Since my last post, I had read a number of Trollope's books: Nina Balatka, John Caldigate, Linda Tressel, The Kellys and O'Kellys, Ralph the Heir, and The Landleaguers. Trollope portrays Jews sympathetically, but with still a strong sense of otherness, in his novels. Nina Balatka is a about a Christian woman who loves and eventually marries a Jew. Like Guess who's coming to dinner, the character of the other is practically a saint. I also read two of Trollope's Irish novels, The Kellys and The Landleaguers. Kellys is Trollope's first novel, and I always read a first novel with curiosity. It certainly announces all his strengths, without actualizing all of them quite yet. Landleaguers is not particularly remarkable. Linda Tressel is another tale of love misplaced. I found Ralph the Heir was irritating with all its characters called Ralph -- this was ineffective as a device and irksome for the reader. John Caldigate is about Australia, and has the long legal plot, about the legality of a marriage, of a number of Trollope's novels.
I also read Sandor Marai's Embers and Casanova in Bolzano. Marai is only now being translated from the Hungarian, and the two novels I have read (only three are available) show a great propensity for the characters making speeches several pages long. The Memoirs of Hungary, however, are riveting and written much more vividly.
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