Rating: 
Summary: Write About What You Know
Review: A real disappointment -- I enjoy Joanna Trollope's books for their contemporary British setting but she should stick to writing about England, not attempt to explore the gracious southern lifestyle in the US which is admittedly foreign even to us Yankees in the north. Note to author: a modern southern woman would probably not say "I shan't..." In the US, those little rubber things on the ends of baby bottles are called "nipples" not "teats." A woman suffers from post-partum depression,not "post-natal depression." Aside from the cross-cultural gaffes, this book bounced all over from character to (barely tangential) character like silly putty. A sad attempt.
Rating: 
Summary: Britain Meets the Deep South
Review: Although thoroughly British writer Joanna Trollope has on occasion ventured into other venues (Italy and Spain), she has never set most of a novel in the United States. As one who has read all of her books, I admit I had a bit of apprehension about the change of locale...I expected a false American accent, if you will.To my surprise and delight, "Girl from the South" proved to be one of Trollope's best works to date. In a story that switches from London to Charleston, South Carolina, and back again, the author introduces us to a number of disaffected people in their 30s--none of whom seem to be able to make a commitment. It is only Tilly, the beautiful but conventional Londoner, who seeks a settled way of life. But her boyfriend, Henry, cannot buy into her view of domesticity, despite years of living together. Tilly and Henry's roommate, attractive and feckless William, is even worse--he has a blonde bombshell girlfriend, Susie, with whom he shares a bed and a quasi relationship, but his true feelings are elsewhere. Into this interesting mix comes Gillon, the "girl from the South." Stifled by the demands of her very proper southern family, bohemian Gillon, an art historian, flees to London to seek some sense of self. She provides the unwitting catalyst for a whole series of profound life changes among her newfound friends--and yet, seems powerless to make any changes herself. The story's denoument is at once a disappointment and a revelation, as the main characters find fulfillment in the most unexpected of ways. As always, Trollope remains true to her characters and her story. This is no happily-ever-after romance, as none of her novels are--but it is life-affirming and positive, nevertheless. Highly recommended!
Rating:
Summary: A very silly book
Review: As a longtime reader of Joanna Trollope's chick-fiction, I was initially surprised to find that this one had flown into the US under my radar screen. But all became clear as I labored through the hand-wringing (excessive, even for one of Ms Trollope's works) and the too-prominently displayed paragons of her feminine ideal. Honestly, if you've followed --hard to avoid if you read any UK lifestyle magazines -- any of the details of the writer's personal life and her pronouncements on it in recent years, simply transpose the most contrived events or statements to the American South, and you've got it. The book suffers miserably from the absence of a good fact checker. Throughout, the character cast as a psychiatrist is plainly meant to be a psychologist, i.e. not a medical doctor. The author's attempt to "write American" was a failed experiment not meant to be repeated.
Rating: 
Summary: disappointing
Review: For a story set in 2001, the Charlestonians seemed to be 50 ish caricatures. The novel starts off well, but falls apart at the end when there is no actual resolution for any of the characters. There is so much more to Charleston than the Battery, and the names "Ashley", "Cooper" (rivers) and "Boone" (plantation) were very corny choices for one family. Was Martha a psychiatrist or a psychologist? She's described as both, but must have completed her formal training in mere months to be the mother of a 30 something. She is oddly indifferent to her daughter's post-partum depression. No american says "straight away". To be such a boor in London, Henry effortlessly charms the socks off all the southerners.
