Forget high minded nobility. What if everyone was greedier than the last? The characters in Anthony Trollope’s The Way We Live Now are a long step away from being kings and queens, princes and princesses, but the way they scheme against one another seems as fitting.

From the very top of society and Parliament’s favorite candidate Augustus Melmotte, to the baseness of Western American born Paul Montague, every person seems to have a plan to rise higher than they are with little regard to cost in this 19th century commentary on English society.

Early on it’s learned that the Carbury’s are simply out of money yet the son continues to gamble and spend as if it could never run out. What if he were to seduce the innocent hearted, flighty and silly young daughter of Melmotte and win himself an inheritance from the richest man in England?

Roger and Paul, long best friends and companions, are in love with the same girl. Roger is older and a tad sever, and Paul can’t see a way out of his promises to marry a possible murderer.

Around it goes, from person to person there is always an enemy out to take what could be their own.

It all happens in places just as varied, from the grandest houses of Lords and Government to the humble hovels of Priests and broke Barons. No matter where someone happened to be, there is always a backroom or a dark corner worthy of making shady business deals, like falsifying a transcontinental railroad in Mexico, or telling secrets, like the banking information of a multimillionaire.

Not lost are those voices of reason and good conscience trying to root kinder morals. Often outspoken daughters constantly being ignored or flicked away, there are only small signs of decency in Trollope’s reflection of his reality.

The truth is that these are two extremes living against one another. Either live in sufferance to the wishes of others and hope to make the most amount of people happy besides oneself or commit oneself daily to the attempt of undermining business partners and personal friends. The middle ground is impossible to find and should be impossible to survive in a world of vice and abandon its god Wealth.

The pace is tireless and the content never less intense. Trollope conveys with critical clarity some of the very real enterprises that went on during his time as people looked for any way besides honest work to secure their living.

     5 out of 5 Spurs.