Marrying the Mistress (Paperback)

Marrying the Mistress begins near London when Judge Guy Stockdale announces to his wife of 40 yeas that he wants a divorce. Not only does he want a divorce but he has already made plans to marry a woman, a 31 year old lawyer, who has been his mistress for the last seven years. As readers we now begin to see this revelation from different perspectives, the judges, his wife Laura, their two sons, a daughter-in law, grandchildren and finally Guy's mistress, Merrion. While sides are drawn over this dilemma, most of the characters would agree that the mistress is quite lovely. But as the plot develops and Guy's wife, at first pitiful and dependent becomes more assured leaving the reader to wonder what will happen next. When a series of startling events occur we watch as these people's lives are further disrupted and the changes in their lives have far reaching consequences.

Joanna Trollope, a resident of England and a descendant of Anthony Trollope, has a keen ear and eye not only for characters, but for their homes and surroundings areas. When the story takes place in Guy and Laura's suburban home we feel as if we are there and can see Laura's wonderful garden and the their dogs barking. And when Guy first meets Merrion during a train ride to London, we are seated next to them and privy to this meeting. Marrying the Mistress is a wonderful read whose characters and their lives reach our hearts and make us think about our own decisions, mistakes and regrets. Now that I've been introduced to Joanna Trollope's writings, I look forward to being further entertained by reading more of her books.

That's the premise behind "Marrying the Mistress," the story of a dignified and esteemed judge, Guy Stockwell, who announces out of the blue that he intends to divorce his wife of 40 years, Laura, and marry his heretofore secret mistress of 7 years, Merrian. The shockwaves from this decision, which the judge and Merrian had considered very private and personal, affect everyone in their lives, whether they want it to or not.

Thus, Laura, the self-centered, clinging, deliberately obtuse "wronged wife," becomes even more annoying, and drops all of her problems in the lap of her son Simon, a lawyer in his 30s with a wife and three children of his own. Laura plays the guilt card so successfully that Simon becomes hopelessly entwined in his parents' troubles. He cannot extricate himself, and this in turn puts dangerous pressure on his marriage. His wife, Carrie, feels that she now has to fight her mother-in-law for Simon's love and attention--and she is right. Carrie and Simon's older two children, teenaged Jack and Rachel, are terribly affected by their parents' unhappiness, and their younger sister starts to suffer from days-long headaches.

Simon's gay brother Alan, who has finally met the love of his life, just wants everybody to be happy so he can bask in the glow of his new relationship. His role is to continually smooth things over, only to have the "smoothing" rejected or ignored.

Merrion, the mistress, is much younger than Guy. A self-possessed woman in her 30s, she is an up-and-coming lawyer whose intense love for Guy never rings true, at least to this reader. Merrion is much too selfish to give herself to anybody. A supposedly brilliant woman, she is completely bemused by the effect her relationship with Guy is having on his family and on her own widowed mother, and she misses the exciting secrecy of being his clandestine lover rather than his bride-to-be.

At the center of this emotional maelstrom is Guy, whose career as a judge enables him to see all sides of the problem. He feels for his rejected wife, his uptight mistress, his beleagured sons, his grandchildren--even his dogs, who are bewildered by his disappearance from the family home. But Guy is no more likeable than the rest of the characters in this ultimately whiny book.

I read this book when it was first published, and did not like it. Because Trollope is one of my favorite authors, I recently gave the book another try. I still did not like it, as I found myself continually annoyed by just about everybody in its pages, and therefore very unsympathetic to their problems. I know what Trollope was trying to say, but she has said it much better in many of her other books, most notably "A Village Affair" and "The Rector's Wife." I gave the book 4 stars rather than 3 because of Trollope's skill and talent as a writer. But I have to say, "Marrying the Mistress" is hard going.