Friday Nights by Joanna Trollope

[mags51]

It's Eleanor who starts the Friday nights. From her window she sees two young women, with small children, separate, struggling and plainly lonely - and decides to ask them in, and see what happens. What happens is that a group gradually forms, a group of six different and disparate women, who become a circle of friends. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a stick. They include one wife, three mothers, three singletons and five working women. They all of them, variously, value Friday nights. And then one of them meets a man - an enigmatic significant man - and the whole dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested - and some of them break. With wit and warmth, Joanna Trollope explores the complexities, the sabotages, and the shifting currents of modern friendship.

 

I have been a fan of Joanna Trollope for many years and I did enjoy this book, but to be honest, not as much as her previous novels. There were almost too many characters, all of whom were flawed in some way, and I found them all intensely irritating and frustrating, apart from Lindsay and Noah, both of whom, under-standably I suppose, seemed extremely sad. I longed for some normality in their lives - or pehaps that is normality in London.

 

Not, in my opinion, up to her usual standards, but still well worth reading.

 

[happyanddandy]

I have my eye on this as another Trollope fan. I will read it when out in paperback or from library - thanks for review

[Maggie Dana]

(This blurb is taken from dust jacket)

 

It's Eleanor who starts the Friday night get-togethers. From her window she sees two young women with small children, separate, struggling, and plainly lonely -- and decides to ask them in.

 

Gradually a group of six different and disparate women forms. They range in age from Jules, who is twenty-two and wants to be a DJ, to Eleanor herself, who is a retired professional and walks with a cane. They include one wife, three mothers, three single women, and five working women. All of them, in their own way, need and value the tradition of Friday nights spent together with a bottle of wine and children often underfoot.

 

And then one of them meets a man -- an enigmatic, significant man -- and the dynamic changes. The bonds that have been so closely forged are tested -- and some of them break.

 

***

 

I bought this in hardcover because that's how I always buy Joanna Trollope's books. Normally, I'd dive right in, but this time I read Amazon reviews first and was dismayed to see so many negative ones.

 

And I disagree with all of them. Those readers, as far as I'm concerned, totally missed the subtlety of this story, its well-wrought characters, and attention to detail. Anyone looking for a 'one-size-fits-all-happy-ending' sort of story won't find them in this one, or in most of Trollope's novels. Her talent, I feel, is in introducing you to interestingly flawed people, then moving them a little further along on their separate journeys without necessarily solving everything for them, or for the reader.

 

I was prepared, given the reviews, to be disappointed but am happy to report that this novel entertained and delighted me (and made me think) the way her others have done. My favourite, I think, is The Spanish Lover; my least favourite (in that I've only read it once rather than multiple times) is Girl from the South. I find Trollope's writing style enormously appealing. She's the only author who can head-hop (multiple points of view on the same page) without it driving me potty; and one of few authors whose use of adverbs I find charmingly (hah!!!) appropriate.

Edited April 25, 2009 by Maggie Dana