Marion Fay

It's quite strange that this book, of all Trollope, is so hard to find. Reviewers didn't like it when it was originally published in the late 1800s, and it never shook its reputation as ultra-tedious. This mystifies me. The melodrama between politically radical Lord Jack Hampton and Marion Fay, a non-aristocratic young Quaker woman who's more of a lady than several of the "ladies" in the book, is flirtatious, accessible and fun (Hampton repeatedly teases Marion that he fell for her when she "poked his fire," i.e. tended his fireplace with a poker--a bolder play with innuendo than Trollope usually engages in). It then turns passionate when Marion won't marry Jack because of a secret trouble involving life-threatening illness. T. uses the situation to examine with great depth and sensitivity the desire to consummate the spiritual union of two souls via marriage. This is the most careful look at what marriage means in T.'s ideal world that I have read in his work yet. He makes it exciting and suspenseful, since we're waiting to see if Marion will really get to poke Jack's fire--or if an unthinkable separation will occur. As in all T., there is a hilarious cast of characters who toe the line that separates the comically pathetic from the dangerously antisocial--for example, will Jack's archetypical evil stepmom just grumble her way through life, or will she scheme to kill Jack? The multiple marriage and family plots are very well integrated, unlike in some other T. novels.