Phineas Finn

Synopsis: The second of Trollope's Palliser novels tells of the career of a hot-blooded middle-class politician whose sexual energies bring him much success with women.

Review: I normally like Trollope's writing, but this one was just a bit too political for me, I found my mind wandering off and thinking about cake whenever there was a long passage about parliament or the elections. If I had been reading it, rather than listening to it, I think it would have stayed sitting on the side ignored for large periods of time.

Phineas's father want's him to be a lawyer and has sent him to London to study, but his heart is not really in it. In the course of his studies he meets a fellow Irishman and politician who convinces him to stand for parliament in the coming elections. This seems much more desirable to him than the law, but much less desirable to me .. surely the law wouldn't have been this tedious! The book is a whacking 700 odd pages long and a lot of it is taken up with lengthy discourses on the workings of parliament, elections and which minister is in which job (which seemed to be a game something like musical chairs.)

Luckily Trollope also excels at writing about romantic entanglements and Finn has his fair share of these so they sucked me back into the story (shallow I know!) He has a perfectly lovely sweetheart in pretty and loyal Irish girl Mary Flood Jones but his elevation in society takes him away from home and throws him into the path of more beautiful, intelligent, not to say influential, women like Lady Laura Standish, Violet Effingham and Madame Max Goesler and he's inclined to think, at one time or another, that he is in love with each of them or at least to think that he could do so much more in the world if he was married to them.

This leads to Trouble of course (with the proverbial capital,) with Finn causing bad feeling and heartache all over the place and going so far as to find himself obliged to fight a duel abroad. He's incredibly good natured and affable in the main and so, despite this little foible (of throwing himself at women and failing to see that he has a lovely girl patiently waiting back home,) you don't find yourself taking against him. You are just waiting for him to wake up. He's not in the least arrogant and his behaviour in general is right thinking although, in politics, as a newcomer, he is a little green behind the ears.

Written in Trollope's usual ironic style, the story is entertaining but has ploddingly dull bits.

Excellently read, as all of Trollope's books are, by Timothy West.