'The Legacy Of Hartlepool Hall' gave me more to think about than I'd expected. It rose above simple satire, declined to take sides in the class war and delivered instead a very human picture of what a legacy from previous generations can do to those born into wealth that is steadily declining. It is hard for me to summon empathy for the struggles of a middle-aged man born into wealth, who has never done anything with his life, not even gained an understanding of the sources and limits of his wealth.

Ed Hartlepool is too bland a man to be dislikable and too lazy a man to garner much sympathy but Paul Torday succeeds in making him a man who is free of malice and greed and who may, eventually, build a life for himself over which he exerts some agency.

I enjoyed the quiet humour of the book exposes absurdities without poking fun at everyone I admired the way it calmly lays out the lives of the rich and those who feed on them, like a butterfly pinned to a board.

The book has some darker moments. One of the main characters goes through a trauma that I initially thought stole her sanity from her. Later, it seemed to me that the trauma revealed who she really was and what she wanted.

I had wondered if this was going to be a sort of comic thriller, with Ed discovering his business acumen and coming up with a plan to make everything better. Paul Torday had something else in mind.

Although it uses gentle humour throughout the book, 'The Legacy Of Hartlepool Hall' sets out to deliver a reflection on inherited wealth and the unsustainable expectations and duties that the current generation faces.

Ed's struggle to deal with the accumulated debts of the Hartlepool estate shows how, in the course of the last three generations, his family has actively declined to acquire the skills and work ethic that generated the fortune in the first place. The Hall that was built as a vanity project providing concrete evidence of what the family had achieved has become an atavistic burden that binds the family so tightly to the past that they are unable to build a future. 

The book also looks at how the expectation of inherited wealth tests the character of the people receiving it. Ed finally comes to the realisation that he might enjoy the freedom that comes from letting go of Inost) of his wealth and living a (financially secure, work-free) middle-class life. One of his friends, who is also waiting to inherit wealth is effectively enslaved by the wait and eventually cracks under the stain.

This is a gentle, well-observed book populated with characters that I recognised and believed in, that, in a low key often humorous way, questions the benefits of transmitting substantial weakth across generations. ( )

I have always enjoyed Paul Torday's books, and it is sad that there will be no more. On the whole he writes about a class of people I know, or care, little about, but he makes the characters come alive and so, you begin to care. In this book the "heroes" [if they are such" are distressed gentlefolk and the villains, the nouveau-riche, the banks, lawyers etc. It is a sad story of the final fall of a "great" house [albeit one only two hundred years old. I have never been sure why he has picked on Hartlepool as a name for the house or the family, it has nothing to do with my ancestral paternal home. But it is, as ever an engaging, and this time, a moving read. ( )

After reading Paul Torbay's "Salmon fishing in Jemen" I went on to read "The irresistible inheritance of Wilberforce". A dark book about a guy who started to get interested in wine and ends being an alcoholic. Hartlepool Hall and its family played a role in this book as well. I was quite looking forward to another dark deep novel but was bitterly disappointed. "The Legacy of Hartlepool Hall" is a book for a persons bed side table who is into romantic novels set in the rich aristocratic English landscape.

I find it quite interesting to see how an author can change from slightly boring but interesting story line (Salmon Fishing in Jemen) to quite fascinating deep and dark (Irresistible Inheritance) to romantic teenager novel.

Shall I read more from him? ( )

At first this had all the appearances of a classic piece of chicklit, but written by a man, and with rather a different focus. Ed does not come over at first as a very sympathetic character, but, as he loses everything, he finds himself, whereas Annabel, for whom one anticipates a happy outcome, as she gains her freedom is totally undone. A most enjoyable, and unexpected, book which kept me reading from start to finish with scarcely a break. ( )

An easy read which I mostly enjoyed but I did feel the end petered out a bit. ( )