THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 29, 1995 TAG: 9510270633
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY BERNICE GROHSKOPF
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
THE CHOIR
JOANNA TROLLOPE
Random House. 320 pp. $22.
The setting of The Choir, Joanna Trollope's seventh novel, the third published in the United States, is Aldminster, a small English cathedral town. Aldminster Cathedral's roof needs immediate, costly repair, and to pay for the work, the dean has suggested sacrificing the choir, whose members are the boys of King's School.
The fact that Aldminster choir dates back to 1535, when it was established by the first Anglican bishop of the city, is of no consequence to some members of the community for whom music is ``a total irrelevance in the modern world.'' For the traditionalists, however, the prospect of no longer having a choir, of no longer hearing ``sacred music sung in a sacred place,'' is unthinkable.
Although the problem of whether a cathedral roof is more important than a choir may not concern many American readers, they are familiar enough with small-town politics to recognize a conflict between traditionalists who would preserve history and the pragmatists concerned primarily with the local economy.
The dean of Aldminster Cathedral, Hugh Cavendish, a manipulative and devious man who ``had meant to love his fellow man,'' but discovered that most of them weren't so lovable, would preserve his cathedral at all costs. Lacking spiritual authority as well as administrative ability, he is dominated by his controlling wife, an overbearing woman without ``the smallest atom of humility.'' Like Joanna Trollope's literary ancestor - Anthony's Mrs. Proudie of Barchester - she too is ``wrapped in a hide of complacency.''
The dean has an unwitting ally in Frank Ashworth, socialist and political activist, who regards King's School and the choir as elitist. But his grandson, 11-year-old Henry Ashworth, is the star of the choir. Henry's father, however, who has never heard his son's fine voice, is off in Saudi Arabia supervising the technical installation of a new hospital, while Henry's mother, Sally Ashworth, weary of her lonely life and her ambitious, self-centered husband, thinks of divorce. Marriage is not about living separately, she reminds Frank, her father-in-law.
Headmaster of King's School, Alexander Troy, although preoccupied and depressed by personal problems, fears for the choir; a gentle, thoughtful man, he is fully aware of its importance to the cathedral, the school and especially to the young choristers. But when he observes that Aldminster's talented choirmaster and organist, the attractive Leo Beckford, and Henry Ashworth's mother have fallen in love, he fears scandal.
Trollope sets each scene with exquisite detail, even including a graceful history of the architecture of English cathedrals. She writes perfect dialogue, and although her style is never ponderous, she effortlessly incorporates significant matters, such as the role of the clergy's wife, a subject she dealt with in The Rector's Wife. She touches on questions of loyalty, the complexity of marital relationships, as well as those between authority and subordinates, and she knows all about the occasional tangle of love and exasperation that can arise between parents and children.
To counterpoint her central theme concerning the preservation of tradition, she reflects on the dangers of masking one's personal aims while claiming to administer to the needs of society. Is it true, the headmaster wonders, that ``all human endeavor springs from the need to be particular, visible?''
This is Joanna Trollope's finest book, and readers will be pleased to know that, like The Rector's Wife, it will be dramatized in a five-part series this fall on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre. MEMO: Bernice Grohskopf is a free-lance book reviewer in Charlottesville who
specializes in 19th-century British literature. by CNB