|
|
6 internautes sur 8 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile :
4.0étoiles sur 5
"There are changes now but they won't last, we'll become used to them.", Jui 25 2008
In Friday Nights Joanna Trollope mixes in a variety of women's social issues into a contemporary comedy of manners when a group of women meet to share their Friday nights together. Little do these women realize that when a stranger enters their fold that the delicate balance in the form of shared friendships and gentle confidences will eventually become challenged.
Finally retired after years working in the health industry in and around the Fulham area of London, Eleanor has a chance to refect on her life, that has been defined mostly by her work. Although Eleanor doesn't exactly regret the fact that she never married and had children, she's not necessarily prepared to face this consummate gap in her time. Its not until that crucial structure has gone, and that it has taken everyone at work with it, that she suddenly comes to the recognition that there is no domestic life to fall back on. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that she's quite keen to invite two young single mothers, Paula and Leslie over for Friday night drinks, along with pate, French bread, and chocolate.
Soon enough, three other women are attending: Blaise and her business partner Karen, both owners of Workwell, an agency that specializes in persuading organizations to change the way that they work; and Jude, Leslie's younger sister, who loves house music and wants one day to be a popular disc jockey. At the center of the group, Paula has weathered much of life's worries, especially with regard to the well being of her teenage son Toby. Now with a new flat, funded largely by the father of Toby, and her job managing a store specializing in uncompromising dark furniture from Indonesia, Paula is finally at a point where she can finds a measure of security.
Meanwhile, Linsday with "her white knuckle grip on life" tries to rise above her ramshackle childhood. Recently widowed with her son Noah to care for, she envies Paula's extraordinary energy, this life force and this urge that she has to thow herself into things even at the risk of drowning. When Linsday was suddenly widowed a few years ago only Paula was there. Her wayward sister Jules certainly offered no support or consolation and the memories of those hard years constantly make her flinch and cringe.
True to form Karen and Blaise are hard workers and have done their best to make their fledging business a success. Lately however, Karen has become ever more distracted with domestic life, with her two young girls, Poppy and Rose, and her artist husband Lucas who refuses to shoulder many of the financial burdens of the household. Blaise, by contrast, feels herself becoming ever more focused on her career, her different approach and attitude to work pulling her further apart from Karen rather than fusing the two of them together. From the very first page it is established that Blaise has far wider horizons than Karen whose loving family responsibities ultimately are her shackle.
When the author introduces a new character, Paula's new beau, the personal and enigmatic Jackson, this brittle dynamic is subtly altered and although these women would never admit it, there relationships with each other are destined to change. At first, Jackson's affability and charming ways seem an easy fit for the group - he's sympathetic towards Eleanor's hip pains, is even interested in financing Jules's bourgening music career even as he seems to want to make Paula happy by forging a companionable relationship with Toby. Indeed he wants to get to know the rest of the group in an easy and undemanding way that proves to be a powerful combination.
Jackson is a man not obviously encumbered by his personal past, and his curiously imaginative efforts to make himself one of the group are endearing at best. Soon enough, however, his presence is causing these women to question their marriages and their lives, their feelings for themselves, and more importantly for each other. Even as Eleanor sees something opaque about him, something quite puzzling that she can't quite put her finger on, the rest of the women are suddenly beginning to turning against each other, all of them floundering about in a swamp of ill-defined anger and resentment.
Clearly though the women have no choice but to keep soldiering on. Paula remains at the novel's heart, unquestionably enamored of Jackson, mainly because he liberates her from all "the little ropes of anxiety and self-discipline," that has kept the poor and battered Linsday tethered to a life of self-imposed orderliness. Indeed, all of Trollope's women - and men - are constantly battered by life's hopes and dreams, their identities defined by their marriages or their families - or in Eleanor and Blaise's case - their work. Meanwhile, they must all face the hard realisation that sometimes getting out of the situations they have made in life is difficult at best and impossible at worst.
Certainly, the wise and consoling Eleanor remains the den-mother of her brood friends as they move around in a type of dance, some leaving the circle and some returning to it. Continuing with her smartly held observations on the lives, loves, and travails of the British middle class, Trollope's themes of work, marriage, and family - while not unique - add much flavor to this novel. The result is a perfectly stewed brew of contemporary English manners involving a variety of appealing characters that have flung themselves into their particular emotions and into the lives of others, regardless of the inevitable outcomes. Mike Leonard June 2008
Aidez d'autres clients à trouver les commentaires les plus utiles
Ce commentaire vous a-t-il été utile ?
 
|
|
|
|
de Joanna Trollope
de Erica Bauermeister
de Joanna Trollope
de Tatiana de Rosnay
de Lisa Moore
