1858
4 books
- Trollope basically tells you how it ends early on, and it doesn't matter a bit, because you're there for the company: Mary Thorne quietly holding her ground, Frank dithering, Lady Arabella scheming over money. Unhurried and gossipy in the best way, if you like that pace.
- Strange in the best way: you follow Anodos into fairy land and the story moves like a dream, one image sliding into the next, including a shadow that attaches itself to him and dims everything he loves. If you need tight plot, skip it; if you like wandering, it lingers for years.
- Three boys wash up on a Pacific island and just get on with it, building huts, diving lagoons, cracking jokes (Peterkin is genuinely funny), before pirates darken things. Very Victorian and sunny in its certainties, but if you like cheerful, capable castaways, this is the original.
- Fair warning, this one moves at the pace of dust settling, but poor proud Hepzibah nerving herself to open a penny shop in her cursed old family house is oddly touching, and Hawthorne's gloomy humor sneaks up on you. Best read slow, on autumn evenings.