Hudson River Bracketed by Edith Wharton

Never was a girl more in love with the whole adventure of living, and less equipped to hold her own in it, than the Halo Spear who had come upon Vance Weston that afternoon.

According to my Goodreads account, I've read 19 works by Edith Wharton's, including short story collections and novellas, and I had assumed that by now, I've read all the best stuff. After The Fruit of the Tree, my hopes were not high for Hudson River Bracketed, one of her least-popular works. I was so happy last week when I absolutely loved it and could not stop reading -- high praise indeed, considering it's her longest novel, more than 500 pages long. Unlike most of Wharton's novels, the main character is not an unhappily married rich woman from New York, but a young, poor man, a struggling writer from the Midwest.

Published in 1929 but set in the early 1920s, it's a coming of age story of Vance Weston. Young Vance is only nineteen at the beginning of the story, and is resisting pressure from his family to join his father's successful real estate business outside of Chicago. What Vance really wants is to be a poet, but that will never fly with his conservative middle-class family. After a serious illness, Vance is allowed to travel to the Hudson Valley outside of New York, to stay with the Tracys, distant relatives in a quiet, small town. Vance hopes that somehow he'll manage to visit New York and make some contacts for a writing career; instead, his life changes forever when he meets Halo Spear while visiting a house called The Willows. (The title Hudson River Bracketed refers to a specific type of architecture in the area, of which The Willows is an example).

Wyndclyffe estate in Rhinecliff, NY, inspiration for The Willows

Vance's poor cousins earn extra money by acting as caretakers for this empty mansion, which must be left exactly as it was when the previous owner passed away. Vance is enchanted by the mysterious Victorian house and its back story -- and by its magnificent library. He is secretly perusing the books when he meets Heloise Spear, a wealthy cousin of the Tracys. Nicknamed Halo, she's several years older than Vance and is impressed by his love of books, though she seems amused at his lack of education. They begin to bond over poetry and literature, but things take a drastic turn over a series of misunderstandings, and Vance is sent back to the Midwest in disgrace. 

A few years later, Vance returns to New York determined to make a career as a writer, and reconnects with Halo, now married, though her husband, the publisher of a new literary magazine, who sign Vance to a very poor three-year writing contract. Vance also reconnects with his cousins the Tracys -- in particular, his cousin Laura Lou, who has grown up quite a bit in the last three years -- enough to steal Vance's heart on first sight. So Vance is a typical starving writer in New York, madly in love with someone who doesn't understand his literary world, and trying to live enough to have something to write about so he can make more money. Naturally, it's a vicious circle that doesn't end well. 

Like The Fruit of the Tree, my previous Wharton read, this is another of her novels that hardly anyone ever reads anymore. My expectations were pretty low and frankly I was shocked by how much I liked it -- and how quickly I sped through it! Granted, I didn't have much to do over last weekend, but I was really absorbed in the story and couldn't wait to find out what happened next. It's Wharton's longest novel at 536 pages, but the pages flew by. According to the book's afterward, Wharton wanted to write about her experiences as a writer, and thought it would be easier for the reading public to accept a story about a young male writer, rather than a female. I loved reading about the writing process and Vance's experiences trying to get published, though it was often infuriating to see all his bad decisions. 

. . . they wanted to know what else he had written, what he was doing now, when he was going to start in on a novel, when he would have enough short stories for a volume, whether he had thought up any new subjects lately, whether he found it easier to write in a big city or in his own quiet surroundings at home, whether Nature inspired him or he had to be with people to get a stimulus, what his best working hours were, whether he could force himself to write so many hours a day, whether he didn't find that regular work led to routine, whether he didn't think a real artist must always be a law unto himself (this from the two or three of the younger women), and whether he found he could dictate, or had to type out his own things. . . .

There are also some thinly veiled references to other writers of the period which I found highly amusing: 

Of the many recent novels he had devoured very few had struck him as really important; and of these The Corner Grocery was easily first. Among dozens of paltry books pushed into notoriety it was the only one entitled to such distinction. Readers all over the country had felt its evident sincerity, and its title had become the proverbial epithet of the smalltown atmosphere. 

Some of the novels people talked about most excitedly--Price of Meat, say, already in its seventieth thousand, or Egg Omelette, which had owed its start to pulpit denunciations and the quarrel of a Prize Committee over its exact degree of indecency--well, he had begun both books with enthusiasm, as their authors appeared to have; and then, at a certain point, had felt the hollowness underfoot, and said to himself: "No, life's not like that, people are not like that. The real stuff is way down, not on the surface." 

I'm just guessing, but I think that The Corner Grocery is a reference to Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (which lost the Pulitzer Prize to Wharton's Age of Innocence in 1920 because the committee thought it was unflattering to small-town America). Could Price of Meat be The Jungle by Upton Sinclair? And I originally thought that Egg Omelette was a reference to West Egg in The Great Gatsby, but further research told me it's meant to be Ulysses by James Joyce. There are also multiple references to the Pulsifer Prize . . . what could that possibly be? 

There's also a mention of Zola that I found delightful: 

Nothing else new about him--might have worked up his method out of Zola. Probably did."

"Zola--who's he?" somebody yawned.

"Oh, I dunno. The French Thackeray, I guess."

