Unhelpful issues

It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’ in a few words, but recently she has been writing what the Americans call ‘issue books’, and they can be more readily encapsulated.

It would not have been so easy to describe what Joanna Trollope’s early novels were ‘about’ in a few words, but recently she has been writing what the Americans call ‘issue books’, and they can be more readily encapsulated. The Other Family is about just that — a man who has, or had, two of them. We only meet Richie in death; at the start of the book Chrissie and their three daughters are returning from the hospital after Richie has died of a heart attack, trying to find a way to cope with what has just happened, struggling even to make tea, they are so dazed.

Richie was a musician, a man wedded more to his piano than any human, and not so long ago he was famous, in demand and well-off. Lately his career has been fading, and Chrissie, who was his manager, discovers with a shock that there is very little money left. She also discovers, on visiting the solicitor, that Richie left the beloved piano and all his earlier music royalties to ‘the other family,’ his actual wife, Margaret, in Newcastle, and their son Scott. Because he would never marry Chrissie, though they were together a long time, she faces even worse financial disaster than she thought — her house must go to pay inheritance tax.

The hurt caused by Richie’s public acknowledgment of Margaret and their son is natural, but the vindictiveness with which Chrissie and her daughters behave is not. She spurns Margaret at the funeral and only lets the piano go when a friend makes the arrangements for her.