Worried that her son has inherited her husbands "moral weakness" Kate strives to instill morals and values into her son.
When faced with his own hard decision Kate hopes she has done enough to steer him on the right path.

Not a fan of this book, It was hard to read simply because I lost interest very quickly.

I hope that people who read this books are already Wharton fans, because if someone unfamiliar with her work reads this, I think it would give them a bad and untrue impression of her writing ability.

Hmm. Well, this was not The House of Mirth. The story wasn't as strong, nor the writing as fine as I am accustomed to with Wharton's best. More a little like The Reef. It was short and mostly about the relationship between a mother and a son, and IMO the mother had wayyyyy too much meddling going on in her adult son's life, to the point of spiking a girlfriend's ear with a story she hoped would influence her son to do what she wants. If you want your adult child to do what you want, you need to have the kind of relationship where you can say "I think you should do this" and then leave it. Aargh. Anyway, the mother then got way too rewarded for the meddling. This poor guy will never have a life and I think Mommie Dearest will manage to "influence away" any future spouse material. Not that I liked the girlfriend in the story much better. Argh. It was so short, I'm not sorry I read it, but it's at the bottom of my Wharton oeuvre list at the moment.

I am sorry to report that Sanctuary simply was not of the same stuff that made Age of Innocence and House of Mirth great.

Many have addressed the morality angle behind this book: the main character married a morally deficient man with the hope that she could correct the deficiency in their children. Questionable judgment on her part? Probably. But I found that more impactful, if not interesting, part of Sanctuary to be the main character's inevitable development into what can only be called America's first helicopter parent. This woman's over-involvement in her growth son's life was pretty scary, and enough to make any (potential) daughter-in-law cringe. I would definitely file this book under the 'examples of bad parenting' category first, and 'importance of moral conduct' second!

FIRST LINE REVIEW: "It is not often that youth allows itself to feel undividedly happy: the sensation is too much the result of selection and elimination to be within reach of the awakening clutch on life." Yeah, you have to read that sentence several times understand it, don't you? For me, that was the challenge of this novella. The writing was just a bit more dense that in the other pieces I've read by Wharton. And that made the final "pay off" at the end a bit more disappointing, as well.

"Before he was out of the fever she had the noose around him - he came to and found himself married."

So dramatic.