"See here, fellows, who's read Thackeray, anyhow?"

"Nobody since Lytton Strachey, I guess."

This German edition looks a little French New Wave to me!

I loved this book, though I did have a few quibbles about some characters that are a little too deus ex machina for me, miraculously showing up at just the right time. But overall, it's one of Edith Wharton's truly underrated novels. And there's a sequel! Wharton published The Gods Arrive only three years later in 1932, the only one of her novels with a sequel. I suppose since it's based on her own life, she really wanted to finish the story. I'll say no more since any hints about the next volume are spoilers for the first. Sadly, copies of the Virago edition of The Gods Arrive are a lot pricier than Hudson River Bracketed so I'll have to read the iBooks copy that I downloaded for only 99 cents. I'm also inspired to finally tackle her massive biography by Hermione Lee that I've been meaning to read forever -- it's 869 pages long! 

I'm counting this as my 20th Century Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge; also counts towards the Chunkster Challenge. 

The Fruit of the Tree: Edith Wharton Tackles Some Big Issues

Whenever I find a little-known book by a famous author, I always wonder whether it's sadly neglected, overlooked, or . . . is it just not that good? Is there a reason why nobody reads it? This was my thought when I picked up The Fruit of the Tree, a 1907 novel written by one of my favorite authors, Edith Wharton. Written exactly between The House of Mirth and Ethan Frome (two of my all-time favorite classics) I was curious to know why this novel is so little read.

Juxtaposing both the society characters she knew so well and the social commentary, it's the story of John Amherst, a young, idealistic assistant manager at a large mill in the fictional town of Hanaford, probably somewhere in New England or upstate New York. We first meet Amherst in a hospital as he checks on the condition of a worker badly injured on the job. The doctor on duty (related by marriage to the factory's manager) stoutly protests that he'll recover, but privately, a volunteer nurse reveals to Amherst that the injured man will most certainly lose a hand, if not his entire arm.

Amherst is determined to change working conditions in the factory, and his chance arises the next day -- the factory's owner, newly widowed Bessy Westmore, is here to tour the factory she now controls after her husband's death. The factory manager is home ill, so Amherst seizes his chance to tell Mrs. Westmore the truth about the factory, and his hopes to improve it. He's young, handsome, and idealistic, and Mrs. Westmore is young, beautiful, and lonely, so one thing leads to another and they wind up getting married.

"He stood by her in silence, his eyes on the injured man."

Of course, nothing is easy or happy in a Wharton novel, and a few years later, neither John nor Bessy is happy. Bessy resents the time John spends at the factory, not to mention the money the improvements are costing, and John is disappointed that Bessy doesn't seem to share his hopes to make real changes. He's getting tired of fighting Bessy's family and the people influencing her to keep him out of the mill.

Meanwhile, the young nurse, Justine Brent has also reappeared -- coincidentally she's an old school mate of Bessy's who fell on hard times and had to make a career for herself. Amherst engages her as a personal nurse/companion to Bessy, but as his relationship to his wife cools, he finds himself more and more attracted to Justine and her sense of social justice.

There are some big, dramatic plot twists, and then it turns into a bit of a sensation novel, but much wordier (imagine Wilkie Collins and Henry James writing a novel together and stole the setting from Elizabeth Gaskell). It kind of alternated between being slow and cerebral, with dramatic events. I'd get bored but then all of a sudden something super-dramatic would happen, then it would slow down again. I don't know if it's quarantine brain, but I was having a hard time with the more cerebral bits.

The setting definitely reminded me of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, and there are definitely plot elements that foreshadow Ethan Frome -- there's a sledding scene that is symbolic, but not nearly as pivotal as Ethan Frome. Wharton also touches on some issues which must have been very controversial for their time. I suppose this could be why it just isn't as popular as some of her other works.

I was also a bit put off by the fact that my Virago edition was 633 pages long! However, when I started reading it, I realized there was an awful lot of white space on each page, the margins are huge. I compared it to my Modern Library copy of House of Mirth which is less than 350 pages long. I checked the iBooks downloads, and they're really almost the same length. And there are hardly any editions in print. I checked the page count from the original 1907 copy and it's the same, so I suspect they're just using the same plates as the first edition. So I guess technically it counts toward the Big Book Summer Challenge.

I'm glad I read it because I am huge Wharton fan, but I don't know if I'd really recommend it. However, it's one more book crossed off my Classics Club List and one more off my owned-and-unread shelves. I still own Hudson River Bracketed but I might have to take a break from Wharton, maybe I'll tackle her biography instead. 

The Children by Edith Wharton : Lifestyles of the Rich and Selfish

"If children don't look after each other, who's going to do it for them? You can't expect parents to, when they don't know how to look after themselves."

This quote basically sums up the entire novel in two lines. Middle-aged bachelor Martin Boyne is an engineer traveling by ship from Algeria around Italy and up the Adriatic to Venice. Before the ship leaves port, he reflects that there's nobody interesting on board, and is convinced he will be bored for the entire two-week journey. Soon it becomes apparent that nothing could be further from the truth, when he meets a party of seven children on board who will change his life. 

