Barry O'Neill
5 books read for LibriVox
- You get compact Breton romances where desire, loyalty, and magic keep upsetting respectable social rules. In Bisclavret, a werewolf’s wounded trust matters more than the marvel itself; Lanval gives you a lonely outsider and a fairy lover, all told with brisk, haunting economy.
- You’ll like Rachel Ray for its quiet pressure: Rachel’s love for Luke Rowan has to survive village gossip, a domineering sister, and her mother’s anxious idea of respectability. It’s a slower, domestic Trollope, but his dry eye for small-town judgment makes Rachel’s eventual steadiness feel hard-won rather than sugary.
- You get Trollope’s dry social comedy at its most pointed, with Elias Gotobed delivering blunt American verdicts on English aristocracy and fox-hunting society while Arabella Trefoil treats courtship as strategy. It’s sprawling and occasionally slow, but rewarding if you enjoy watching manners, money, and marriage expose people.
- Harry Clavering gets jilted for a rich old lord, then finds the widow back on his doorstep just after he's engaged to someone kinder, and Trollope refuses to make him a hero or a villain. If you like watching a decent, weak man squirm honestly, this is quietly satisfying.
- Mr. Crawley, a proud, half-broken country curate accused of stealing a twenty-pound cheque, is one of the most painfully real people Trollope ever wrote, and you'll ache for him. It's long and unhurried, but if you like character over plot, this rewards every page.