The Way We Live Now

De: Anthony Trollope

Narrado por: Timothy West

Exclusively from Audible

In this world of bribes, vendettas, and swindling, in which heiresses are gambled and won, Trollope's characters embody all the vices: Lady Carbury is 'false from head to foot'; her son Felix has 'the instincts of a horse, not approaching the higher sympathies of a dog'; and Melmotte - the colossal figure who dominates the book - is a 'horrid, big, rich scoundrel...a bloated swindler...a vile city ruffian'. But as vile as he is, he is considered one of Trollope's greatest creations.

Trollope's highly regarded satire is about the dishonest and villainous financier, Augustus Melmotte, who captivates and buys his way into the corrupt aristocratic society of London, throwing it into turmoil.

Described by The Guardian as 'the darkest of Trollope's 47 novels' it is also the longest with gloriously rich subplots. Inspired by the financial scandals of the 1870s, the novel is a dramatization of how greed and dishonesty permeated life during that era.

The Way We Live Now has become recognised as Trollope's masterpiece and was featured at Number 22 in The Guardian's 100 best novels.

Narrator Biography

Timothy West is prolific in film, television, theatre, and audiobooks. He has narrated a number of Anthony Trollope's classic audiobooks, including the six Chronicles of Barsetshire and The Pallisers series. He has also narrated volumes of Simon Schama's A History of Britain and John Mortimer's Rumpole on Trial.

Timothy West's theatrical credits include King Lear, The Vote, Uncle Vanya, A Number, Quarter, and Coriolanus and his films include Ever After, Joan Of Arc, Endgame, Iris, and The Day of the Jackal. On television, Timothy has appeared in Broken Biscuits (BBC), Great Canal Journeys (across 3 Series), and the regular role of Stan Carter on EastEnders (BBC).

Public Domain (P)2014 Audible, Inc.

Reseñas de la Crítica

"A tale of financial skulduggery reminiscent of recent city scandals." ( Daily Telegraph)

Finally!

I've listened to all of Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire on audiobook (I recommend the Simon Vance-narrated versions), and I've been longing to read his most famous novel this way, too. However, for the longest time Audible only had a version narrated by the awful Flo Gibson, who sounds like she's 90 years old. So hooray for this new narration by Timothy West of one of Trollope's fabulously entertaining and relevant masterpiece! I was spellbound. Considering that one of the main plot elements is the rise and fall of a Bernard Madoff-style pyramid stock scheme, some of this novel rings painfully true. But there's also love, money, marriage and literary gossip -- something for everyone. Bravo to Audible for finally getting a decent version of this great book.

Superlative

I absolutely agree with Larry (reviewer from San Antonio); Trollope couldn't find a better narrator than Timothy West.

Trollope constantly surprises us, he never takes the easy option - none of his characters is totally good or totally bad. For instance, one starts off wanting Mrs Hurtle to be a villain and Paul Montague a hero, but neither turns out to be either. Even Melmotte himself is not the devil incarnate.

My only problem is that I have read most of Trollope! However, if Timothy West is the narrator, I will listen again to books I have already read.

The Shortest 32 Hours and 25 Seconds of My Life

In Victorian novels this big and baggy, it is customary that, with several different stories interweaving, the listener is very interested in some threads, and not so interested in others. Usually, when we turn from the young lovers just torn asunder, to the embittered old man who lives in the ramshackle cottage over yonder, our hearts tend to sink a bit. Not so here. Trollope has several stories going at once (or, rather, several strands of one huge story) but they all hold the listener's interest equally.

Then there's Trollope's sense of realism. Take the secondary character John Crumb. In Dickens' hands, he would be a pure, unspotted tribune of the people, a sterling example of uncorrupted and incorruptible rural virtue, always doing the right thing and forever shunning the wrong. In Trollope's hands, he is indeed a good man, but somewhat slow. One imagines that he doesn't shun wrongdoing so much as he is incapable of conceiving of it. For all his many virtues, we can see why his ladylove would hesitate to commit to him as a lifelong partner. She, too, has her foibles--a taste for urban dance halls being among them--and this finely counterbalanced picture gives us a sense that we are inhabiting a world very much like our own. A world where, while there is certainly right and wrong (Trollope never slides into moral relativism) discerning the right through the fog of our own desires can be difficult. And doing it can be even harder.

Then there is the writing. Again and again, I was reminded of P. G. Wodehouse. Not that Trollope is always funny, but his books flow along with a sort of good-natured, semi-omniscient, Wodehousian narration that makes me smile. Here's a character's first experience in seeking a position as a domestic:

"The answers which she had received had not come from the highest members of the aristocracy, and the houses which she visited did not appall her by their splendour."

And the reaction of a gentleman to a startling rumor:

"That men should be thoroughly immoral, that they should gamble, get drunk, run into debt, and make love to other men's wives, was to him a matter of every-day life. Nothing of that kind shocked him at all. But he was not as yet quite old enough to believe in swindling."

Even in the midst of reporting serious doings, the wit is there:

"It was so probable that such a man should have done something horrible! It was only hoped that the fraud might be great and horrible enough."

And if Trollope's humor unmasks us, his serious insights are just as surgically discerning:

"He behaved certainly very much better than he would have done had he had no weight at his heart."

It is only left to praise Timothy West's magisterial performance. Coming from him, Trollope's writing sounds so natural--the cadence of his sentences, the insinuations of his meanings--that one might suppose it was really Timothy West pushing the pen.

Fabulous and Timeless

I could not stop listening to this book! The descriptions of the people, their motivations and personalities are as true as today. It is beautifully written and the 18th century London/England setting and historical references are fun.

Masterpiece

Trollope's novels are like the world's best miniseries and my only regret is that there isn't another 30+ hours of it to listen to. More than any of the last 11 books of his that I've been binge-listening to, this one has the most relevance to 2018. In the world of finance, the title is still apt. And thankfully, Trollope seems by the 1870s to be moving away from the anti-semitism that marred the earlier books. The narrator is superb. It's a breathtaking performance.