The Wheater children are a collection of siblings, half-siblings, and step-siblings, headed by Judith, aged 15 and wise beyond her years. The pack also includes baby Chipstone, their father's favorite; the clever yet delicate Terry, the eldest son; his twin sister Blanca; a half-sister Zinnie; and the two step-siblings, nicknamed Bun and Beechy. The Wheater parents are old acquaintances of Boyne from his youth, so naturally he takes an interest. Apparently, Cliffe and Joyce Wheater had the oldest three children then divorced, whereupon Cliffe fathered Zinnie with an actress. Meanwhile, Joyce married an Italian whereby she acquired two step-children, Bun and Beechy. Eventually, the Wheaters split with their respective spouses and remarried, producing baby Chip. Got all that? 

Martin first meets the children when he discovers young Terry, aged about 11, will be sharing his cabin; meanwhile Joyce is assigned the adjacent deck chair. He gets to know the children and their governess during the voyage and is swept into the delightful chaos of their lives. When they arrive in Venice he spends a few days trying to help find a suitable tutor for Terry, and gets the full picture of their family dynamic when they meet up with their parents. 

The adult Wheaters are essentially shallow, wealthy Americans living abroad who flit from one luxurious resort to another, dragging their children along. They're so self-absorbed they can't see how much damage they're doing to their own children. Meanwhile, it's the eldest, Judith, who has taken on the role of mother and protector, and she is determined to keep all the children together, despite the disappearance and reappearance of absent parents, step-parents, and potential step-parents, as Cliffe and Joyce seem to be constantly on the verge of affairs, breakups, and reconciliations. 

After leaving the Wheaters in Venice, Martin goes up to the Italian Alps, where he meets up with an old flame, Mrs. Sellars, who is recently widowed after an unhappy marriage. He's hoping to take their long-distance romance to the next level when the reappearance of the Wheater children interrupt their domestic bliss. Martin has to decide whether his loyalties lie with Mrs. Sellars or with this boisterous brood of children who really need a responsible adult in their lives. Also, it becomes apparent that Martin's feelings for young Judith may be not just fatherly. 

Published in 1928, this was a best-seller at the time, though it's now one of Wharton's lesser-read novels (less than 700 ratings on Goodreads, compared to more than 125,000 for The Age of Innocence and nearly 100,000 for Ethan Frome). I really enjoyed it -- it's a quick read and I finished it in only three days. I found the plot interesting and the characters engaging and well-developed, and parts of it are quite funny -- in particular, there's a chapter when Martin is trying to negotiate with the Wheater parents to keep the children together permanently. The parents keep putting off the discussion because they're far too busy amusing themselves with their society friends, and when they do meet, they're constantly interrupted by all the ex-spouses, step-parents and hangers-on trying to put their two cents in.  Cliffe and Joyce Wheater are so easily distracted by their social calendar they seem less mature than 15-year-old Judith. Edith Wharton spent much of her life as a wealthy expat so I'm sure she had plenty of first-hand knowledge of this sort of shallow, wealthy American living abroad. 

If you've ever read anything by Wharton, you know that her books rarely have happy endings. This book isn't as tragic as most of them, but it is still ultimately rather sad, though there are many lighthearted moments. The only thing I didn't like about the book was Martin's relationship with Judith -- he's in his mid-forties and Judith is only 15. I realize this book was published 90 years ago and it wasn't uncommon for middle-aged men to marry very young women, but it made me uncomfortable -- not as bad as Lolita, but more uncomfortable than Emma. 

I'm very glad to have finally read it -- I've owned a copy since about 2010. I started reading Wharton more than 10 years ago and have since completed most of her novels and short stories, and I've enjoyed nearly all of them. I still have two unread on my shelves, Hudson River Bracketed and The Fruit of the Tree (which are even more obscure than The Children); plus a massive biography of Wharton by Hermione Lee which I'm planning to read soon for the TBR Pile Challenge -- it's more than 700 pages long so it's rather daunting. 

I'm counting this as my Classic From the Americas for the Back to the Classics Challenge.

Madame de Treymes and Three Novellas by Edith Wharton

It's been quite a while since I read anything by Edith Wharton. She's the author of some of my favorite novels, and I've read nearly all of her most popular works. When you get to the little-known works of a famous author, it's always something of a crapshoot -- are they less popular because they're simply overshadowed? Or is it because they're just not that good? My last two books by Wharton were The Glimpses of the Moon, which I loved, and Twilight Sleep, which was just okay. 

Madame de Treymes and Three Novellas includes four of Wharton's shorter works from various times in her career. I actually read these out of order, mostly because they were also available on iBooks and I read them in bits and pieces, mostly on my phone. It's kind of hard to review them all in one post, but I'll give it a go. 

Bunner Sisters is probably the most well-known of the novellas. Written in 1892 but unpublished until 1916, it's one of her few works not about upper-crust New York society. Spinster sisters Ann Eliza and Evelina are existing in near-poverty, working and living in a tiny shop where they make and sell hats, bonnets, and trimmings. Ann Eliza splurges and buys Evelina a clock for her birthday, and the two sisters both fall in love with the local clockmaker, the meek Mr. Herbert Ramy. What seems like a way out of poverty for at least one of them ends badly, of course. If you've ever read anything by Wharton you'll know her books rarely have happy endings. 

