Daughters-In-Law by Joanna Trollope
Random House $39.99
As she grows older and hones in on the big issues of life, Joanna Trollope just gets better.
Back in the 80s, the problems she wrote about may have been a little too "English counties" for some of her New Zealand readers. Most of our kids weren't in church choirs and transferring the issues she wrote about to the rugby club or the Little Nippers branch of the local surf club didn't quite work. In super-secular New Zealand, even fewer of us married rectors.
But more recently, Trollope - the mother of two daughters and two step-sons - who now lives alone in London rather than the countryside, has become seriously relevant. She writes about life's challenges and changes with rare perception, honesty and a marvellous eye for detail.
Her new novel, Daughters-In-Law, focuses on the often-complicated relationship between a mother of boys and her daughters-in-law: the necessary shift in power from mother to wife; and with it the separation of mothers from their adult children.
It's a perennial problem made worse by the fact that the more dedicated - and successful - a mother has been, the harder it is to hand over her children to the next generation.
Worse, as we all know deep down, this becomes much more difficult if you're the mother of boys. Rachel, the mother and co-star of this novel, is gradually learning about the power of her sons' wives. Her third boy, the youngest, has just married. His wife, Charlotte, is the youngest too. Here we would probably call her the potiki - meaning the youngest child and, as such, often a bit of a pet. She is certainly used to getting her own way.
And when she takes on her formidable mother-in-law, she nearly pulls it off. As she explains to her husband why she told her mother about her pregnancy three weeks before her mother-in-law, "The mother's mother is always the first to know. The mother family comes first ... That's how it works."
But this is far too simplistic to give a decent idea of Trollope's style which, like Shakespeare and Jane Austen before her, meanders along looking deceptively light and every-day, while pondering these serious, life-changing, issues.
She deals with this subject the way she always does, through her characters. And level-headed and thoughtful characters they are too, describing from all angles, the seismic, potentially disastrous shift in loyalties that must take place as each new generation sets up its own family.
Much of the book is in direct speech, much of it discussion, as it gradually teases out the problems and sets the ground rules. As one of Rachel's daughters-in-law explains to Charlotte, who is firmly of the opinion that her husband owes her 100 per cent loyalty and should cast off his mother's rule like an old cardy: "The way forward is something between the two. Not defending, not attacking, but not leaving your wife to feel alone either."
Despite the fact there's plenty of room for thought within these pages, Trollope insists she is no therapist or thinly-disguised guidance counsellor. "Writers aren't there to tell you what to think," she said in a recent interview. "They can beckon you into a book and join you in thinking."
They can also alert you to problems you may not have carefully considered before. Although neither of my sons are married, by the second half of this story Trollope certainly had my attention. As one of her characters says, "Luke is my husband. First!"
Overall, this is a fascinating, highly enjoyable read from probably the greatest writer of domestic drama alive today. And although Trollope insists she's just drawing things to her readers' attention, it's worth noting the fact that although we mothers may not like it, if we are to retain the people we love, we need to rethink who we are and how we act, as the power shifts down the generations.
My favourite book of 2011 and unlikely to be superceded.
Carroll du Chateau is an Auckland reviewer.
