Me ha gustado este libro por los debates morales a los que nos somete la autora, por lo menos a mí me ha llevado a pensar cómo actuaría yo ante las dos tentaciones principales a las que se ven sometidos los personajes de esta obra. Quizás el libro peca un poco de moralista, y la crítica a la sociedad de la época hubiera ganado con un tono más mordaz, pero es ese análisis de los defectos de los adinerados, todo cubierto por un velo de rectitud del que en realidad adolecen, lo que más me ha gustado de la lectura.

This book is delightful in its melodrama and the moral tests it addresses. As an architect I particularly enjoyed the setting of a Beaux Arts design competition.

"The music room, when she entered, was thronged with acquaintances, and she found transient relief in that dispersal of attention that makes society an anaesthetic for some forms of wretchedness."

"It was part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counsellor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues."

I'm sure Wharton's full novels have more skill to them (I've only ever seen Scorsese's Age of Innocence), but this book is a narrower slice of what I imagine she is like. It was a good entry point for me and reminded me of Henry James and The Turn of the Screw. In that book, I had found the highly descriptive inner thoughts and intentions of the characters almost hyperreal. In this one, it melded with the intensity of the generational moral drama. It's this drama that you come to this book for. It's a riveting tale, to be sure.

I love Edith Wharton. I found this book at a used book sale, and the description on the flap (also the description on Sanctuary's Goodreads site) was intriguing. A dilemma of morality and a woman's honest efforts in conquering it or watching history repeat itself--I bought it and took it home to read.

Unfortunately, I found that reading the flap was not too dissimilar from reading the story. A powerhouse writer like Wharton should have devoted a novel-length work to such an idea. It felt abridged, in a sense, with too much exposition in Part 1. Wharton "tells" the reader about the character of Kate Orme, her engagement to Peyton, her feelings, her actions--the last of which there are few. The inner psyche is interesting, as Kate weighs the pros and cons of entering a marriage with a deliberate liar, but the resolution seems altogether too rushed; this is to create the effect of a surprise beginning in Part 2, which introduces Dick Peyton and his "mother" (the reader is supposed to "wonder" for the first few paragraphs if Kate went through with the marriage or not), but Wharton could have taken her time in developing the end of Part 1 and still created her tension.

Part 2 begins with Kate's adult son (because, come on, we all knew Kate went through with it). Again, Wharton "tells" the readers that Kate tried to inculcate moral value and judgment in her son, but it would have been much more effective to see this upbringing, especially as it figures so heavily in the conversation in the final scene of the book. Why is the reader deprived of a childhood, even a survey of one, of Dick and his mother, and why does she remain so passive with her son? Passive is the operative word here; I was astonished to see how passive Kate behaved throughout the whole novel; as the main character, it makes for a weak plot and a slow read. Kate reacts to and registers the world around her, and the bulk of the narration is either exposition or inner psyche. The dialogues are few, and the other characters get little "onscreen" time with Kate. An interesting concept of a story, but certainly not one of Wharton's finest.

En esta ocasión he leído una novela de Edith Wharton, autora que me produce un amor-odio. Esto es porque siempre odio o amo sus obras

What an oddity.