In Sanctuary, Kate Orme seems to have it all -- youth, beauty, position, and she's engaged to marry eligible bachelor Denis Peyton, who recently inherited a pot of money from his scandalous stepbrother. However, Kate learns the terrible secret behind the inheritance, and struggles to decide if she should marry someone with such a lack of character -- and if she does, will her children inherit their father's morals, or whether she her influence will be enough. This one was my least favorite. 

This cover is sort of creepy and really has nothing to do with the story.

The Touchstone is another story about a moral crisis. In this case, Stephen Glennard, a young lawyer, is in love but struggling financially. He wants to marry, but doesn't have enough to support a wife, and to keep the woman he loves from moving abroad with a rich relative, he struggles with a decision to publish some very personal letters written to him by a very popular writer who has since died. It seems like the right thing to do, but eventually he has a crisis of conscience.

Madame de Treymes is actually the shortest of the four, only about 80 pages, but I ended up reading it last. While in Paris, a wealthy American, John Durham, has reconnected with an old acquaintance, the former Fanny Frisbee, who had married a French nobleman but is now separated from him. Durham wants her to divorce her ne'er-do-well husband and marry him, but Fanny is certain his family would never permit the scandal of a divorce. Durham appeals to her sister-in-law, the eponymous Madame de Treymes, and doesn't know whether he can trust her to assist them in persuading the family to allow the divorce.

Overall, I enjoyed the novellas, but I'd forgotten that Wharton can be kind of wordy and very introspective, and her plots tend to move rather slowly. All the novellas have themes about decisions and moral crises, though Bunner Sisters seems rather the odd book out simply based on the class and financial circumstances of the subjects.

I still have three more books by Wharton unread on my shelves -- The Children, Hudson River Bracketed, and The Fruit of the Tree. I was thinking about reading one of them for the Back to the Classics Challenge. Bloggers, have you read any of them? Which do you recommend?

This is my fourth book for the TBR Pile Challenge 2018. Eight left to go!

Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton

Well, it had to happen sometime: Edith Wharton has finally disappointed me. Twilight Sleep is the thirteenth book by Wharton that I have read, and it is officially my least favorite. Hardly anyone has reviewed this book on Goodreads, and my library doesn't even own it.

The set up is a little complicated. Published in 1927, this is the story of the Manford family, rich socialites living in New York in the 20s. Pauline Manford is the busiest rich woman in the world, with a schedule so jam-packed with committees, speeches, beauty treatments, appointments with new-age gurus, and social engagements, she has to schedule time in 15-minute increments, including a conversation with her own daughter Nona, who is 19. Nona is Pauline's daughter by her second marriage, to the successful lawyer, Dexter Manford, who represented Pauline in her divorce from her first marriage to Arthur Wyant, after Arthur had an affair with his cousin. Pauline also has a son, Jim Wyant, from her first marriage, and his own marriage is on the rocks. Jim's wife Lita is a Jazz Age party girl with a hankering for the stage, to the dismay of her husband's family. Following all this?

The story takes place over a fairly short period of time, in which Pauline is determined to devote her do-gooder energies to saving Jim's marriage to Lita, not realizing that her own marriage is crumbling and that her daughter Nona is in love with Arthur Wyant's cousin, who is trapped in a loveless marriage to a pious woman who won't divorce him. Lita is determined to leave Jim and go out to Hollywood. Dexter claims he merely wants to prevent a family scandal, but he's clearly falling for Lita himself, and all the characters are thrown together at the end in a climactic scene in Pauline's country estate. (I'm actually trying to mentally recast with all the characters from Downton Abbey, except Michelle Dockery would have to be the daughter-in-law and we wouldn't have the wonderful Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess).

I rather liked this novel but I was sort of puzzled by it. It starts out describing Pauline's busy life and packs in all the other characters in such a rapid succession I could hardly follow them. I suppose Wharton is trying to show the fast pace of life in the twenties and the whirlwind schedules of these wealthy characters, but I just found them shallow. I hadn't ready any Wharton books in a while but I do remember that typically the character development was better and the pace was slower.

Wharton is known for her novels about rich society people who are unhappy. Pauline seems shallow but has so much energy, it made me wonder what this character could have done if she had lived in the 21st century -- she could have been a CEO of some Fortune 500 company instead of filling her time with making inspirational speeches, visiting charlatans trying to do emotional healing, and doing eurythmic exercises.

I suppose this novel is supposed to be a satire of the Jazz Age, and she does get in some good shots about society types. My favorite bit in the entire novel is when Pauline and Dexter both decide to visit Lita's eccentric aunt, Kitty Landish. Kitty's latest obsession is remodeling her home, No. 1, Viking Court, in the authentic style of the Vikings who just may have landed close by hundreds of years ago:

. . . the room contained only a few relentless-looking oak chairs, a long table bearing an hourglass (for clocks would have been an anachronism), and a scrap of dusty velvet nailed on the cement wall, as to which Mrs. Landish explained that it was a bit of a sixth-century coptic vestment, and that the nuns of a Basilian convent in Thessaly were reproducing for eventual curtains and chair-cushions. "It may take fifty years," Mrs. Landish always added, "but I would rather go without it than live with anything less perfect."

