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Janet Baker

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June 2014

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Average rating: 4.0 · 4 ratings · 3 reviews · 1 distinct work

Run

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2015 — 2 editions

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An Old Man's Love

by Anthony Trollope

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Janet Baker said: " This is a subjective review, but of course all reviews are subjective. But this one is really, really, insofar as I was taking heavy pain-killers while reading it and insofar as Trollope was dying. I had hip replacement surgery on a Wednesday and dov This is a subjective review, but of course all reviews are subjective. But this one is really, really, insofar as I was taking heavy pain-killers while reading it and insofar as Trollope was dying. I had hip replacement surgery on a Wednesday and dove into the book on Friday, or just about as soon as I could focus. The nerve blocks had worn off and I was relying on hydrocodone. (If I forget to mention it again, let me say here, and very seriously: don't ever take this drug. Never. I don't care if Big Pharm comes for me with cudgels for saying it, don't you ever take this drug. Never). Along with hallucinations of people screaming and enormous spiders crawling across the metal posters of the bed, I had to consider that Trollope had written a post-modern love novel in which he challenges not only the presumptions of Christian marriage (and those presumptions get to be wowsers when pushed to the level of giant spiders on the bed) but even the presumptions of language itself, as his characters weave back and forth across their original understandings of statements, rake back again, revisit yet again, in different and extremely bizarre settings that whiz from South Africa around the world to a much roughened England and back again (and there's some mind-popping language involved in that journey, let me tell you. I thought somehow I was picking up the narrative in the wrong place--and perhaps, given that I heard phantom rats outside the bedroom door, that's not out of the question--as the two rivals over the girl endlessly discuss their motives and their perception of what is the best for *her.* That's the Christian part. The Old Man descends into his own fantasy of what love is from a sweet girl he has bought for himself. One knows, one does not have to google, that his was Trollope's last novel because it challenges all his other romantic novels--Anna comes immediately to mine, The Eustace Diamonds, so many more. Was Trollope questioning all of them? My caretakers are hissing at me to go back to bed. This is an awesome novel. Good, bad, that's out of the realm of reviews. But it certainly is hallucinogenic. ...more "

Jul 04, 2021 11:05AM · see review