Book Review- The Warden

The Warden by Anthony Trollope is a novel similar to reading Austen. It involves morals, money and love. However, it also heavily involves the church. I like this synopsis from Goodreads to sum it up.

The book centers on the character of Mr. Harding, a clergyman of great personal integrity, whose charitable income far exceeds the purpose for which it was intended. Young John Bold turns his reforming zeal to exposing what he considers to be an abuse of privilege, despite being in love with Mr. Harding's daughter Eleanor. The novel was highly topical as a case regarding the misapplication of church funds was the scandalous subject of contemporary debate. But Trollope uses this specific case to explore and illuminate the universal complexities of human motivation and social morality.

As you can see, this book delves into a lot of interesting issues giving much food for thought. I enjoyed it a lot and found it to be entertaining as well as edifying. Trollope's remarks on the newspaper and on the parliament are humorous but thought provoking. He's quite clever in his writing and I often caught myself smiling. The charters were all great and I especially loved the character of Archdeacon Grantly... not because he was exactly a "good" character (though he wasn't bad) but because his actions and people's commentary on his actions were hilarious!

Overall I recommend the book and after it I recommend the sequel Barchester Towers, which I actually read before The Warden. :) There is also an excellent miniseries that came out in 1982 entitled The Barchetser Chronicles that encompasses The Warden and Barchester Towers.
I actually listened to this via Librivox, which is free so if you can't get ahold of a copy then that is a good option. With this book I got points for The Classics Club, my Audiobook Challenge and my TBR Pile Challenge. I love it when I'm able to knock out so many challenges with just one book. :)

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