Sense and Sensibility by Joanna Trollope

Following in the footsteps of Jane Austen, we have Belle, Elianor, Marianne and Margaret following a modern saga with equally heart rending stories. Belle is being thrown out of her home forthwith by her nephew John and his domineering wife Fanny. A long lost cousin materializes and offers them a charming cottage. (I felt that their gratitude was very limited, for a family which was destitute). True the cottage was nowhere near the grandeur of their home at Norland, but a free home is not to be sneered at and Marianne and Margaret and their mother Belle were really lacking in the gratitude department. This was irritating but part of the general story. Belle throughout had a sense of entitlement which was totally unjustified, Marianne lived on another planet, Margaret was too young to understand the drastic changes facing them all at once and it was left to Elinor to deal with the practicalities of bills, transport and just how to survive. Marianne and her mother did not endear themselves to me but it was Elinor who had to hide her own heartache over her thwarted love for Edward and focus entirely on Marianne with her disastrous love affair with Willoughby and her tendency to fall ill at every turn. Marianne's dramatic outbursts were unbelievable and that no one found her over the top was also unimaginable. Her subsequent illness had to be tended to over everything else and everyone and everything took second place to that. That it all ends well for all of them was good. I especially liked Elinor getting a fair deal at the end. It had overtones of the 19th century in a very modern environment and this was slightly off. A re-read on my part but one I thoroughly enjoyed nevertheless.