Trollope project, part three

Today I finished Anthony Trollope's third novel, La Vendee. This one is difficult to find in print. Hard copies on amazon.com were expensive. I requested a copy from my local library, and received a little book printed before 1900, with brittle yellow pages and tiny, tiny print. Impossible.

So I asked my husband to download the novel on his Kindle. Only 99 cents and - like magic! - within minutes there it was, with print adjustable to any size. At times like this I am humbled by the age of miracles in which we live.

This was a hard novel to like. It took me quite a while to sort out the various characters, and much of the writing seemed cliched and turgid. Trollope's own assessment of this work, from his autobiography:

"The story is certainly inferior to those that had gone before - chiefly because I knew ... in truth, nothing of life in the La Vendée country, and also because the facts of the present time came more within the limits of my powers of storytelling than those of past years. ... The conception as to the feeling of the people is, I think, true; the characters are distinct; and the tale is not dull. As far as I remember, this morsel of criticism is the only one that was ever written on the book."

It's the story of a group of French people loyal to their king and church who resist the efforts of the revolutionary republicans. I was amused by one scene, in which the hero rescues his fiancee when her home is invaded by the evil revolutionary forces. She has no time to dress, and so he throws a blanket over her thin nightdress. She faints, and a lecherous republican soldier grabs the blanket, but our hero manages to carry the nearly naked, unconscious damsel to safety. Talk about your stereotypical romance novel!

What struck me as good about the novel is the realistic depiction of the terrors of war for ordinary people, noncombatants. All are ruined, starved, and murdered - women, children, and old people, not just soldiers. Although there are plenty of patriotic, brave speeches, the old blacksmith who scorns both sides and finally concludes that all the fighting was worthless and served no purpose at all seems to me to have the most realistic, albeit nihilistic, view of events. I am reminded that Tolstoy considered Trollope one of the greatest of English novelists. I wonder if Tolstoy read La Vendee.

Also, now a big fan of e-readers.