Thursday, June 15, 2006

Summer by Edith Wharton


Summer was the first book I ever read by Edith Wharton, back in my junior year in college. Somehow I’d missed the requisite reading of Ethan Fromme in high school. And I hated it. Yet another Madame Bovary like book about a woman falling from virtue and losing for it.

But now that The House of Mirth is one of my favorite books and she I s one o f my favorite e writers, going back to reread this book because I’m on an Edith kick gives me perspective. Everyone loves this book, the critics say, as did Wharton herself. But although it’s still well written in Edith style, it sucks. Her skills are best when eviscerating the posh new Yorkers she lived amongst, not satirizing the uneducated as she does here and in Ethan Fromme. This, and Ethan Fromme reminded me of Shopgirl by Steve Martin, a book so bad I threw it in the garbage because I didn’t want anyone else to ever read it. Condescending to its characters, Charity Royall, come on, Charity? With a woman so trash she gives her daughter up to a man as a sex toy?

Anyway, still the worst Edith Wharton book I have read, but short.

C-

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