Trollope strikes familiar chords

Joanna Trollope has produced another book dealing with modern issues in a way which will be familiar to her regular readers.

She zones in on a topic, does her research thoroughly, writes about the kind of people she knows and captures their voices well.

In Balancing Act, she provides a family situation which, in spite of being middle-class British, probably strikes chords within many households. How do dedicated career women maintain a balancing act between home and work demands?

The family is a successful one. Susie Moran, abandoned by her parents as a baby, has been provided by her grandparents with a secure base for her talents in design and entrepreneurship to flourish. She has rescued a failing pottery business, and developed it in a single-minded effort to the point where it provides a comfortable living for her three daughters and one of their husbands.

Just as every good novel has to have friction to maintain interest, every seemingly perfect family has some underlying discontent. When Susie's family begin to chafe at her overall dominance of the company and are keen to try new, modern methods of expansion, they have to contend with her resistance to change ... Susie has always had a vision for the company she established and as long as they were happy to follow that vision all is well. But when their ideas clash, deep-rooted grievances emerge. To add to the mix, Susie's errant father makes an unexpected return and provokes the problem of what to do with him.

Susie has managed to make her office, her pottery designs, reflect domestic cosiness, yet relies on others to provide that comfort in her own home. She has been able to do what she does and do it splendidly, because her husband was content to care for the three girls, although his career as a successful musician came to a halt while he did so. Of Susie's three daughters, two remain childless, and, like their mother, the main focus for all three is on their lives outside home. The one who produced two children has an unsatisfactory nanny, and a laidback husband who fills the gaps the nanny leaves.

The trademark characteristics of a Trollope novel are here. No long introduction - the reader is straight into the action. Small everyday actions are used to interrupt dialogue and bring the reader into each scene. Within the first 10 pages we've met the daughters and have a small insight into their characters. A clever technique but she makes it look easy - although I did find that after that beginning, the main female characters only slightly engaged my sympathy, the men a little more so, whereas the children and their antics were beautifully captured and provoked sparks of humour and delight.

It's fashionable now to mock Joanna Trollope and her reliance on the trials of the English middle class as the fodder for her books. But if you enjoy relaxing with a novel which echoes modern life in a recognisable way, if you enjoy eavesdropping on a fictional family with realistic dialogue, you'll like this one.

- Patricia Thwaites is a retired Dunedin schoolteacher.

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Win a copy
The ODT has five copies of Balancing Act, by Joanna Trollope (RRP$37.99), to give away courtesy of Random House and its imprint Doubleday. For your chance to win a copy, email helen.speirs@odt.co.nz with your name and postal address in the body of the email, and ''Trollope Book Competition'' in the subject line, by 5pm on Tuesday, March 18.

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