Wobbly Barstool

"...Wobbly Barstool, your name belies you, as you are a man of such stability and temperance; yet the name is most fitting, for contact with you produces in me a feeling akin to the intoxicated giddiness one might experience while attempting to maintain one's balance on such an irregular seat after having indulged overly much in spirits at a cozy pub--or," she added primly, "so I would imagine."

--from chapter thirty-seven of Wobbly Barstool
 


Jane Lowy's literary novel Wobbly Barstool challenges traditional concepts of morality while ultimately asserting the intrinsic value of marital, familial, and platonic bonds. It may appeal to readers interested in such classic writers as Charles Dickens,  Anthony Trollope, or Jane Austen.

Wobbly, a good-natured young farmer  in a Victorian England, loves Prunella, a London socialite whom he meets during her visit with Wobbly's cousin, Marigold. Marigold adores brilliant, articulate Tobias, Wobbly's adopted brother, who in childhood had survived for two years wandering a nearby wood with a pack of dogs. As a warm and complex relationship develops among the four, Wobbly and Marigold find themselves in the painful position of imagining that their dearest friends are their rivals. Over the next four years, while Marigold waits for Tobias, Wobbly pursues Prunella with gentle persistence as she struggles between her strong sense of filial duty and her growing acceptance and love of Wobbly, whom her adoptive mother adamantly rejects. The course of their lives is, all the while, overseen and subtly influenced by the mysterious solicitor Beggintrade, for reasons of his own.


 Wobbly Barstool is meant to offer readers a fun, life-affirming story with memorable characters that they can delight in and love.