The Way We Live Now has lots of characters, and they interact with each other exhaustively. I liked many of the characters, and I thought that Trollope painted a great picture of the lifestyles of the class society of England during the 19th Century. But for me the book goes on and on and on. Character relationships that could be examined in a few pages take chapters. I also did not like the resolution of many of the stories. I gained some insight into British society of a bygone age, and for that I am grateful, but by the conclusion of it all I felt as though I walked away quite unchanged, and not terribly concerned with what I had read.