I don't know who or why or how or what, but I just did not like this book. I suppose it was a character study. That is often a good way to say a book was plotless and incredibly boring- as this was.
Perhaps I am not doing The Warden justice. It did have a romance, and the prose was not nearly obscure. It is just that everything was so flat. The book was like a children's primer. Of course, it did not help that my edition had a rather large font and cute little illustrations.
The Warden is a clergyman appointed to oversee some aging, retired field workers. A young activist-type decides the Warden is paid too much, and that more of the money he receives should go to the old men. So the kid conjures up a lawsuit. Unfortunately, he loves the Warden's daughter, and she pleads for him to give up the suit. Alas, it is too much for the Warden. He resigns his post, the girl marries the young guy, and everyone is moderately happy at the end, except for the old men, who have lost the best master they could have over greed for money they never got.
"Pedestrian" is the best I can do to describe the book. "Dull", "flat", "uninteresting" are close contenders. What more is there to say? I am sure the book had some sort of merit as social and political commentary at some point, but now even I, an unabashed Anglophile, can derive little of enjoyment from it. It is so hard to say intelligent things about a boring book
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