So. Overall, not a terrible read, but not up to what I normally expect from Edith Wharton. I was originally going to count this as my 20th Century Classic for the Back to the Classics Challenge, but since nobody reads it, I don't really think it applies.  I still have some novellas and a couple of her earlier works on the TBR shelves. Hopefully they will not disappoint.

Awful Book Covers: House of Mirth

Inspired by this hilarious post by Simon of Stuck in a Book, I've decided to showcase some bad book covers of my own choosing. Here are some supremely bad covers from one of my favorite novels, House of Mirth by Edith Wharton.  Let the snark begin!

House of Mirth:  Renaissance version!  

Because we all know that Lily Bart lived in 1605, not 1905.   

House of Mirth:  Bridal Shower edition!

The one where Lily Bart and her frenemies make gowns out of toilet paper.

House of Mirth: 18th Century edition. Laurence Selden is really rocking those breeches --

I especially love his golden capelet.  

House of Mirth: Cirque du Soleil edition!

Lily Bart visits Venice and gets her face painted at a street fair.

House of Mirth: Crazy Reptile Lady edition!

Apparently Lily would rather hang out in Italy with a little turtle instead of her society friends.

But her outfit is fabulous, though I can't figure out what time period that's supposed to be.  

House of Mirth: Jazz Age edition!  

I actually kind of like this cover, even though it's the wrong time period.  Too bad Lily didn't live in the 1920s.  But then she'd be in The Glimpses of the Moon instead. 

House of Mirth: No Girls Allowed edition!

It looks like she's about to run the gauntlet to get into their exclusive men's club. 

(And not a fun club with Bertie Wooster, either). 

House of Mirth: Diva Edition!  

Lily Bart starts a new career as an opera singer, and lives happily ever after.  Riiiight.

House of Mirth: YA Edition! 

That's the prequel when Lily was 13 and wandered around a mansion in her nightgown.

House of Mirth: Pre-Raphaelite edition!

(I think this may be the same girl who had nothing to wear but her wet sheet

 in Simon's Wuthering Heights cover.)

House of Mirth:  "Mr. Selfridge"edition!

Of course Mrs. Selfridge's dresses were much more fabulous.  

That is one seriously ugly dress.

House of Mirth: Ennui edition!

I love Penguin classics, but that girl looks bored beyond belief.

That was really fun -- which novel should I pick for my next edition of Awful Book Covers? 

And who else wants to play?

The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton

My copy looks like this one.  I think Scribner was the original publisher. 

I am a huge fan of Edith Wharton -- Ethan Frome and House of Mirth are two of my all-time favorites, not just favorite classics.   I've been hoarding her books and have had Twilight Sleep and The Glimpses of the Moon on the TBR shelves for a long time, so I planned to choose one or the other for the Back to the Classics Challenge -- maybe both!  But I picked The Glimpses of the Moon and I'm counting it as my Classic by a Woman Author. 

Published in 1922, it's not one of her more famous works, so I was a little worried that it might not be among her best.  However,  I was very pleasantly surprised.  It's the story of a young American couple, Nick and Susy Lansing, who are newlyweds, and it begins as they're enjoying a honeymoon in a villa on Lake Como.  

The original cover, maybe. Could it be the honeymoon villa in Lake Como?

Like many of Wharton's protagonists, they're society people, but they're not actually rich -- they're basically hangers-on who sponge off their wealthy friends.  Theirs is not a traditional love story by any means.  They've set up an unusual agreement -- they know that they can live for at least a year on the wedding gifts and cash that their wealthy friends give them; after that, if one of them gets a better offer, they're free to divorce and move on, which sounds rather cold-hearted and mercenary, more like a business agreement than the basis of a marriage.

Of course, things don't work out as planned.  Various friends lend them fabulous houses and apartments that they're not using, but in reality, nothing is really free -- there's always some kind of condition or favor that's expected in return.  After awhile, this causes problems in the marriage, and then circumstances change that could upset the original arrangement altogether.  Susy and Nick start to realize that their marriage has changed them both, and they begin to want different things out of life.  

This book had some of the same themes as Wharton's previous novels, but it still seemed modern.  Susy Lansing reminded me of Lily Bart from House of Mirth, and what Lily's story might have been if it were set in the 1920s instead of thirty years before.  Nick Lansing also reminded me of Lawrence Selden. 

I love this art-deco cover. 

This was a fast read and I really enjoyed it.  I found the characters well-developed, though I wish there were more back-story about Susy), and as always, Wharton's writing was excellent, with a lot of witty observations.  It was an easy, fast read, and I got really invested in the characters and how it would all play out in the end, which I found very satisfying.  The Glimpses of the Moon is definitely one of my favorites by Wharton so far.

Besides Twilight Sleep, I still have some other Wharton works unread -- The Children and Madame de Treymes and Three Novellas, which I found last year at Half-Price Books and couldn't pass up.  Bloggers, have you read any of these?  Which one should I read next?

The New York Stories of Edith Wharton

Short stories collections are really hard to write about.  Many people dislike short stories; my theory is that most people, once they get invested in characters and settings, want the stories to continue.  To me, a short story is a just a moment captured in time with these characters, an introduction.  Sometimes as a reader I want more.  

Edith Wharton is one of those rare writers that was equally good at writing both short stories and full-length novels.  Some of her novels are among my favorites; as are some of her short stories.  This collection, published by NYRB Classics, features twenty stories that are all set in New York, or includes characters that are New Yorkers.  

