Daughters-in-Law

January 3, 2011
Short on plot but long on emotion, Trollope's latest (after The Other Family) is a straightforward take on the ways we shape and reshape our idea of family. Though her three sons are grown and married, Rachel is unwilling to let go of her role at the center of their lives, much to the dismay of her daughters-in-law. Responsible Edward, the eldest, feels the burden of being the good son, but his consuming roles as son and brother are jeopardizing his relationship with his own wife, Sigrid, who sacrificed her relationship with her family in Sweden to build a life with him. Rachel and her husband coddled their middle son, Ralph, even matchmaking him with fragile Petra, whose marriage is made uneasy by the large role Ralph's family has in their life. And willful Charlotte quickly finds herself at odds with Rachel after her marriage to youngest son Luke, when Charlotte challenges Rachel's hold on the family's habits. Though genuinely caring, the characters slight each other as they tumble toward individual crises. There's nothing groundbreaking, but it's a decent fix for family drama addicts.

January 15, 2011

Family ties bind rather too tightly in the bestselling author's latest capable snapshot of British middle-class domesticity.

Trollope (The Other Family, 2010, etc.), who has created her own genre of scrupulously anatomized family relationships over 16 highly successful novels, now wraps her readable prose around the problem territory of excessive parental expectations. Rachel Brinkley has given her life to raising her three sons and now that they are adults inevitably has strong views about their partners. Dreamy Petra was hand-picked for brilliant, impossible Ralph, but eldest Edward made his own choice, Swedish Sigrid, who has never felt wholly accepted by her in-laws. Charlotte, newly married to youngest Luke, suffers disapproval when she falls pregnant, too early by Rachel's standards. When Ralph's business fails and Petra refuses to move house to help him take a job in London, a crisis of a kind blows up, compounded by Petra's sudden friendship with another man. Rachel wants to get involved, but it's the younger generation which finds solutions as daughters talk to mothers, sons to each other and Rachel is finally forced to confront a changed landscape.

With conversations between pairs of characters substituting for events, this is a smoothly drawn but comparatively lackluster parable of family dynamics.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2011

Trollope's (The Other Family) latest novel is a thoroughly enjoyable read, dealing with the family dynamics of in-laws. When we are first introduced to Rachel and Anthony Brinkley, it is at their youngest son's wedding. Trollope then takes us through the newest wife's surprise pregnancy and Rachel's not-quite-nice response to it. Then Rachel meddles when her middle son's marriage breaks up. Rachel at first appears to be the stereotype of the overbearing mother, but as readers get a closer look at her thoughts and feelings, they become more sympathetic to her actions. Yet the reactions of the sons, their spouses, and even the parents of the daughters-in-law are also understandable and relatable. Life after the wedding vows is not always happily ever after, and Trollope does a good job of showing us what is involved in a real marriage. VERDICT While some of the characters are not fully fleshed out (this reviewer would have liked more backstory), Trollope fans and readers who enjoy domestic fiction will not be disappointed.--Marianne Fitzgerald, Annapolis, MD

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2011
Mothers yearn for control of their offspring. Rachel, mother of three grown sons, has maintained leadership of the family far longer than is typical. She is an exceptional cook with a generous demeanor, and with her artist husband, Anthony, oversees a spacious house in which all family events take place. The first daughter-in-law, Sigrid, is Swedish, with a distant family. The second, Petra, is a prot'g' of Anthonys. She has no family and is happy to blend in. The newest family addition, Charlotte, has a mother close by. She gives her family precedence, which opens the tiny chink in the established pattern of Rachels life. Each daughter-in-law is distinct, as are Rachels sons, but when crisis time comes, the six of them form a bond that excludes Rachel. It is, of course, all very civilized and proper, but still, Rachel feels bereft and alone. Trollope is at her best in this tightly woven family drama. Her characters are well drawn, and the life events are believable. Readers will care about the outcome, and will find popular, prolific Trollopes latest very hard to set down.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)