Orley Farm

One of his best works. Persevere through the slow scene setting.

(5 stars)

Tone

Trollope is known for slow starts and in-depth character heavy analysis. This one in particular takes a lot of early chapters setting the scene with very detailed analysis of the history of the plot, the psychoanalysis and countenance of every character. Eventually it settles in around chapter 9. Then it becomes a fascinating legal novel of the machinations of the civil law, the skullduggery of the greedy grifting lawyers and the games played by opportunists in probate, inheritance and property law. I enjoyed it more than any of his other novels and the heavy praise from other top novelists is well deserved: The work has received high adulation from Virginia Woolf, George Eliot, Dickens, George Orwell as well as senior judges and law school professors both in Britain and in the USA, who have tagged it as one of the best Legal novels of all time and it is included on many Law school reading lists. If you enjoyed the Parliamentary novels of the Palliiser set, you will feast on this.

Trollope puts his characters through the wringer

(5 stars)

Margaret87

Trollope takes us through the horrible situation a mother's obsession can put everyone. He presents the crime as altruism, but I see it as selfish, despite her subsequent sweetness and light and beauty. He also manipulates us regarding Mr Dockwrath's comeuppance but after all, for all his faults, as far as the case is concerned the lawyer did identify the fatal flaw. As for characters Trollope likes better, Trollope disarms me when he tells me how I should forgive this and that, asking who among us has no blemishes. However, despite these quibbles, I enjoyed every minute of this long story. Wonderful reading by Leonard Wilson. He has a very agreeable tone of voice and reads at a pace that allows the listener to hear, take in and understand what's happening. (I can't cope with being rushed off to the next point without pause.) Thank you all once again.

Oh Sweet GUILT!?

(4 stars)

Vancouver Ken

I was so sorry that Lady Mason didn’t get away with her crime and enjoy the proceeds of it living out a long life of Victorian upper class respectability, wealth, peace and quiet. But it was not to be so! “Crime” could not pay emotionally! Punishment must follow! Lady M was so unrelentingly miserable and capital G - guilty that Indeed I wonder if Trollope was actually satirizing the late 19th C British view of Christian Guilt , Punishment and Repentance. Lady M shed so many tears of remorse and repentance that salty water was dripping out of my earphones! Excellently read and recorded. I discovered Anthony Trollope this year and have listened to about 25 titles. He is so great a psychological writer that his indecisive or over decisive characters completely capture this reader and I think millions of others.

THIS DID NOT MAKE THE FAME OF TROLLOPE

(5 stars)

AVID READER

His books are always slow, but this one is the slowest. It finally gains momentum around chapter 60. Thankfully the reader is one of the best, else I might have given up. One reader's comment deploring the lawyers of the England at that time rings hollow. Our group of ambulance chasers put them to shame.

I couldn't stop listening

(5 stars)

Ada Ebbis

I loved this book! The story was engaging chapter after chapter and amazingly well written. I didn't want it to end.

Good book, excellent narrator

(4.5 stars)

Helen Simpson

I really enjoyed listening to this book. Trollope at his best with the story, and the narrator was excellent.

great reader, repetitive story w few surpises

(3.5 stars)

A LibriVox Listener

Leonard Wilson is one of the few American readers who does great British accents. story a bit meh; everything turns out as expected except one major plot twist.

(2.5 stars)

Melanie

Pretty tedious. I slept and vacuumed through a lot of this, but a lot of the law narrative was interesting. Filled with repellent characters and tediously virtuous folks.