A few months ago I had read a collection of Edith Wharton’s short stories and novellas between 1911 and 1937 (here’s a link to that book). I didn’t know a thing about Edith Wharton (photo to left) and liked the short stories quite a bit. She was a society person that lived in wealth on both sides of the Atlantic; somewhat like Hemingway, she worked an ambulance during WW I. I liked the stories; many dealt with the foibles in the “high society” in which she lived; a few had WW I themes; a few were very imaginative (for example, one was about a castle where murdered dogs came back to take down their oppressor).
So I decided to try a full-length novel, The House of Mirth. I listened to this in the car (10 cassettes, 13.5 hours). Started slowly, but was worth finishing. The heroine, let’s say, is a beautiful but relatively poor woman named Lily Bart; she was o
rphaned in her teens and lives with her aunt. She has a great touch for hanging out with wealthy society types but blows it when it comes to landing a wealthy husband, gets disinherited, blows it again with the love of her life (a comfortable-but-not-wealthy lawyer), gets ostracized by her erstwhile society buddies, and things go downhill from there. Notwithstanding, I liked it. Amazon posts customer reviews here; a biography on Edith Wharton is here.
I hadn’t realized that a movie was made out of this book in 2000 with some fairly well-known folks. Gillian Anderson of X-Files fame (middle photo) played Ms. Bart; Dan Ackroyd played the slimy Gus Trenner. Having read the book, I’d be interested in seeing the movie. It’s reviewed here.
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