Next of Kin - Hardcover

Trollope, Joanna

3.68

1,507 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0670899992 ISBN 13: 9780670899999

Publisher: Viking Adult, 2001

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The death of Caro Meredith turns the lives of her grieving husband, in-laws, brother-in-law, and stepdaughter upside down as they all struggle to cope with the loss of a woman who had been the central figure in all their lives. By the author of Marrying the Mistress. 40,000 first printing.

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Review:

Fans of Joanna Trollope's cozy, plot-driven novels like Marrying the Mistress and Other People's Children might find Next of Kin slightly forbidding. Set on a farm in the English Midlands, the book opens with a funeral. The deceased, Caro Meredith, is (or rather, was) a Californian, a lost soul who ended up on Tideswell Farm by chance, having married into the taciturn, proud Meredith clan. Her funeral finds her husband, Robin, depressed; her twentysomething daughter, Judy, furious at the world in general and at her father in particular; and her brother-in-law, Joe, hopelessly bereft. Meanwhile, Robin's father, Harry, looks on, thinking of his late daughter-in-law: "Strange woman. American. Never quite seemed able to involve herself with the farm and yet--Harry swallowed. He felt it might be an obscure and diverting comfort to mention to Robin that his new power harrow would cost over six thousand pounds, but thought he'd better not."

This gives some idea of the preoccupations and sensitivities of the Meredith mind. The farm comes first; everything else comes a distant second. Next of Kin traces how that rigid mindset is changed by a wholly unexpected agent: Judy's London roommate, Zoe. This disturbingly forthright character arrives for a weekend at Tideswell Farm bedecked in her signature purple hair, rows of silver earrings, and all-black boy's wardrobe. She declares that she likes farm life, and to Judy's horror, soon moves down from London to Tideswell, ultimately ending up in the paterfamilias's bed. As the Merediths find their old ways failing them, Zoe teaches the family how to live with her own odd mixture of honesty and lawlessness. Trollope's books usually move with a nice combination of introspection and action. Next of Kin, on the other hand, holds still--Zoe has to all but goad the Meredith family into the happy ending she has in mind. This stillness makes for a quietly and surprisingly satisfying read. --Claire Dederer

From the Publisher:

"A richly satisfying novel, sometimes dark, but compulsively readable, and imagined with a warmth that makes its determined realism oddly uplifting"
- Sunday Exprss

"A devastatingly acute picture of a harsh rural world"
-Sunday Times

"Absorbing, uplifting and truly impressive"
-Daily Express

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