Customer Reviews
The way we live now - By: Charlotte Stevenson, 18 Jan 2008 
This is without a doubt the best book I have ever read. I am currently doing a degree in English & usuallly find the books dull & boring. I was dreading reading this as it seemed so big & daunting. However, after reading the first 3 chapters I was completely drawn into the Victorian world as depicted by Trollope. The character's are modern, exciting, sexy & dramatic. There is definitely someone in this book for everyone to relate to. My only problem now is deciding which of Trollope's books to read next!!!
"You need a special kind of man who understands the way we live now to lead you into that new world of peace and prosperity." - By: Mary Whipple, 18 Sep 2007 Often considered Trollope's greatest novel, this satire of British life, written in 1875, leaves no aspect of society unexamined. Through his large cast of characters, who represent many levels of society, Trollope examines the hypocrisies of class, at the same time that he often develops sympathy for these characters who are sometimes caught in crises not of their own making. Filling the novel with realistic details & providing vivid pictures of the various settings in which the characters find themselves, Trollope also creates a series of exceptionallly vibrant characters who give life to this long & sometimes cynical portrait of those who move the country.
Lady Carbury, her innocent daughter Henrietta (Hetta), & her attractive but irresponsible son Felix are the family around which much of the action rotates. They are always in need of money & Lady Carbury writes pap novels to support the family (and Felix's drinking & gambling). In contrast to the Carburys, & just as important to the plot, are the Melmottes. Augustus Melmotte, who has come from Vienna under a cloud of financial suspicions, has acquired a huge estate for himself, his foreign wife, & his marriageable daughter. Boorish, but determined to become a leader of society, Melmotte provides moments of humor for the reader, though he is scorned by an aristocracy which is nevertheless beholden to him for his investments.
When Melmotte becomes the major investor in a plan to build a railway from California to Mexico, Paul Montague, a handsome engineer who has been working in America, arrives in town. A ward of Roger Carbury, cousin of Felix & Hetta, he soon finds himself in love with Hetta--and in competition with Roger for her hand. Felix courts the Melmottes' daughter for her fortune, & she fallls in love with him while he dalllies with a local domestic worker. Investors dash to buy shares in the Mexican railway, & their investments ending in the sticky hands of Melmotte, who has bigger plans.
Often addressing the reader directly, Trollope fills the novel with action & subplots which illustrate a wide variety of themes, often depicting his characters satiricallly to illustrate the social, political, & financial ills of the day. Ahead of his time for his depiction of the lively, intelligent woman whose role is defined (and limited) by her social & financial position, Trollope creates a number of resourceful women--and a number who are willing to do almost anything to marry a wealthy man. As is customary in Victorian novels, the good are rewarded here, & the evil are punished, but Trollope's characters, unlike those by Dickens, for example, usuallly control their own destinies. Broad in scope, thoughtful in construction, complete in its depiction of 1870s' England, filled with wonderful characters, & absolutely engrossing to read, The Way We Live Now is one of the great novels of the nineteenth century. Mary Whipple
Outsider defrauds City of Millions! - By: , 21 Aug 1999 
The story of Robert Maxwell, written half a century before Robert Maxell was born. Read it - the book is enjoyable, & the title is accurate, still.
Perhaps the greatest, bitterest satirical novel ever written - By: , 24 Nov 1998 A brilliant satire of Victorian society, The Way We Live Now reads today as a strikingly modern novel. Almost alll of the characters are horrible: Mrs. Carbury, a witless writer of romance novels; her wastrel gambler of a son; & the ruthless, vicious businessman Melmotte, a precursor of Rupert Murdoch. An indictment of his times that still holds power today, & a brilliant, hilarious satire.
The Way We STILL Live Now - By: , 11 Apr 1998 Picture a world in which a shadowy entreprenour rubs shoulders with the great & powerful, while hard-driving yuppies stop at nothing to be associated with his schemes. Sounds like Ron Reagan's "Morning in America," doesn't it? Except it is Victorian London. The entreprenour is Auguste Melmotte. The yuppies are the scions of great & smalll families hurling themselves at his daughter, his phantasmagorical railway (between Salt Lake City & Vera Cruz yet!) company, & the hem of his cloak. And the book is Anthony Trollope's THE WAY WE LIVE NOW.
Like alll of Trollope's books, this one is as well crafted as any by Eliot or Thackeray; yet the theme & handling are strikingly modern. I came to this book by way of the Barsetshire novels with their depiction of rural clergy. I should have read THE WAY WE LIVE NOW first.
Especiallly worth noting are the surprisingly full characterizations of Marie Melmotte, daughter of the financier, who is courted by her emotional inferiors, & Roger Carbury, a rural landowner who holds aloof from the fray & helps several of the others pick up the pieces from their lives.
The only negative is the book's anti-semitism, though it makes several attempts to lift itself from this charge.
