Wednesday, March 21, 2018

"Cty of Friends," by Joanna Trollope

     I had never read any of the twenty some novels of Joanna Trollope, an English author, who--to judge by this book--is a chronicler of British society and mores.
( She is of the same family as the famous Trollope, but not a direct descendant. She is now in her seventies, and her contribution to literature has been recognised by an OBE--Order of the British Empire, an empire that is no longer.)
      The novel chronicles the lives of four professional women over a period of about a year. The four met in an economics class at their university--the only women in the class--and bonded in close friendship in the subsequent years as they all undertook demanding professional careers. Stacey in finance: Gaby in banking: Beth a professor of business psychology; and Melissa, a consultant to companies on the efficiency of their boards of directors. Gaby has three children. Melissa is a single mother with a teen-age son. Stacey is happily married to Steve, and her mother is deeply into dementia. Beth is a lesbian, living with Claire.
       Stacey is fired from her job and is devastated--and that kicks off the whole complicated story of the relationships among the four women and their spouses and children. And who tells whom what, and who withholds what from whom, seems to be a rather artificial underpinning of the stories of the four characters.
        At the center of the novel are questions concerning the reconciliation of motherhood with demanding, full-time work, and the position of capable working women in the masculine environment of the business world.
    It's all very well done, very well written, but I did not find the various crises and relationship problems particularly gripping, although it held me sufficiently to hang in there until the end. Maybe a woman might find the issues more interesting. I will try to get Joan to read the first chapter and see if she sticks with it.
     It is available in hard-cover at the DC Public Library.

       

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