In Brief
Julia Hunter and Kate Bain have, it seems, each found true happiness with men old enough to be their fathers. The immaculate Julia organises her husband Hugh, a television personality, with the same efficiency with which she runs their lovely home and cherubic twins. Kate has lived with James Mallow, a retired teacher, for eight years, and although she refuses to marry him she is apparently devoted to him. Hugh and James, lifelong friends and now in their sixties, feel blessed indeed.

But the age difference cannot be ignored forever, and when the eccentric and fiercely independent elderly spinster Miss Beatrice Bachelor enters their lives- after James, absent-mindedly driving without his spectacles through the dark and rainy Oxford streets, knocks her off her bicycle, a chain of events is set off in which many suppressed discontents and frustrations emerge. Kate begins to seek out friends of her own age, while Julia finds her own career blossoming just as her husband's is beginning its natural decline. The tranquil lives of the men and the girls seem shattered as new relationships develop and old anxieties surface, and nothing will ever be quite the same again.

Critical Appreciation
Joanna Trollope is the best selling author of contemporary fiction.  She is the eldest of three, the mother of two daughters and the stepmother of two stepsons — and — now a grandmother. After school days in Surrey and winning a scholarship to Oxford, she worked for the Foreign Office and then as a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. Joanna Trollope has been writing for over thirty years.

Jami Edwards’ review of The Men and the Girls, wrote: “This was first of Joanna Trollope's novels to be published in the United States but, fortunately, not the last. For our media- and youth-conscious culture, it's the perfect introduction to Trollope.  The cast of characters for this lively novel is believable, interesting and contemporary. As with all her novels, Trollope's writing is strong and straightforward, with just the right touch of acerbic humour. Trollope gives her characters plenty of outside influences to work with - violence against women, euthanasia, infidelity, teenage angst - but it is interior growth, relationship interaction, and lack of predictability that make Trollope's novels a cut above the norm.”

In 2003 Amanda Thursfield, writing for the British Council, said: “Reading Joanna Trollope's novels gives one the strong impression that she has her finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary Britain, indeed, a historian looking back to study the main social preoccupations of the 1980s and '90s and the early years of this century would learn a lot about how the power structure between men and women, and within the family, was changing during these years. The Family is a central preoccupation, but it is the late twentieth century family with its shifting relations that comes under scrutiny in The Men and the Girls. One of Trollope's favourite themes is misconceptions between couples - she is particularly deft at describing how a relationship can be perfectly happy but can slip, almost imperceptively, due to external circumstances, into disaster.  Anthony Trollope said, 'the novelist's task is to make his readers so intimately acquainted with his characters that the creations of his brain should be to them speaking, moving, living human creatures. This he can never do unless he know these fictitious personages himself, and he can never know them well unless he can live with them in the full reality of established intimacy'. Joanna Trollope, writing as she does about the class and environment in which she lives, has captured that intimacy.”

For Discussion
1. Two lifelong friends who are involved in relationships with women 25 years their junior seem blissfully happy - but the age difference is like a time bomb ticking away at the heart of their happiness.

• How far do you think this statement is true? Make a list of the characteristics of Hugh, James, Julia and Kate.
• Examine how Hugh and James deal with the way their relationships with Julia and Kate fall apart.

  2.Compare Julia and Kate as mothers and discuss how this reflects their behaviour in their relationship with Hugh and James.

• Why do you think Hugh and Julia got back together and James and Kate did not?
• Why should age make a difference? Discuss the possible differences in attitudes and perceptions that may have influenced the characters’ relationships.

  3.The dialogue in The Men and the Girls is often playful, irreverent and acts like a cover for a deeper significance. Consider these following conversations and discuss what is going on between the characters. Then see if you can find any other conversations that really capture you.

  4. Page 40. Uncle Leonard and the Chinese cleaning lady, who has recently escaped from her violent husband: ‘Leonard was very happy. He adored the days Mrs Cheng came “Where's my coffee? It's ten past eleven. What does Kate pay you for…?” “I paid double," she said,  “to put up with you.”

  5. Page 243- 244: Joss leaves Kate and goes back to live with James: ‘Joss had forgotten Hugh…. “Good Lord,” Hugh said…. “I live here,” Joss said furiously….  “Where’s Uncle Leonard?”…. Beatrice beamed at her. “You have been tremendously missed.”

  6. Page 291— 295: Hugh goes back home to Julia and the twins: When the twins first saw Hugh they couldn’t speak…. Edward whispered, “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy,” in fiercest monotone…. Their faces were hot and damp… “I desperately wanted to come back,” Hugh said…. Julia went on…. “…. I love you…. but I won’t be punished again for being a good and loving wife.”

  7. Joanna Trollope displays a love for architectural description, for gardens, plants and landscape that are a characteristic of much English writing. Somewhere at the beginning of each of her novels there is always a description of the building(s) where the main characters live. The description of James Mallow's rather ramshackle house in Oxford is typical: ‘It was his house. He had bought it nearly thirty years before - long before the carelessly built Victorian area of Oxford, called Jericho, had risen from a near slum to gentility. It was a low double-fronted red house with a Gothic doorway and wide sash windows edged in blue-and-yellow brick … and James loved it’.

• Look through the novel and find other descriptions of where people live.
• Talk about how this helps to build a picture in your mind of the story.

  8. Joanna Trollope cleverly introduces a group of characters that set in motion the fateful choices of James and Kate and Hugh and Julia. Shrewd, venerable Miss Bachelor is noteworthy among them, regularly setting all straight with her pithy wisdom.  There is also the lonely Bluey Acheson, who found that being at Richmond Villa ‘felt like coming out into the sunlight after a long time in the cold and rain’. Discuss what part each character plays in the story.

• What drew Beatrice and Bluey to Richmond Villa?
• What do you think would have happened without them?
• Do you think James was right to refuse Bluey’s advances?

  9. Joss and Beatrice develop a special relationship. Discuss how this happens and what you think will happen in the future.

  10.Underpinning Joanna Trollope’s novel are the social issues and problems of the late twentieth century. Choose one of the following and examine how the characters react.  Then, discuss how you would react in same circumstances.

• Euthanasia: ‘…. “ I believe in euthanasia.  I helped my brother to die” Page 76  …… “I’ll take the poisoned umbrella any time…stuff the medics.  Whose sodding life is it anyway?’” Page 124
• Violence against women: ‘…. and then he hit her.  She felt the blow thud into the side of her face.’  Page 270. ‘Kate’s voice rose. “It isn’t the bruises that hurt! At least they do, of course, but they don’t hurt like what going on in my mind hurts!” Page 273
• Guilt:  ‘…I’m a liability …and I mustn’t be that, nobody should ever inflict their brokenness on other people, on the innocent,’ Page 72 ‘Kate’s guilt — “your ball and chain.”’ Page 151. ‘”Because I suppose I think every child has a right to a proper life.  And I feel guilty.”…. “Nonsense!” shouted Beatrice. “Don’t behave as if you were the first!  Agamemnon had a terrible family life, remember!  It isn’t original sin!” Page 167

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