A review by burritapal_1
Phineas Finn by Simon Dentith, Anthony Trollope

challenging emotional hopeful informative reflective sad slow-paced

3.0

This is probably my least favorite Trollope novel. Nevertheless, it gets 3 stars because Trollope is just such a fabulous novelist and has such magnificent command of language. The development of and actions of his characters is extremely realistic. They evoke emotions from the reader in sympathy, laughter, and, at times, disgust.
The reason it is not my favorite is because of all the politics in it, which I find boring. These are English politics, and American politics are certainly annoying, but at least I can relate to who they're talking about. If I had been around in 1850s, and 1860s England, then I'd know what and who Trollope was talking about. However, it is valuable in that it makes the reader understand much more than they originally did about how Parliament works. The only one that I've ever heard of is Disraeli, just because it's such a strange name, and the politician Daubeny was purportedly modeled after Disraeli. Phineas Finn himself has been proposed as the model for Chichester parkinson-Fortescue, About whom I know nothing.
The location of the novel is for a majority spent in the palace of Westminster where all the politics takes place, but there are also ministries, political clubs, private salons, and dining rooms in London. 
The novel starts in Ireland, where Phineas comes from, And also goes to the Highlands of Scotland and a provincial English borough; it also spends time in the hunting counties of Midland England, which part I hated.
Phineas is the only son of a successful Irish doctor who sends him to London to study under a barrister. He's not that great of a student, but because he's handsome and has a likable character, he makes many friends, and one of them proves to be helpful to him. That's Barrington Erle, who is the private secretary to a politician, and he convinces Phineas to run as MP for a small borough in England and Phineas actually wins this seat, because of a quirk of luck.
The lawyer who had tutored Phineas is almost like a father to him, so when he lets Mr. Low know that he's going in for Parliament, Mr. Low is angry with him. He tells Phineas that he's going about Politics the wrong way around. Phineas keeps telling everybody that he can take this risk of taking a job with no pay because there's nobody dependent on him. When Mr. Low reads this part of Phineas's letter to him, he snorts 
"...'no one dependent on him! Are not his father and his mother and his sisters dependent on him as long as he must eat their bread till he can earn bread of his own? He will never earn bread of his own. He will always be eating bread that others have earned.'..." lol
There's no income attached to this seat, so Phineas's father reluctantly agrees to give him 250 pounds a year to support him, while he gets upon his legs as a politician.  It takes a while, but get on his legs he does, much with the help of Lady Laura Standish, the daughter of an Earl who is a Tory in Parliament.
Phineas comes to love Lady Laura, despite having a girlfriend back home in Ireland. But Phineas is penniless, and Lady Laura doesn't have much money herself, because she bails out her brother Lord Chiltern, who is a ruffian, and earlier had been a drunk and a gambler.
 When Phineas is about to ask Lady Laura to be his wife, she jumps the gun and tells Phineas that she has agreed to marry Robert Kennedy, a rich politician. But Robert Kennedy is a dry, cold man with no humor. And this marriage becomes Lady Laura's ball and chain.
Mr. Kennedy has certain ideas about what a wife should be like, and Lady Laura is nothing like this. he thinks a wife should go twice to church on Sunday with her husband, and should never read books on Sunday. Lady Laura Chafes against this and eventually stops Doing as he wishes. When he wants her to go with him to church on a Sunday, she starts getting headaches. Mr. Kennedy enrages Lady Laura by sending for the country doctor whenever this happens.
" 'I will send for Doctor McNuthrie at once,' said Mr. Kennedy, walking toward the door very slowly, and speaking as slowly as he walked.
'no; - do no such thing,' she said, Springing to her feet again and intercepting him before he reached the door. 'if he comes I will not see him. I give you my word that I will not speak to him if he comes. You do not understand,' she said; 'you do not understand at all.'
'what is it that I ought to understand?' he asked.
'that a woman does not like to be bothered.'
