind of outwardly-seeming banal domestic situations that Austen tackled in her time. Trollope, when she's in top form, has a keen eye for character that propels her novels from 'chick lit' territory into something better.Happily, in this novel, she seems to back in form after several disappointing (to me, at least) novels. (I never managed to finish her last, Friday Nights.) The focus of the story is Chrissie, who lives in London with her long-time partner, Richie Rossiter, an older man and an aging pop star that women of a certain age still swoon over, and their three daughters. She wears a wedding ring -- one that she bought for herself, since Richie doesn't want to divorce his first wife, Margaret. (Although he was happy to leave her behind in Newcastle when he headed south with Cassie in search of new horizons and new audiences, decades earlier.) Left behind also was Richie's son, Scott, who becomes the focus of Margaret's life. Margaret also wears a wedding ring -- a real one -- but has no husband to go with it. And then Richie dies suddenly of a heart attack (this is where the book begins), leaving two unanticipated bequests to his old family and a large hole in the center of his new family. In Trollopian tradition, Richie's will ends up forcing the two families together in a way that both resist and resent, and requires all of them to find a new way to exist. Without realizing it, all five have slipped into ruts of various kinds, and in an effortless way, Trollope points this out while allowing each to make the first tentative discoveries and take the first steps toward change. It's a predictable kind of novel if you've read her books before, but still satisfying and an enjoyable weekend read. It's a solid 4-star book, extremely well-written. Nothing revolutionary, but recommended to anyone who has enjoyed some of Trollope's better novels (mostly her earlier books; my favorite remains A Spanish Lover: A Novel) 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not best book she ever wrote...,
By Book Maven - Published on Amazon.com
I am about halfway through this book and I'm not planning to finish it. I have read almost every prior book Joanna Trollope wrote and have liked them a lot...but not this one. I don't find the characters engaging--they're too one-dimensional, too undeveloped, too flat. I just don't care enough about any of them to bother to finish the book.The story has the potential to make a good novel, but it misses the mark. The intertwining of the two families and how they all reacted to Richie's death could have been an engrossing tale, but it just doesn't get off the ground. There needs to be a little more introspection and a little less whining and self-pity. But I'll probably read her next book. She's capable of brilliant writing. Nobody writes a masterpiece every time. 2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars
GAH!,
By Kayla - Published on Amazon.com
I couldn't even make it through three chapters and was bored. After the first chapter of boredom I told myself to stick it out and it would get better, but I just couldn't get myself to read this book when I have a list of other books I want to read!
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