Some of her stories are sad, some are extremely funny.  Many of them are deliciously ironic, and she was especially good at ghost stories.  This collection includes all of these, and are selected from those published at beginning of her career to works published near the end.  It begins with "Mrs. Manstey's View," her very first published short story, and ends with "Roman Fever," from her last short story collection.  

"Roman Fever" is possibly Wharton's most famous short story and one of my personal favorites.  This was one in the collection I had actually read before, but I never get tired of it.  It's the story of two New York society ladies who meet unexpectedly while in Rome with their grown daughters.  They sit on the terrace of restaurant, admiring the view, and the reader learns the history of their complicated relationship.  The ending is deliciously ironic, and I'll say no more.  It's quite short so if you have a few minutes do click on the link and read it -- tell me in the comments if you liked it, but don't give the ending away!!

My other favorites in the collection are mostly ironic or funny.  They include "Expiation," an amusing tale about writers in the same family; "Diagnosis," about a wealthy man who has recently discovered the truth about his illness; and "The Pomegranate Seed," which is one of the ghost stories.   The only one I really didn't care for was "The Long Run," which, as the name implies, seemed to go on forever. 

Unfortunately, this collection does not include "Xingu," my other favorite of her stories, about a pretentious group of women who attend a "Lunch Club" to become more cultured.  I reread the story today before I finished this posting, and I suppose it wasn't included because it really doesn't have a New York connection.  It's still really funny though, and definitely worth reading.  Many of Wharton's works are available free online through Project Gutenberg, so you can just click on the links and start reading if you're curious.  They're really worth trying, even if you're not willing to tackle a 450 page book with twenty stories in it.  

This book counts toward my Back to the Classics Challenge and is one of the alternate reads for my TBR Pile Challenge. 

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Here is a book that many people hate, and yet, it is one of my favorite books of all time.  Sadly, the people who hate this book were most likely forced to read it in high school.  I often bemoan the fact that I came to love many classics later in life, but I've also come to realize that if I had read this in high school English, it's quite likely I would have hated it as well (probably because the American Authors teacher was a terror; I took World Lit because I'd had that teacher for composition sophomore year and really liked him).  At any rate, I was happy reading Candide and 1984 (though The Mill on the Floss was a BIG mistake on my part) and my friends were suffering through The Scarlet Letter.

Nevertheless, I finally found Edith Wharton about seven years ago.  I read The Age of Innocence while on vacation in the Florida panhandle, but somehow, it didn't do much for me.   I really didn't get how wonderful Edith Wharton was until I read House of Mirth about a year later, which I could hardly put down.  Soon after I read Ethan Frome in a single sitting, and I've loved it ever since.  Since then I've enjoyed more Wharton, a writer who can write both heartbreaking novels, ghost stories, and wry and witty short stories -- if you don't believe me, just Google "Xingu" and try to read it without cracking a smile.

But, back to Ethan Frome.  If you don't know the story, basically, it is about a young man trapped in terrible circumstances.  (If you haven't read Wharton, this is pretty much the theme of her entire oeuvre.)  Told with a framing device, in flashback and conjecture, we learn that when Ethan was in his late 20s, he was trapped in a marriage with an older woman, Zenobia, a shrewish hypochondriac.  To help out, Zeena's distant cousin, Mattie Silver, had come to live with them, and Ethan is in love with her.  Once Ethan had a promising future as an engineer or scientist, but he's saddled with debts on a farm he can't sell, and now there's really no way out for him and Mattie.  Over the course of a few days, his life takes a tragic and ironic turn.

I chose this book for the January read for one of our book groups, and I think it was a good choice.  It's a short read, about 150 pages in most editions, and there's so much to discuss -- loaded with symbolism and great characterization.  Also, Wharton is just masterful at setting the scene.  I live in south Texas where we rarely get a hard freeze, much less a dusting of snow, and I just felt freezing cold while reading this book.  It brought back a lot of memories of winters I've spent in the Midwest -- about ten years ago we were stationed in Nebraska, and this story could have easily been relocated to the bleak, windy prairies.

I love Ethan Frome, but it always makes me wonder why I'm so attracted to it.  What does it say about me, if I love Wharton -- her stories are so tragic!   She does tend to write variations on the same story over and over, but she does it so well.  I've read about about seven of her novels, and I've loved most of them.  Sadly, I can only think of one that has a happy ending -- and that was her unfinished novel, The Buccaneers, which was finished by another author based on Wharton's notes.

I still have Twilight Sleep and The Glimpses of the Moon on the TBR shelves, plus The New York Stories of Edith Wharton, an NYRB Classic.  I want to read at least one of these this year.   There's a chance I may even get to visit Wharton's estate, The Mount, in the Berkshires this summer -- but that's still in the planning stages.

So, who else is a fan of Edith Wharton?  Do you love Ethan Frome, or hate it?  And has anyone been to The Mount?

This is the first book I've completed for the Back to the Classics 2013 Challenge.

