The Wharton Gothics by Edith Wharton

Rating: WARTY!

Every so often I give one of the classics a try and seem to have little success. I guess they're just not for me, but here goes another one!

Read nicely by Gabrielle de Cuir, I had a problem not with the reader, but with the stories. I started this in conjunction with an ebook of similarly ghostly short stories by a variety of authors and curiously I had the same experience with both of them - the first story started out fine, but the more I listened/read, the less I liked it, and subsequent stories bored me. They were slow to the point of lethargy, unappealing, and difficult to follow at times. Admittedly I listened to the Wharton stories while commuting to and from work, so there were distractions, but even in the quiet of the early morning when there's little to no traffic, I had a hard time finding anything interesting to listen to.

The eight stories are these, in case you want to look them up. Some or all of them may well be public domain by now, and available on the Gutenberg Project or some other similar online platform for free:

• The Fulness of Life
• The Lady's Maid's Bell
• Afterward
• The Letters
• Mr Jones
• A Journey
• The Hermit and the Wild Woman
• The Quicksand

I made it only about halfway through this before giving it up as a bad job. I can't commend it based on the experience I had despite Gabrielle de Cuir's sweet and mellow voice. This is my second experience of this author and my last. I did not like The Age of Innocence either so it's time to move on and give other authors a chance.

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton

Rating: WARTY!

My evidently ill-fated quest to read some of the classics continues! For the life of me I cannot see how this won a Pulitzer Prize. Set in the late nineteenth century, the novel was published in 1920, and was about an era during which the author grew up, so at least it has an authenticity which modern historical novels of this era cannot pretend to. That said, the main characters were two of the most stupid people I've read about, so for me, while the novel wasn't exactly awful, it ended-up being thoroughly unsatisfying.

The idiots are Newland Archer and Countess Elena Olenska, who used to be one of the locals - a Mingott, who married a Polish count and then realized it was a mistake. Evidently having learned nothing from that, she screws up any hope of a love with Newland because she's an idiot, I guess, aka a hopeless romantic. Had the novel been about her and she not rendered quite so idiotically, the story might have been worth reading.

Newland, meanwhile is a lawyer, so it's rather nice to see him get done over! He's engaged to May Welland, and it seems to be a perfect match, but obviously it isn't that way from his perspective because he wants out of it! Failing to find the courage to withdraw, he spends his life in smoldering resentment it when he could so easily have called it off. May even accepted the possibility that he might and encouraged him to do so if he could not bear to marry her, but he refused. Moron. The manipulative May then decides she will spend the rest of the novel denying him any opportunity to renege on his choice and she succeeds admirably, so despite how little she appears in the novel she's also an interesting character.

Character names are important to me and I choose the names of my own main characters with some thought. I have no idea how Wharton chose her character names, but 'new land' for a guy who is too chicken-shit or stupid to explore the terra nova of an unconventional woman is a joke, although it does pair with May's name, 'well land' quite comfortably, I suppose. May Safeland would have been a better name! Archer is certainly a major fail for someone who is so comprehensively unable to make himself the target of Cupid's aim. I don't know what Olenski means in Polish, but in Bulgarian it means reindeer! Maybe instead of 'Age of Innocence' the novel ought to have been titled "Reindeer Games?!

So Newland leads his boring life, has children with May and gets old, until May dies. Instead of pursuing the countess at that point, when he was free to do so, he deliberately walks away from her without even offering her a choice in the matter, thereby proving his love was hollow, or he's a complete imbecile. Either one made this book a severe disappointment. I can't commend this particular novel as a worthy read, but I would consider reading other material by this author.