Girl from the South [Paperback]

Into this picture comes Gillon, a geeky American girl interning in London. Tilly meets her at a party, spills a drink on her and takes her out to dinner by way of compensation. Little does Tilly know this friendless, floundering girl from Charleston, South Carolina, will steal her boyfriend. To find out how this contemporary love triangle pans out, you'll have to read Girl from the South, Joanna Trollope's latest novel.

Girl from the South is a departure for Trollope, a quintessentially British tale bearer whose work falls nicely onto the same subtle shelf as Barbara Pym's and Mary Wesley's. In her latest venture, Trollope takes the action over the Atlantic to Charleston. Trollope's Charleston is a world richer in ritual and convention than England ever thought of being. And Gillon comes from one of the city's most elegant families. Yet the Southern girl fails to drop neatly into the puzzle. At 30, she is still unmarried, childless, not even on the fast track to a high-powered career. Determined to search for her own unique destiny, she seems to have fallen far behind her popular, married sister in the game of life.

However, things are never exactly what they seem on the surface in this intriguing Trollope novel. People who follow all the rules often have their own regrets. Like Tilly, Gillon's sister and grandmother are trapped in a regimen that defines who they are and how they will behave.

To her conventional family, Gillon is a disappointment, but to Henry, she is everything Tilly is not. Where Tilly is brittle and demanding, Gillon is tentative, searching and formidably honest. She may never get her act together, she warns Henry.

"It might take my whole life. I might drive you nuts while I keep thinking just this or just that will do the trick," she says. In exploring the differences between Tilly, Gillon and conventional Southern women, Trollope captures the choice that all modern women make-whether to take the easy path of fulfilling other people's expectations or the harder, more poorly marked trail of deciding what you expect of yourself.

To my surprise and delight, "Girl from the South" proved to be one of Trollope's best works to date. In a story that switches from London to Charleston, South Carolina, and back again, the author introduces us to a number of disaffected people in their 30s--none of whom seem to be able to make a commitment. It is only Tilly, the beautiful but conventional Londoner, who seeks a settled way of life. But her boyfriend, Henry, cannot buy into her view of domesticity, despite years of living together. Tilly and Henry's roommate, attractive and feckless William, is even worse--he has a blonde bombshell girlfriend, Susie, with whom he shares a bed and a quasi relationship, but his true feelings are elsewhere.

Into this interesting mix comes Gillon, the "girl from the South." Stifled by the demands of her very proper southern family, bohemian Gillon, an art historian, flees to London to seek some sense of self. She provides the unwitting catalyst for a whole series of profound life changes among her newfound friends--and yet, seems powerless to make any changes herself.

The story's denoument is at once a disappointment and a revelation, as the main characters find fulfillment in the most unexpected of ways. As always, Trollope remains true to her characters and her story. This is no happily-ever-after romance, as none of her novels are--but it is life-affirming and positive, nevertheless. Highly recommended!