The Taverners' Place by Joanna Trollope

by Joanna Trollope

The lives, loves, triumphs, and tragedies of the Taverner family centers around the great ancestral mansion of Buscombe, in a novel that ranges from the 1870s and Victorian England to the outbreak of World War II

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Joanna Trollope Potter Curteis (aka Caroline Harvey)

Joanna Trollope was born on 9 December 1943 in her grandfather's rectory in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, England, daughter of Rosemary Hodson and Arthur George Cecil Trollope. She is the eldest of three siblings. She is a fifth-generation niece of the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope and is a cousin of the writer and broadcaster James Trollope. She was educated at Reigate County School for Girls followed by St Hugh's College, Oxford. On 14 May 1966, she married the banker David Roger William Potter, they had two daughters, Antonia and Louise, and on 1983 they divorced. In 1985, she remarried to the television dramatist Ian Curteis, and became the stepmother of two stepsons; they divorced in 2001.

From 1965 to 1967, she worked at the Foreign Office. From 1967 to 1979, she was employed in a number of teaching posts before she became a writer full-time in 1980. Her novel Parson Harding's Daughter won in 1980 the Romantic Novel of the Year Award by the Romantic Novelists' Association.

Reviews

[Nightwitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of those nice long meaty family sagas. The characters are more three-dimensional than most, but still suffer from being so compressed - we're following fully ten+ main characters around over a century or so, so there are a lot of one-sentence "and then she married so-and-so" moments, and some characters are wildly one-dimensional. Additionally, it suffers from a sort of narrative blindness that got really difficult to read at times. So, for example, one of the protagonists repeatedly impregnates his wife despite the fact that she suffers from crippling post-natal depression, then moves her and the children to a country house they both hate when he inherits it, forcing her to live with his controlling aunt who maintains all control over said house, decides that this country living is bad for his career so spends five days a week in London but his wife isn't allowed to come "because of the children," joins forces with her father to pressure her to get pregnant again so that he has a son to inherit, decamps to Greece for a full year without consulting her shortly after she produces said son, delays in answering letters or telling anyone where he is or what he's doing because he doesn't feel like it, comes back to England, goes back to Greece again where he embarks on an affair with a Greek girl twenty years his junior, deliberately cuts himself off from all contact with his family (including his adolescent daughters) because he doesn't feel like dealing with them, returns to England when he learns his wife is having an affair with a cousin who moved into the house and is, you know, actually around and helping parent his children, immediately takes custody of his toddler son (whom he's spent maybe six months around at this point), makes an emotional play for custody of his teenage daughters, refuses to allow his wife to see the son for the next several years, and divorces her. His Greek mistress shows up with his other son (approximately the same age as the one he forced his pregnancy-averse first wife to have), and he marries her and brings them both to live in the house, where they live happily ever after with his family while his ex-wife molders away in Wales, miserable and blamed for everything by everyone, and dies painfully of stomach cancer at a young age. But he is basically never presented as the bad guy; so while Trollope draws the characters to be relatively well-rounded and refuses to villainize his wife, the fact that she never even hints at villainizing him was intensely frustrating.

Similarly, some of her characters embrace left-wing politics (some become Communists in the 1930's) and these views and concerns are treated very contemptuously and with a kind of Cold War or post-Cold War viewpoint (was the primary political concern in England of relatively liberal upper-class people in 1937 really a communist fifth column? and if it was, then I'm entirely unsympathetic to them and wish the narrative were too). There's also a lot of imperialism - one character buys a farm in Africa and we're treated to an Isak Dinesen interlude. Imperialism, colonialism, classism - they are always issues in these kinds of books, but generally they're just kind of... less present. Like, no one becomes a communist, or no one goes to live in colonial Africa, and then nobody discusses it. You know what you're getting into when you read a book about the British upper classes in Ye Olden Days. But when these issues are brought up in the book, then any disagreement with some of these perspectives is too obvious to ignore.

[JoAnn Plante · Rating 3 out of 5]

Joanna Trollope is one of my favorite authors, but I did not enjoy reading this novel. It was too long and the print was small. I usually love her stories, the characters, and the settings. This novel takes place over many years and the characters get muddled as you keep reading. They’re all from the same family and by the time you’re two-thirds through the book, you can’t remember whose child is whose.
There was too many descriptive passages that should have been left out to keep the story moving forward. Although a very good storyline, it took a lot of energy to read this book. She (Joanna Trollope) has gone on to write so many great novels. I have many favorites, but this one is not one of them. I usually try to balance my reviews with pros and cons, but this novel was just so out of the ordinary for this author.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a well-written, well-crafted multi-generational saga of England, and lots of interesting historical detail as it intersected with the family.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this is the last of Joanna Trollope's historical novels (written as Caroline Harvey) in a series of about eight and if so, concludes my reading of the series. In fact it was one of these novels, "The Brass Dolphin" set in my home country (Malta) that set me off reading Joanna's books. I think "Taveners' Place" is one of the best and reminded me of the first two "Legacy of Love and its sequel, "The Second Legacy"except that this one was written as one book but like the first two, moves effortlessly from generation to generation. It has a very predictable ending but is no worse for this and I finished it with a great deal of satisfaction. She really is a very good story teller.

[Fi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A proper 'sweeping saga'; the only thing that would have improved it is a family tree/who's who page to refer to; with so many characters, there were several instances were a familiar name came up again & I had to pause to try & remember who they were/how they fitted in - oftentimes I'd have to give up & just continue reading: usually their place within the family/community became clear again after a few pages, but I'm still not entirely sure how some characters fitted in to the family. Ah well, the story itself was enjoyable enough that this minor gripe didn't really spoil it, but the addition of a tree would definitely have enhanced my enjoyment of the book!

[Elaine Cougler · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Taverners' Place by Joanna Trollope (as Caroline Harvey) was long, lingering and lovely. Following the Taveners through three generations at Buscolme, the family estate, the reader meets many characters, some whose names slip away and others most memorable. The story begins in 1870 and progresses to the brink of the Second World War, with world events woven into the family fabric deftly and seamlessly. A good story.

[Alexandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

As always, Joanna Trollope's writing simply engrosses me.. fascinating take on late 19th century Britain, the early feminist movement and the evolution of British landed gentry. The family dynamics are thoroughly believable and rich in complexity.
A truly good book to read and reread!

[Loras]

Too Long

[Pam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Trollope (AKA Caroline Harvey) never disappoints :)