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.