The Rector's Wife - Joanna Trollope

Anna is an Anglican vicar's wife in a small village. As the book opens, her husband Peter has just been refused a promotion that would have increased his salary, and he's feeling rather depressed about it. At the same time their 10-year-old daughter Flora is being badly bullied in school. Anna, who has felt like an unpaid curate for the past twenty years, without any vocation - and not even any definite faith - decides to take matters into her own hands. So she gets a job as a supermarket packer, in order to send Flora to a private school. Unfortunately Peter sees this as proof that she thinks he is inadequate, and some of the ladies of the parish consider it a ...  Read the complete review

I took one look at this book and deemed it suitable holiday reading: short, easy going and something new as I hadn't read any Joanna Trollope before. What I read was short and easy going but infuriating in places. What I found most infuriating was the subject matter - probably a good sign as it means that I became involved in the storyline! The story goes like this: Anna Bouverie is the wife of a rural vicar. She runs a home and a family on a miniscule wage and suffers the constant scritiny of the locals who expect her, as a pillar of the community, to be exemplary in every way. When her husband isn't promoted, he regresses into his own little world and ...  Read the complete review