Friday, May 22, 2020

72. Miss Mackenzie

Miss Mackenzie. Anthony Trollope. 1865. 432 pages. [Source: Bought]

First sentence: I FEAR I must trouble my reader with some few details as to the early life of Miss Mackenzie, — details which will be dull in the telling, but which shall be as short as I can make them.

Premise/plot: Easy come, easy go. That sums up Miss Mackenzie quite succinctly.

Our heroine, Margaret MacKenzie, inherits a large fortune when her brother dies. But with all that money comes trouble, worry, and heartache. For Miss Mackenzie who has never had a suitor before suddenly finds herself besieged by men desperately wanting to marry her...Can she find true love in spite of her money?

Three of her suitors are John Ball (a widower, a cousin, a mama's-boy), Samuel Rubb Jr. (a tradesman, the business partner of her younger brother, the wearer of yellow gloves), and Mr. Maguire (a curate who proves himself shamelessly ambitious and greedy).

Miss Mackenzie hasn't determined to marry at all...and yet...she wants to find TRUE LOVE despite the fact that she's "middle aged" (36).

My thoughts: I really enjoyed this one!!! I found it well paced--perhaps with the qualifier of well paced for a Victorian novel. I thought the last half was extraordinary. (Perhaps not better than my favorite, favorite, favorite Trollope novels).

Quotes:
I have no doubt these people are very good in their way; only their ways are not my ways; and one doesn’t like to be told so often that one’s own way is broad, and that it leads — you know where.
He had on bright yellow kid gloves, primrose he would have called them, but, if there be such things as yellow gloves, they were yellow; and she wished that she had the courage to ask him to take them off.
 For me, if I am to live in a moated grange, let it be in the country. Moated granges in the midst of populous towns are very terrible.
It was, however, generally felt that, though Mr Slow was the slowest in his speech, Mr Bideawhile was the longest in getting anything said. Mr Slow would often beguile his time with unnecessary remarks; but Mr Bideawhile was so constant in beguiling his time, that men wondered how, in truth, he ever did anything at all.
Men who can succeed in deceiving no one else will succeed at last in deceiving themselves.

© 2020 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews

1 comment:

Lark said...

This one does sound like fun! I've been meaning to read Trollope for quite some time. Maybe I'll start with this one. :)