he made no reply at once, but stood there twisting the handle of the door, and collecting his thoughts. 'yes,' said he at last; 'I am beginning to find that out; - and to find out also what it is that bothers a woman, as you call it. I can see now what it is that makes your head ache. It is not the stomach. You are quite right there. It is the prospect of a quiet decent life, to which would be attached the performance of certain homely duties. Doctor McNuthrie is a learned man, but I doubt whether he can do anything for such a malady.'
'you are quite right, Robert; he can do nothing.'
'it is a malady you must cure for yourself, Laura; - and which is to be cured by perseverance. If you can bring yourself to try - '
'but I cannot bring myself to try at all,' she said."
Now Phineas turns his love interest towards Violet Effingham, Lady Laura's best friend.  Violet Effingham has many suitors proposing marriage to her, and she cracks me up when she's talking to Lady Laura about choosing a husband:
"...'after all, a husband is very much like a house or a horse. You don't take your house because it's the best house in the world, but because just then you want a house. You go and see a house, and if it's very nasty you don't take it. But if you think it will suit pretty well, and if you are tired of looking about for houses, you do take it. That's The way one buys one's horses,-and one's husbands.' "
Yeah, Me Too, Violet, but that didn't work out too well for me.
  Violet Effingham has a fortune herself, and she's loved Lord Chiltern all her life since they were children together. Lady Laura wants nothing better than to have Violet and Oswald, her brother, Marry.
Lord Chiltern and Phineas have become good friends, but when Lord Chiltern learns that Phineas has expressed an interest in Violet, he gets furious and proposes a duel. Amazingly enough, these 2 ridiculous characters go to Brussels and fight a duel, where I suppose it's legal. Nobody dies, but Phineas gets shot in his shoulder, and it)))) takes him a while to get better and come back to London. Nobody is supposed to know about this, and indeed those who do keep it quiet for some time.
Phineas and Robert Kennedy are in Parliament together, and know each other well, because of lady Laura. However, they're not that close, as nobody can get along with this old fuddy-duddy. One night they're leaving Parliament together, and as they part ways, Phineas notices 2 shadowy characters trailing Kennedy. He intervenes when they try to Garrote him, and so earns much praise and good feelings from among other politicians and friends and family of Lady Laura and Kennedy. Indeed, Lady Laura's father, Lord Brentford,  offers Phineas the seat for the "pocket borough" of Laughton,  where the family estate is.
Though Phineas has saved Kennedy's life, it drives a wedge between Kennedy and his wife, because he's jealous of the attention that Lady Laura pays him. Their marriage, which hasn't been very good up to this time, now becomes exceedingly difficult for Lady Laura, and she becomes ill and depressed,  and eventually dumps his ass and goes back to live with her father.
"...He was a man terribly in fear of the world's good opinion, who lacked the courage to go through a great and harassing trial in order that something better might come afterwards. His married life had been unhappy. His wife had not submitted either to his will or to his ways. He had that great desire to enjoy his full rights, so strong in the minds of weak, ambitious men, and he had told himself that a wife's obedience was one of those rights which he could not abandon without injury to his self-esteem. He had thought about the matter, slowly, as was his wont, and had resolved that he would assert himself. He had asserted himself, and his wife had told him to his face that she would go away and leave him. He could detain her legally, but he could not do even that without the fact of such forcible detention being known to all the world..."
Yeah, this Kennedy dude reminds me somewhat of my ex-husband, trying to force his idea of what a wife should be on somebody, and thus he kills any love that she might have had for the pendejo. 
Phineas asks Violet Effingham to be his wife, and she turns him down and eventually gets together with Lord Chiltern. 
Now there's another woman on the scene, madame Max Goesler, who is a wealthy widow, who is also beautiful and young. She lets Phineas know that she would like to be his wife, but at the last minute, Phineas decides to go back with his old girlfriend from his Irish Hometown.
I was disappointed in the ending; I wanted Phineas to get together with Madame Max.