American Literature

I must stop buying these fancypants editions of literary classics because they are twice the price of standard paperbacks. It's the bookish equivalent of Carrie in Sex and the City when she spots another pair of Jimmy Choos!

Ethan Frome is a relentlessly tragic novel and portrays a completely different view of New England to Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs. The tortured relationship between Ethan, his wife Zeena and the young Mattie Silver plays itself out to its shocking conclusion.

Talking of toxic marriages Shadow Tag is an unflinching portrayal of the relationship between Gil, an artist and his wife Irene who is also his muse. Both are flawed. He can't control his temper and she is a loving mother but a cold-hearted wife. Irene keeps a 'false' blue diary which she leaves around for her husband to read while her real thoughts are recorded in a secret red diary. Shadow Tag could not be considered a comfort read and this marriage turns uglier than most bad marriages with alcohol playing its inevitable part, but sometimes you need to read about real life, as it is, both good and bad and Louise Erdrich excels at writing real life.

After all that tragedy I need some Austen.

Go steady, Undine!

Undine's white and gold bedroom with sea-green panels and old rose carpet, looked along the Seventy-second street toward the leafless treetops of the Central Park.

Undine and her parents are living at the Hotel Stentorian in New York with the aim of moving among wealthy society. Undine is no Lily Bart. She is interested in all that is vulgar, expensive, bright and showy. This is echoed by her rather obvious beauty - bright red-gold hair and a high complexion. Completely self-centred and extravagant she drives her second husband, the lovely Ralph Marvell to suicide and flees from her third husband who is not quite such a pushover.

I loved Mrs Heeny, the cheerful manicurist and masseuse who keeps a sheaf of society newspaper clippings in her bag, knows all the latest gossip and is always warning Undine to Go Steady! I've read The Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth. Any suggestions which Wharton I should try next?

Browsing in Waterstone's today I was struck by a display of books for Mother's Day at the front of the store. Are all mothers only interested in expensive Cath Kidston craft books, books with cute kittens on the front and books about how to make cupcakes? I am so bored with cupcakes. A while back Waterstone's had a display of books by Japanese writers and they managed to put an Amy Tan novel amongst them!

The Custom of the Country

Undine was fiercely independent and yet passionately imitative. She wanted to surprise everyone by her dash and originality, but she could not help modelling herself on the last person she met ...

Undine Spragg has a dilemma. She has read in 'Boudoir Chat' that all the fashionable women in New York are using the new pigeon-blood red notepaper with white ink. Yet, elegant Mrs Fairford's invitation to lunch is written on plain old-fashioned white notepaper. Should Undine reply on red or white paper? Perhaps white paper is truly more stylish than red? Perhaps Mrs Fairford's use of white paper indicates that her social standing is not what Undine supposed?

Such are the difficulties faced by a wealthy Midwestern girl trying to move among New York's smartest set. Undine is always one step behind the Van Degens, the Driscolls and the Chauncey Ellings. I can't put Edith Wharton's brilliant satire The Custom of the Country down and I'll post more when I've read it.

Irene Dische

Funny how books suddenly attract your attention. I first heard about The Empress of Weehawken on that excellent but now sadly defunct site Readerville where it was getting some good reviews. I saw it again on Caustic Cover Critic which reminded me to put it on my tbr list. I finally got around to ordering it last week and started reading it at the weekend.

But ... I can't get into it. Not that it's a bad book but I still have a head full of The House of Mirth and Lily Bart is following me around. I need to read more Edith Wharton. Having exhausted my book budget (currently one paperback per month) I made a quick trip to the library after work yesterday evening and picked up Ethan Frome and Hermione Lee's Wharton biography.

The Empress of Weehawken is temporarily on hold.

Edith Wharton

I loved this novel from its opening sentence where Lawrence Selden runs into his friend Lily Bart at Grand Central Station and notices that her bloom is slightly diminished after 'eleven years of late hours and indefatigable dancing.'

At twenty-nine, Lily Bart, a poor girl whose beauty enables her to move in the best American society, is aware of the pressing need to marry a rich man because time is passing and this is echoed in the 'glitter of the American autumn' of the first chapters.

On a deeper level, Lily knows she is better than that and her friendship with Lawrence Selden a young lawyer of integrity who maintains a certain aloofness from the vicissitudes of fashionable society often verges on love. But Lily has a self-destructive streak and as her debts mount and her reputation suffers she finds that society rejects her.

Despite - or perhaps because of - her failings I adored Lily Bart. I now want to read everything Edith Wharton has written.

House of Mirth

On a visit to London with friends yesterday I was struck by a painting of the glamorous Lady Colin Campbell in the National Portrait Gallery. I popped into Waterstone's to buy some of the books on my tbr list and the very same painting was on the cover of Edith Wharton's House of Mirth! There are some excellent Edith Wharton posts here and here.

Also saw a stunning arrangement of hydrangeas in a huge square cut glass vase in a London restaurant. Who would have thought of cutting hydrangeas for indoors?