Unlikely behaviour undermines veracity of tale

The new Joanna Trollope novel is engaging enough, yet doesn't quite capture her vintage form.

CITY OF FRIENDS
Joanna Trollope
Macmillan Publishers

By CAROLINE HUNTER

It’s quite a few years since I’ve read a Joanna Trollope novel, so I was pleased to dip into her latest effort,  City of Friends.

I remember her writing style as being of the well-written Aga Saga type, with an emphasis on relationship hiccups. City of Friends fits that mould generally speaking, but somehow it missed the mark in terms of the quality I was expecting.

Four female friends encounter some bumps in the road that appear to be set off by one of their number, Stacey, losing her high-flying job in a London private equity firm. Like a stone landing in a tranquil pond, Stacey’s  sudden unemployment triggers a series of events that destabilise her life, the women’s friendships  and eventually the relationships they have with their various partners.

What didn’t sit easily with me were some of the unlikelihoods that emerged, and these made it difficult to accept the storyline. Stacey was abruptly made redundant in the middle of a conversation with her employer about whether she could work some flexitime from home.

It was clearly an unjustified dismissal, or at the very least a situation wide open for legal challenge, and yet this highly intelligent and capable woman simply rolled over, fled the office and turned into a depressed hausfrau caring for her elderly mother.

Similarly, the other three women (again all high flyers in their respective fields) got entangled in personal dilemmas they should have had the brains and good sense to sort out, given their evident success in other areas of their lives.

While their problems were all eventually resolved one way or another, I wasn’t fully invested in some of the characters’ decision-making and so I failed to engage in that sense.

It was a pleasant enough tale and a quick read,  but I would probably sum it up as Joanna Trollope Lite.

Caroline Hunter is an ODT sub-editor. 

Comments

In private equity, of course, an injury to one is an injury to all. That will account for how the firing of one woman impacts on the lives and relationships of others. Yet, I posit such collective solidarity is uniquely female, which is really good, because the protagonist is a lady.