Phineas Redux Lib/E: (#4 Palliser Novels (Audio))

His beloved wife having died in childbirth, Phineas Finn finds Irish society and his job as a poorhouse inspector dull and unsatisfying, particularly after the excitement of his former career as a member of Parliament. Back in England, the Whigs are determined to overturn the Tory majority in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Since Finn had once been considered the most promising of the younger set, he is encouraged to run for office again. Bribery, romance, and murder are peppered throughout this Trollope novel. The fourth novel in the Palliser series, Phineas Redux stands alone as a compelling work of political intrigue, personal crisis, and romantic jealousy.

About the Author :
Anthony Trollope (1815-1882) grew up in London. He inherited his mother's ambition to write and was famously disciplined in the development of his craft. His first novel was published in 1847 while he was working in Ireland as a surveyor for the General Post Office. He wrote a series of books set in the English countryside as well as those set in the political life, works that show great psychological penetration. One of his greatest strengths was his ability to re-create in his fiction his own vision of the social structures of Victorian England. The author of forty-seven novels, he was one of the most prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Simon Vance is an award-winning actor and an AudioFile Golden Voice with over fifty Earphones Awards and thirteen prestigious Audie Awards. He was named Booklist's very first Voice of Choice in 2008 and an AudioFile Best Voice of 2009.

Review :
"There are certain chapters in the middle of Phineas Redux that are Trollope at the highest power." -- "Sir Hugh Walpole, English novelist" At its core, Phineas Redux is more about friendship than romance, family life, or even politics...Alliances through friendship permeate political and romantic relationships alike and repeatedly entwine them together...Friendship is for Trollope one of the most stable of social bonds and yet also a transitory and transitional one, another in-between state, that is always in danger of becoming something less or more. -- "John Bowen, professor of nineteenth-century literature, University of York" Later Palliser novels such as Phineas Redux and The Prime Minister ennoble-at times even heroize-exemplary characters. The thoroughgoing corruption these novels depict does not neutralize or even privatize human virtue so much as portray public life as a grueling duty (Palliser) or exacting challenge (Finn) to which ethical exemplars must submit. -- "Lauren Goodlad, author of Victorian Literature and the Victorian State" There is a case for arguing that Phineas Redux, although perhaps less well-known and popular than Phineas Finn, is in some ways a greater achievement. In it Trollope displays, at times almost negligently, his two greatest strengths-his power of characterization and his capacity to dramatize the ordinary...In Phineas Redux, with its darker tone and more astringent style, it is recognizably a real world with which we are dealing and we pay it the ultimate tribute of feeling a genuine sense of loss when we leave it. -- "F. S. L. Lyons, author of Ireland Since the Famine"