ABOUT THE BOOK

Other People's Children explores that most modern of dilemmas, second marriages and their effect on the children of the first marriage. In a world where, ten years into the new millennium, it is estimated that there will be more stepfamilies than birth families in Britain, Joanna Trollope looks at the effects which second marriages have on the offspring of all ages: young ones, teenagers, and even grown-up children.

Tom and Josie had divorced without too much acrimony. Josie had fallen in love with Matthew and decided to marry him while Tom, who had married Josie partly to provide a mother for his two children after the death of his first wife, seemed content to be on his own again. Nadine, Matthew's first wife, moved resentfully into a remote and drafty cottage in the country. The adults seemed to have taken care of themselves.

But who is to take care of the children, who had to adapt to absent fathers, new homes, strange stepsisters and brothers and the horribleness of change? For eight-year old Rufus, Josie and Tom's son, these changes were bewildering and overwhelming. He now had to regard Matthew's three children as his family - big, rebellious teenagers, who had been conditioned by their mother Nadine to hate his own mother. His half-sister Dale, in spite of the fact that her own mother was dead and she herself was grown-up, carried her resentments and hatred towards all stepmothers past, present and future with her. Their father had a new friend - Elizabeth, who was in the midst of all this hatred a sane and friendly figure to Rufus. But can there ever be a neat and satisfactory solution where other people's children are concerned?

Joanna Trollope has described how the stepmother myth had interested her for a long time. 'The Wicked Queen in Snow White terrified but also fascinated me. Why was she so jealous and cruel and vengeful? Why didn't Snow White's father just tell her to lay off? And why did her beauty have to matter so much? ...The perception of stepmothers as wicked, as dangerous, as inimical to children, is perhaps more to do with our feelings about true motherhood than bad stepmotherhood, namely that to see our our true mothers as good is so strong that we cannot face the possibility that they might fail us.' She also says that Other People's Children is about 'a love affair between a little boy of eight, a boy who is very fond indeed of his own mother, and a woman in her late thirties; a childless, professional woman whom he believes will be his stepmother.'

SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION

1. The stepmother myth is a powerful one in Western literature and culture. How far do you think our fear of stepmothers stems from our need to see our true mothers in a perfect light?

2. In Other People's Children Dale, who is grown-up, and whose own mother died some time ago, is more hostile towards the idea of stepmothers than, perhaps, any of the other characters. Why should this be?

3. Joanna Trollope avoids the obvious happy ending in this novel. Do you think that things could have worked out for Tom and Elizabeth?

4. The author has said that you cannot have change in life without sacrifice: 'All my novels focus on what making a choice really means, because I think that sacrifice through choice is something that happens to almost everybody.' How far do you think that the choices which the characters in Other People's Children make are for altruistic reasons?

5. Ann Widdecombe, in reviewing this novel, said 'One pities the Rufuses of this world who pay the price for the lack of adult self-restraint and willingness to see things through...Other People's Children should be required reading in every sixth form. It might give pause for thought in later life and is more eloquent than a thousand sermons.' Does this novel support the idea that unhappy couples should stay together for the sake of the children?

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

The Uses of Enchantment by Bruno Bettelheim

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Telling Liddy by Anne Fine

Back to top of page