The House of Mirth

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Summary: A difficult & brilliant revelation, yet again.
Review: Except for Undine Spragg from "The Custom of the Country," I've yet to read a novel from E. Wharton wherein I cannot painfully relate. From the joy and madness of unrequited passion to hopes and dreams pulled asunder, I've been there and done that only to have Edith bring it all back to life every time I pick up one of her novels. What an eye she possesses; what an imagination! "The House of Mirth" is a shocking and honest disection of how cruelly society can work to crush those of us whom dare to be daringly unique and follow the beat of a different heart. I do agree with another reader's comment that the story suffers from "too much detail," but God...how achingly beautiful she writes. The story's ending left me grasping for a comprehension I am still unable to locate. While I didn't particularly enjoy this journey, it's only because a raw nerve was touched. To be sure, such reaction is proof of a genius at work.

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Summary: Lily Bart
Review: Although she was certainly flawed, I found myself wishing that I could be her. There were parts of her that made her fate so sad, and then there were parts of her which totally redeemed her, and reminded me of myself. I read a great many books, and this is certainly my favorite. In no other book have I found a character so complex and interesting as Lily. A week has passed since I read the book for the first time, and already I want to read it again, but I can't, since I recommended it so highly to a friend that she borrowed it from me...

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Summary: Passionate incisive portrait of American high society 1900
Review: Wharton is devestating in her deconstruction of New York's high society - shallow, self-absorbed and self-indulgent, callous and cruel. Lily Bart is an underfinanced outsider bred to be a part of that society, but whose self-consciousness brings internal conflicts that place her neither in or out of it. Her descent, by choices of her own that are predetermined by her background and victimized by the hypocrisy and cruelty of that world, is painful. Because there is the opportunity, time and again, to escape or to successfully join that society, and one understands as Lily makes just those choices that doom her. And the awful proximity of the man who should have been the love of her life, Seldon, whose own timidity and small-minded self-righteousness seal the failure. To watch the step-by-step descent of this beautiful woman is wrenching, agonizing. It may not be pleasant, but it is unforgettable.

Rating:
Summary: The ugly side of the gilded age
Review: The ugly side of the gilded age, and the world in which Edith Wharton was immersed, is highlighted in this incredibly haunting and moving novel. I can't wait to read Wharton's other works.

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Summary: A powerful novel that speaks across time
Review: Though "Age of Innocence" may be more famous, with a well-known film to spread its story, I felt that this novel was better. Wharton provides the reader with a well-woven tapestry of despair and tragedy. I felt myself wishing that Lily would take the initiative, DO something to stop her slow decline into poverty and drugs, but at the same time, as an amateur literary critic, knowing that in her inability to do so lay the whole point of the book. The description was wonderful, the subsidiary characters excellently drawn, and the ending powerful. I did not particularly appreciate the stereotyping of the Jewish character, but no doubt that expressed the feelings of upper class New York at the time, and so I reluctantly accepted it in my heart. Nothing, especially retrospective viewing of ethnocentrism, can take away from Edith Wharton's rank as one of the great American writers.

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Summary: house of defeat ...
Review: Is victory in our culture reserved solely for small personal matters? Is its price always too high? Is its value negligible? This book, written in 1905, continually turns the smallest victories into major defeats. The House of Mirth is named after a passage in Ecclesiastes: "The heart of the wise is in the house of morning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth." I couldn't agree less. It galled me that this breathtakingly subtle book should end with what seems to me like a hammer blow to the human spirit. Well, only if one allows oneself an emotional response. If not, the novel ends with a literary parlor game. What is "the word which made all clear"? Cowardice? Money? Honor? Death? Defeat? Certainly not love -- that makes nothing clear. I was able to find only four things about The House of Mirth that would tell me it was not written by Henry James. Its range, which seems broader than anything James would attempt in a single work. Its linearity, its unbroken declining trajectory. Is anything James wrote so utterly tragic? So unrelentingly anti-capitalist? Strange that such a dour tale should be such a joy -- so enchanting -- to read....

Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: My heart was racing as I got closer to the end; I'd forgotten what it's like to read a book like this. What a powerful psychological portrait of a character and the times! Though I prefer happy endings, this book was so facinating and so complete, that the ending did not disappoint me. Edith Wharton has become one of my favorite authors.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: A dated account of a world unfamiliar to the modern reader. Excessive details do not familiarize the reader with this world; rather they distance her from the truly important themes. However, there are some strong points, such as the portrayal of the limited opportunities of unmarried women at that time, as well as what high society was really like at that time.

Rating:
Summary: Edith Wharton's writing is like light through crystal!
Review: A glorious story! As a writer myself, I was moved to jealous fits! A tender story, as sad as it is triumphant! You will be moved!

Rating:
Summary: ------------------------------------------------------------
Review: A literary sensation when it was published by Scribners in 1905, The House of Mirth quickly established Edith Wharton as the most important American woman of letters in the twentieth century. The first American novel to provide a devastatingly accurate portrait of New York's aristocracy, it is the story of the beautiful and beguiling Lily Bart and her ill-fated attempt to rise to the heights of a heartless society in which, ultimately, she has no part.

The story of young Lily Bart and her tragic sojourn among the upper class of turn-of-the-century New York.