Summer by Edith Wharton

This book was a bit of a bummer.  Summer has been on my to-read shelf for several years (I bought this edition specially because I loved the cover; the original painting is at the Smithsonian), but other books kept shoving out of its place in line.  But lately I've been sneaky and now I only nominate books for my face to face discussion groups if they are sitting on my to-read shelf.  Basically, I want to force other people to read what I want. Anyhow, Wendy, the librarian who coordinates the group, appropriately chose this for our August read, and we had a great discussion this week.

Summer is the tenth novel I've read by Edith Wharton, and I must say I was a little disappointed. I've been a huge Wharton fan since I read House of Mirth several years ago, but somehow this book just didn't do it for me.  I was so hoping I'd love it as much as Ethan Frome, but it was not to be.

I should back up and include a quick synopsis here:  Published in 1917, this is the story of Charity Royall, a 17 year old girl living in a small town in western Massachusetts, probably near the Berkshires.  Charity is the foster child of Mr. Royall, a respected lawyer in the town.  He's now a widower and he and Charity have something of an awkward relationship.  Meanwhile, a young architect from Boston, Lucius (note the similarity to the name Lucifer!) has come to town to study some of the old houses, and Charity falls in love with him.  This being an Edith Wharton novel, things do not bode well for Charity's romance.

Years ago, Mr. Royall brought Charity down from "the Mountain," a nearby community full of rogues and lawless folks, to be brought up in a better place.  However, Charity isn't particularly grateful.  She's been brought up her entire life knowing she somehow isn't as good as everyone else because of her parents and where she came from, and she's pretty resentful.  She doesn't have much education or interest in intellectual pursuits.  I should have known Charity was going to annoy me from the very beginning -- when the story begin she's been skiving off her job at the library, and she has absolutely no interest in reading what's in "those dusty old books." !!!  I should have just shut the book aside right then and there, and just admired the pretty picture on the cover.  But I persevered.

Sadly, I didn't like Charity much more by the end of the book, but I did feel sorry for her situation.  Once again, Wharton focused on how few choices women had in the early 20th century, and the double standards women to which women are held.  I think I would have liked this book a lot more if Charity had been a more sympathetic character.  In a way I pitied her because she's really just a teenager and made a lot of bad choices, plus teenagers tend to be pretty self-centered.  However, she doesn't really show any kindness or sensitivity to anyone other than Lucius, and she's very attracted to him, so she has ulterior motives.

Wharton described this book as her "hot Ethan," comparing it to Ethan Frome, one of her most famous works, and one of my favorites.  However, I was so much more sympathetic to Ethan -- he had far more redeeming qualities than Charity.  He didn't want to hurt anybody, but he was trapped in an unhappy life and a miserable marriage.  He'd always wanted an education and couldn't get it because of his obligations.  Charity, on the other hand, has no interest in improving herself, even though she seems fairly bright.  We did have an interesting discussion about whether she has unselfish or selfish motives at the end.  It is possible Charity made a good decision at the end, the best possible decision given her situation, but I just thought it was sad.  Some of Wharton's books are beautiful and tragic, but this one just made me depressed.  Still, I'm glad I read it.

Other reviews of Summer by Edith Wharton:

• The Zen Leaf
• A Striped Armchair
• Sparks' Notes

If you've reviewed this book and would like me to link to your blog, please leave a comment and I'll add a link. 

The Reef by Edith Wharton

I've been a big Wharton fan for a few years now -- I'd never read anything by her in high school or college, then I got completely hooked after I read The House of Mirth. My love for all things Edith was confirmed when I read Ethan Frome. I'm also a huge fan of her short stories. But this book has left me completely perplexed. Mystified.  Confused!  (Much like the woman in the beautiful illustration on the cover.)

Time for the synopsis:  Our story begins with George Darrow, a thirtysomething American diplomat living in London.  He's recently rekindled a romance with an old flame from his youth, Anna Leath, who is now a widow with a young daughter and a grown stepson, Owen.  He's ready to get serious, and is on his way to visit her in France at her estate.  However, he receives a mysterious telegram instructing him not to come after all, with no explanation.  Darrow is very hurt and proceeds to Paris, thinking he'll wait there in case Anna changes her mind.  On the boat over, he runs into another American, Sophy Viner, whom he knows vaguely from social circles.  Sophy, a young, attractive woman in her early twenties, has quit her job, and she's on her way to Paris, where she ultimately hopes to become a stage actress. Darrow is hurt by Anna's rejection, and bored, and he's intrigued by Sophy.  While he waits for an answer from Anna, he amuses himself by taking Sophy to the theater and showing her around Paris.  There's a lot left unsaid, but it's obvious that he's considering an affair with her.

The action then jumps forward several months, and Darrow has reunited with Anna.  They're planning to marry and go off together to his next assignment in South America.  However, this is an Edith Wharton novel, so nothing is ever easy or simple, and usually ends tragically.  This involves a love quadrangle (square? trapezoid? insert your favorite four-sided geometric figure here) with a lot of secrets, lies, half-truths, and jealousy. 

Wharton claimed this was her most autobiographical novel, and portions of the book are really heartwrenching.  After she divorced her husband and moved to France, Wharton had an ultimately unhappy love affair with a man called Morton Fullerton, and I suspect this novel draws heavily on that experience.  After reading this book, I feel like I've lived through her tragic love life.  The character of Anna Leath expresses some heartbreaking emotions when her love for George Darrow is tested.  This book is all about deceit, trust, and forgiveness.  However, she's such a great writer that George isn't a completely awful character, and I was really able to sympathize with all the main characters. There's so much going on here, and the book addresses so many issues, that it would great for an real-life discussion. 

