Phoebe, Junior by Marget Oliphant

So this is the second time I'm making the announcement, but this book is officially the last novel I will ever be forced to read against my will! I have never read Oliphant before, and I really wasn't too impressed by this novel. It was a quite amusing, but it was just so stereotypically late Victorian realism that it drove me a bit up the wall. It was quite funny at times, and I think I would have enjoyed it more if I hadn't been counting the pages when I would finally be free of it. What was quite challenging about it for me is that it's highly concerned not only with class, but with religion (churchmen and dissenters) and I really have very little idea of that terrain of Victorian society. I think I missed quite a lot of the niceties surrounding behaviour and custom around religious stuff. A large part of the plot hinges on money lending practices that I'm also not very familiar with, so I got a bit tangled up in that. However, this book has one of the most satisfyingly horrible (by which I mean someone you want to punch in the face with rage and forget they're only in a book) Victorian patriarchs; Mr. May, who constantly bullies and terrorises his children, while getting himself into fantastical financial difficulties. There are a lot of horrible male characters, such as the nouveau riche Mr. Copperhead, who will not shut up about his genuine Turner, and his blundering son of phenomenal stupidity. The female characters are the intelligent, clever and appealing ones, but I didn't really get attached to any of the characters. I did like the way Phoebe's scheming for a good marriage was presented in a positive light, since it confronts the very real dilemma that many women faced (marry for money or be a burden to relations since they are unable to work) without pretending that the rules of the real world can be suspended in fiction.