Women at work while men dunk digestives

Trollope's novels have always centred on the push-me pull-you tensions within family life and this is no exception. Useless men feature heavily but the narrative bubbles along cosily, rather than exploding and the men tend to be nice rather than naughty, says Katie Law.
24 February 2014

Balancing Act by Joanna Trollope (Doubleday, £18.99)

Women going out to work while the men stay at home is the latest tricky topic Joanna Trollope tackles in this, her 18th novel. The backdrop, I suspect to make it palatable to her largely Aga saga-loving fan base, is a matriarchal family-run pottery business: think Emma Bridgewater with a spot of Cath Kidston. Susie Moran, abandoned as a child by her hippy parents and raised by her grandparents, started making spongeware in her twenties and 30 years on is running a successful company helped by her three grown-up daughters and a son-in-law.

Childless by choice, Cara and husband Dan do commercial and merchandising. Grace, who’s in the throes of ditching her bully boyfriend, does design, while Ashley, married to Leo with two toddlers, does marketing but spends so much time juggling the childcare with the hopeless nanny and even more hopeless Leo that she feels marginalised at work and home.

Useless men feature heavily. Susie’s husband, Jasper, is an old rocker who wants to revive his band but seems to spend most of his time home alone talking to his parrot, and then there’s Morris, Susie’s estranged dad, who turns up from Lamu half-way through the book, long-haired and penniless, repentant and hoping to be taken in by the family.

Trollope’s novels have always majored on the push-me-pull you tensions within families and are consistently, slickly readable. The narrative here bubbles along like a comforting casserole rather than an exploding pressure cooker and the men tend to be not at all naughty but terribly nice.

It’s all polka dot PJs and cups of tea, and the nearest we get to a sex scene is when Leo, having sacked the nanny, feels sufficiently empowered about running the household, to suggest he and Ashley “go upstairs”.

“You had to admire and rejoice in a man whose self-esteem seemed so undiminished by the domestic round,” Ashley marvels, before heading firmly off to the kitchen, grateful to him for letting her Lean In, to compete against her sisters and mother, but still determined to wash up.

Still while the chaps are dunking digestives, the women seethe with resentment. Being a woman with ambition and a career is a difficult choice, fraught with guilt and causing resentment.

Nonetheless, Trollope’s conclusion is that it is a choice — and being an absent mother is still a greater crime than being an absent father. Unless — and this is the crux — the husband is happy, and I mean happy, to take complete control at home. And how many men do we know like that?

Go to standard.co.uk/booksdirect to buy this book for £14.99, or phone 0843 060 0029, free UK p&p

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