Rating:
Summary: Southern Girl without the juleps
Review: Henry loves Tilly. What's not to love? She's beautiful, elegant, does everything to perfection. Henry has lived with her for the past 10 years. But he won't commit. And Tilly is getting desperate. Into this picture comes Gillon, a geeky American girl interning in London. Tilly meets her at a party, spills a drink on her and takes her out to dinner by way of compensation. Little does Tilly know this friendless, floundering girl from Charleston, South Carolina, will steal her boyfriend. To find out how this contemporary love triangle pans out, you'll have to read Girl from the South, Joanna Trollope's latest novel. Girl from the South is a departure for Trollope, a quintessentially British tale bearer whose work falls nicely onto the same subtle shelf as Barbara Pym's and Mary Wesley's. In her latest venture, Trollope takes the action over the Atlantic to Charleston. Trollope's Charleston is a world richer in ritual and convention than England ever thought of being. And Gillon comes from one of the city's most elegant families. Yet the Southern girl fails to drop neatly into the puzzle. At 30, she is still unmarried, childless, not even on the fast track to a high-powered career. Determined to search for her own unique destiny, she seems to have fallen far behind her popular, married sister in the game of life. However, things are never exactly what they seem on the surface in this intriguing Trollope novel. People who follow all the rules often have their own regrets. Like Tilly, Gillon's sister and grandmother are trapped in a regimen that defines who they are and how they will behave. To her conventional family, Gillon is a disappointment, but to Henry, she is everything Tilly is not. Where Tilly is brittle and demanding, Gillon is tentative, searching and formidably honest. She may never get her act together, she warns Henry. "It might take my whole life. I might drive you nuts while I keep thinking just this or just that will do the trick," she says. In exploring the differences between Tilly, Gillon and conventional Southern women, Trollope captures the choice that all modern women make-whether to take the easy path of fulfilling other people's expectations or the harder, more poorly marked trail of deciding what you expect of yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Joyless, Dispiriting and Dull
Review: I am a fan of Joanna Trollope, so I was looking forward to her latest book. Alas, I was sadly disappointed, for several reasons. In this book, Ms Trollope engaged in a favored literary device of lazy authors: most of the action takes place off-stage, as it were, and the reader is confronted by various faits accompli and is left to guess at how they came about. Perhaps the most conspicuous of these is the relationship between Gillon and Henry. When we leave them, they are not a couple. When we return to them, they are. There is absolutely no effort on Ms Trollope's part to reveal how this came about. Not only are they a couple, they are the most joyless and passion-free couple I have met in many books. Their relationship seems to provide no happiness to anyone. Certainly there are unhappy relationships in fiction, but this relationship is not unhappy either. As far as I can tell, it isn't anything. It isn't even dull. It's nothing. Ms Trollope's world is indeed a bleak one, from its absence of strong emotion to the essential dullness of the people in it. All the characters in this book were dull, and I would not be interested in getting to know any of them. They are adrift in a world of boring indecision, and seem to have no spark at all, even to battle this world, that would give the novel any kind of movement or interest. There is no happiness, no tragedy, no feeling of any kind. Just a gray kind of world that belongs to the days of Sartre and Camus, and not to the kind of writing I am used to from Ms Trollope.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing Trollope
Review: I have loved all of Joanna Trollope's previous books, but this one was disappointing. She was trying to change writing styles in each section of the book; "southern" when in Charleston, SC, and then back to "British" when in London. She should stick to what she does so well, that is, writing good, thoughful women's novels based in her own UK. She did not ring true in the American parts of the book, and sounded almost chiche'd at times. Her other books are so much better than this latest.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful Comfort Food
Review: I have to say I love reading Joanna Trollope and this book is no exception. I agree with some of the reviews that dialogue of the characters in South Carolina is at times "british" vs. "american" but I forgive that. It's a story about roots and a sense of place or home, obligation vs. freedom, security vs. isolation, and the desire to forge your own identity. Its emotionally honest and insightful. I love Joanna Trollope's style of writing, she is not muddy or flowery but clear, effective and compelling. I didn't want the novel to end.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful Comfort Food
Review: I have to say I love reading Joanna Trollope and this book is no exception. I agree with some of the reviews that dialogue of the characters in South Carolina is at times "british" vs. "american" but I forgive that. It's a story about roots and a sense of place or home, obligation vs. freedom, security vs. isolation, and the desire to forge your own identity. Its emotionally honest and insightful. I love Joanna Trollope's style of writing, she is not muddy or flowery but clear, effective and compelling. I didn't want the novel to end.
Rating:
Summary: Spare yourself
Review: I love British novels, I love Southern novels, and normally I love Joanna Trollope. She's on my top 10 list. But with this novel, she flops.
A ruthless American editor could have saved it, but clearly it didn't have one. It's obviously written by a British novelist who has visited Charleston, but not for long enough to get the hang of how Americans really talk. At one point a blue-blooded young Charlestonian man says, at a moment of great emotion, "Yo, *man*!" Yo, please!!! Joanna Trollope clearly saw Charleston in terms of its inhabitants' English roots--the furniture, the holiday celebrations, etc. That's all fine--*but they don't see themselves that way.* No Americans do, not even Anglophiles. I can imagine polite Southerners pointing out similarities to an English guest. Apparently she fell for it. What also might have saved this novel is if it had a British narrator, and if most of its characters were transplanted Brits. As it is, the continual intrusion of British English, coupled with rarely-on-target American English, is incredibly annoying, and detracts completely from the novel's good points. Rosamunde Pilcher is largely successful with her Americans, primarily because she gets them onto her turf. Unfortunately, Trollope bit off far more than she could chew. Spare yourself the grief and read one of Trollope's many excellent novels, such as The Rector's Wife or A Spanish Lover.
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