I have no idea why I bought this book. It’s probably a combination of having heard about Trollope and liking the cover. Probably.

Anyway, The Warden is the first book of Trollope’s that I’ve read. It’s about two good men – The Warden, who believes that he has done what is right to the men in his care, and John Bold, who believes that the Warden is taking money that he doesn’t deserve. The complication here is that John Bold is in love with the daughter of the warden, making it a tricky situation all around.

In most books, there’s a clear hero and villain. Here, the two main characters are actually good people. They’re both doing what they think is right, except they have different ideas on what they think is right. The closest we can get to a villain figure is Dr Grantly, the Warden’s son-in-law who has very firm ideas on how the Warden should respond to the challenge. Even so, Dr Grantly isn’t a true villain, he’s also acting in the way that he thinks is right (and also he’s got a very ‘powerful’ personality, but that just makes him unlikeable, not evil).

I’m fairly sure that Trollope is supposed to be funny. Despite the fairly serious subject matter, the tone of the book is light and the narrator is very self-aware. Quite a few of the passages made me laugh, and made me think a bit of Berkeley due to their wry humour. But there’s one thing that stopped the book from being very funny to me – the sentences are too long! I feel like it’s the style of the time, but the way the narrator goes on drags out the punchline and consequently, a lot of the humour is lost for me.

Overall, this was a light and entertaining story. I found this book to be a fun introduction to Trollope. However, I’m not sure if I’d read any other books – while I liked this enough, I’m not exactly left wanting more. But it’s not the book, it’s probably me; I think if you like the narrative style, you’ll really enjoy this book.