LilMtnCbn
02-08-2004, 06:50 AM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/02/01/botro01.xm
l&sSheet=/arts/2004/02/01/bomain.html
The search for blood relations
(Filed: 01/02/2004)
Mary Wakefield reviews Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope
It has only been a couple of days since I finished Joanna Trollope's 11th
novel, Brother and Sister, and I am already finding it difficult to remember
the plot. I have blurred memories of anxious husbands, school-runs and pine
floorboards, but no real grip of what happened.
A quick look at the cover illustration brings it back. The main characters are
David and Natalie, a brother and sister who were adopted into the same family.
When we meet them, both are in their mid-thirties with spouses, sprogs and
comfortable homes. But they soon decide to upset the cosy equilibrium and start
searching for their real mothers. As a result, adopted parents are jealous,
children are neglected and newly found "birth mothers" break down. Everybody is
shaken up enough to make for a lot of soul-searching dialogue – but not so
much that "closure" isn't achieved within 311 pages.
A Joanna Trollope is an agreeable way to spend a grey afternoon, and Brother
and Sister is no exception: the action is carefully paced, the phrases are as
well-balanced and unthreatening as the middle-class characters with their
reasonable neuroses. Trollope is, as ever, a slick and stylish writer with a
good ear for dialogue, and she is brilliantly perceptive about the little
things that get on people's nerves.
So it's difficult to pinpoint what makes this particular novel less memorable
and less satisfying than the others. There are Trollope novels I still recall
with pleasure -– The Choir, A Village Affair, Next of Kin -– but there is a
glibness and a whiff of dishonesty about Brother and Sister. One problem is
that the title and set-up promise us a novel about adoption. But, as it turns
out, this isn't a book about the importance of blood ties – it's another
"bitter-sweet" look at marital relationships. Trollope has done her homework
– she knows about "bio-folk" and adoption search services, and even drags in
a trainee psychoanalyst called Sasha to say things like "the abandoned baby
lives inside every adoptee all his life", and to point out "the acknowledged
violence of the primal wound". Despite this, the theme of identity and
belonging is not examined in any real depth.
Once you strip away the psychobabble, the real structure of the book emerges:
the first chapter starts with Nat's husband, Steve, musing on his perfect life;
the plot peaks with his affair with the psychoanalyst Sasha, "very attractive
in a bony, bold way, with seal-pelt hair"; and the final chapter describes his
repentance. "It's over," Steve said. "I slept with her once, and it's over. I
ended it and she's gone. And it was never to do with love, never, ever to do
with love."
Trollope would probably protest that it is unsettling for husbands and wives
when their partner starts searching for their real parents, that Steve's affair
was prompted by his adopted wife's mission. But the fact remains that while
adoption is useful wrapping paper, Brother and Sister is really about
Trollope's favourite subject – adultery.
Even the way Nat, David and their various relatives develop indicates that
Trollope hasn't put all that much thought into the book. Each of the characters
has a cathartic moment of behaving out of character: the control-freak Steve
has a messy affair, the ice-queen Sasha falls in love, Nat and David's
timorous, unassertive adoptive mother, Lynne, finally works up the nerve to
speak her mind to her strong-willed daughter. "I'm not afraid of you dear, I
have been in the past, but I'm not now. You've had terrible things happen to
you but you've had wonderful things happen too. I haven't helped in the past,
either, I know, because I was so insecure about a lot of things, but all this,
the last few months, has made me feel a bit better about life in general."
Brother and Sister is by no means bad – Trollope has put together the
characters and plot very competently. The problem is that they have the feeling
of being cobbled together from other books. Even the moral of the story is a
bit of a cliché: Nat and David eventually realise that, despite finding their
blood relations, their real home is where the heart is.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
l&sSheet=/arts/2004/02/01/bomain.html
The search for blood relations
(Filed: 01/02/2004)
Mary Wakefield reviews Brother and Sister by Joanna Trollope
It has only been a couple of days since I finished Joanna Trollope's 11th
novel, Brother and Sister, and I am already finding it difficult to remember
the plot. I have blurred memories of anxious husbands, school-runs and pine
floorboards, but no real grip of what happened.
A quick look at the cover illustration brings it back. The main characters are
David and Natalie, a brother and sister who were adopted into the same family.
When we meet them, both are in their mid-thirties with spouses, sprogs and
comfortable homes. But they soon decide to upset the cosy equilibrium and start
searching for their real mothers. As a result, adopted parents are jealous,
children are neglected and newly found "birth mothers" break down. Everybody is
shaken up enough to make for a lot of soul-searching dialogue – but not so
much that "closure" isn't achieved within 311 pages.
A Joanna Trollope is an agreeable way to spend a grey afternoon, and Brother
and Sister is no exception: the action is carefully paced, the phrases are as
well-balanced and unthreatening as the middle-class characters with their
reasonable neuroses. Trollope is, as ever, a slick and stylish writer with a
good ear for dialogue, and she is brilliantly perceptive about the little
things that get on people's nerves.
So it's difficult to pinpoint what makes this particular novel less memorable
and less satisfying than the others. There are Trollope novels I still recall
with pleasure -– The Choir, A Village Affair, Next of Kin -– but there is a
glibness and a whiff of dishonesty about Brother and Sister. One problem is
that the title and set-up promise us a novel about adoption. But, as it turns
out, this isn't a book about the importance of blood ties – it's another
"bitter-sweet" look at marital relationships. Trollope has done her homework
– she knows about "bio-folk" and adoption search services, and even drags in
a trainee psychoanalyst called Sasha to say things like "the abandoned baby
lives inside every adoptee all his life", and to point out "the acknowledged
violence of the primal wound". Despite this, the theme of identity and
belonging is not examined in any real depth.
Once you strip away the psychobabble, the real structure of the book emerges:
the first chapter starts with Nat's husband, Steve, musing on his perfect life;
the plot peaks with his affair with the psychoanalyst Sasha, "very attractive
in a bony, bold way, with seal-pelt hair"; and the final chapter describes his
repentance. "It's over," Steve said. "I slept with her once, and it's over. I
ended it and she's gone. And it was never to do with love, never, ever to do
with love."
Trollope would probably protest that it is unsettling for husbands and wives
when their partner starts searching for their real parents, that Steve's affair
was prompted by his adopted wife's mission. But the fact remains that while
adoption is useful wrapping paper, Brother and Sister is really about
Trollope's favourite subject – adultery.
Even the way Nat, David and their various relatives develop indicates that
Trollope hasn't put all that much thought into the book. Each of the characters
has a cathartic moment of behaving out of character: the control-freak Steve
has a messy affair, the ice-queen Sasha falls in love, Nat and David's
timorous, unassertive adoptive mother, Lynne, finally works up the nerve to
speak her mind to her strong-willed daughter. "I'm not afraid of you dear, I
have been in the past, but I'm not now. You've had terrible things happen to
you but you've had wonderful things happen too. I haven't helped in the past,
either, I know, because I was so insecure about a lot of things, but all this,
the last few months, has made me feel a bit better about life in general."
Brother and Sister is by no means bad – Trollope has put together the
characters and plot very competently. The problem is that they have the feeling
of being cobbled together from other books. Even the moral of the story is a
bit of a cliché: Nat and David eventually realise that, despite finding their
blood relations, their real home is where the heart is.
-------------------------
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail . . . but, a true friend will
be sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
-----Unknown