The book started out slowly but really picked up and caught my interest.  However, my biggest complaint about The Reef is in regards to the ending, which is one of the most abrupt and inexplicable I've read in a long time.  Honestly, I'm still not sure what happened. Now I feel like I need to research this book and find an expert to explain the ending.  Which is really sort of irritating, because I like to think of myself as a relatively smart person. 

It's not my favorite Wharton, but worth reading if you're a fan. I recommend it with reservations, but if you're not familiar with Wharton, it's not a good starting point -- not nearly as good as Ethan Frome or the House of Mirth.  If, after reading this review, you are left with Fear of Wharton, I recommend her short stories.  The Ghost Stories are great, and my other favorites are Xingu and Roman Fever.  She was the master (mistress?) of dramatic irony, and I think her short stories showcase that aspect of her writing best.

During the recent Classics Circuit of Wharton's works, two other bloggers reviewed The Reef.  If you're interested, you can read reviews by Laura and The Lady Fern.

Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories

Lately, I have been completely obsessed by short stories.  I can't explain it (and I hope it doesn't mean that my attention span is getting even shorter in this day and age of instant information).  Basically it started shortly before The Classics Circuit tour of Edith Wharton.  I couldn't decide which of her books to read and whilst perusing my library's catalog, I found that their collection included a delightful CD version of four of Wharton's short stories from Selected Shorts, the excellent NPR radio program.  By far, my favorite was Christina Pickles' brilliant reading of Xingu.  (You wouldn't think it, but Wharton's ironic streak is sometimes hilarious.  She completely knocks the stuffing out of society matrons in this story.) Roman Fever is pretty wonderful too.

But I digress. Because of my obsession with Wharton, I discovered Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories, as it includes a one of her short stories -- yes, Edith Wharton, the queen of New York society novels, also wrote ghost stories.  Good ones.  Some of them are included in her collections, but they're also available in a single volume, which is worth looking for.

 Roald Dahl is himself one of my favorite short story writers.  If you have only read his delightful children's books, please go directly to your bookstore or library, or start googling the shorts and READ THEM NOW, because they're brilliant.  He has a marvelously wicked sense of humor, and most of his stories end with jaw-dropping plot twists.  He personally selected this collection, after an ill-fated attempt in the 1960s to create a weekly television anthology of ghost stories (rather like the Twilight Zone).  Dahl researched and read hundreds of ghost stories in preparation, and apparently, most of them were lousy.  He found 24 that were worth filming for the series, and fourteen of those are included in this anthology.

The stories range in time period over 100 years, from The Ghost of a Hand, a classic by the gothic writer J. Sherdian Le Fanu, to the 1950s and 1960s.  All of the stories except one seem to be British -- a Danish story called Elias and the Draug, which is my least favorite of the collection.  Dahl himself admits in the introduction that it's much scarier in the original Danish, but since I'm limited to English I'll have to take his word for it.  My favorite was Harry by Rosemary Timperley, in which a woman begins to fear that her adopted daughter's imaginary playmate isn't so imaginary.  It still makes me shiver a little when I think about it.  Edith Wharton's Afterward is also good, though it starts off a little slowly (typical of Wharton) but the payoff is excellent.  And the final story, The Upper Berth, would make me think twice about crossing the Atlantic by ship if I actually had the means to do so.  The collection also includes tales by British writers E. F. Benson, who wrote the Mapp & Lucia series (still on my to-read list) and L. P. Hartley.

Roald Dahl didn't write any of the stories in the anthology.  Though his work is sometimes macabre, his short works aren't actually ghost stories.  Howeve, he did write the introduction, which is great -- he writes about the nature of ghost stories, female writers versus male (lots of great ghost stories by women, surprisingly), and about the writing of children's fiction.  It's worth reading or even buying the book just for the introduction.

And now that I'm all into the short stories, I've decided to sign up for a challenge -- one that I may actually be able to achieve! Yes! It's The Short Story Challenge.  I'm going to try and read at least five short story collections this year -- I don't think I'll count Dahl's collection, since I read it before I signed up (that smacks of cheating) -- but there are lots of other authors I haven't read with great short works.  On my to-read bookshelf I've already got collections by Chekhov, Hemingway, Garcia Marquez (which is turning brown since I've owned it so long) and Haruki Murakami.  Here are some of my favorite short stories, in no particular order.  I've added links when available if you can't wait and want to read them immediately.

• The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant
• Roman Fever by Edith Wharton
• Xingu by Edith Wharton
• Chivalry by Neil Gaiman
• Snow, Glass, Apples by Neil Gaiman (recommended by Nymeth at Things Mean A Lot).
• The Interlopers by Saki
• The Occasional Garden by Saki
• The Way Up to Heaven by Roald Dahl
• Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl
• The Man Who Loved Dickens by Evelyn Waugh
• The Faery Handbag by Kelly Link (from Magic for Beginners).  Another recommendation from Nymeth (read her review here).
  

 I'm always looking for suggestions -- any favorites in the blogosphere? Please let me know in the comments section.