"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Friday, July 31, 2009

The Reef (Edith Wharton, 1912)

I just enjoy Wharton's novels a lot. This one perhaps not as much as The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth, but it was very good reading at the gym (or would be elsewhere).

Basically, a widow (Anna Leath) is getting married to someone (George Darrow) with whom she was in love earlier in life but didn't marry for various reasons; her stepson (Owen Leath) is getting married to Anna's daughter's governess (Sophy Viner). This plays out in a French chateaux that has been in the family of the widow's in-laws. The relationships have some complications. And yes, there is a sort of reef on which the relationships are on the verge of foundering and around which the main participants seek to steer. The ending is nice and ambiguous.

Wharton has an unusually good feel for how people think and speak. Which I think is helpful as we look at our own behaviors . . . but who knows. In any event, it is much enjoyable to read.
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