Bunner Sisters

Edith Wharton

Originally published in 1916, but actually written in 1890, Bunner Sisters is a compelling, heartbreaking little novella about two sisters, who have never been apart, struggling to eek an existence as small shopkeepers on the margins of late nineteenth-century society in New York. They barely make enough money to live on. But when Ann Eliza the elder buys Evelina the younger a clock that does not work for her birthday, the sisters commence a relationship with Herbert Ramy, who operates a queer little shop, setting in motion a series of events that will prove to be everyones undoing. Edith Wharton provides a vivid description of the life of shop keepers and their friends in the poorer urban areas of New York City.

Crucial Instances

Edith Wharton

Originally published in 1901, Crucial Instances is the second collection of six short stories connected, as the title suggests, by a hinging moment in the narrative through which the plot alters dramatically. The contents included the following: The Duchess at Prayer, The Angel at the Grave, The Recovery, Copy: A Dialogue, The Rembrandt, The Moving Finger and The Confessional.This is a great collection of stories, where Edith Wharton shows her wide range of talents, from those with a bit of a horror feel, to ones which just make the reader feel good. There is one Dialogue or play, several written in third person, several in first person, written from a mans point of view and some from a womans. All of them are carefully crafted to show a particular attitude or character or scene in great detail. Highly recommended!

Duchy i ludzie

Edith Wharton

Życie przedstawicieli amerykańskiej arystokracji zdaje się spokojne i radosne. W rzeczywistości za murami wystawnych domów często skrywa się zdrada, małżeńska przemoc, poczucie samotności, toksyczne relacje. A do tego niejednokrotnie przypominają o sobie duchy przodków lub dawnych mieszkańców. Ingerencja sił nadprzyrodzonych jednym bohaterom pomaga wyjść z opresji, a innym wymierza sprawiedliwość - zawsze jednak budzi przestrach czytelnika. Idealna lektura dla miłośników subtelnej grozy w stylu Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

Ethan Frome

Edith Wharton

In the early years of the 20th century, life on a farm in Massachusetts is not easy. The New England winters are hard; snow and ice cover the fields for months, and the nights are long and cold. For a poor farmer like Ethan Frome, life has few bright moments. He works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeenas young and beautiful cousin Mattie Silver enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. Edith Whartons Ethan Frome is a classic of American Literature, with compelling characters trapped in circumstances from which they seem unable to escape.

Madame de Treymes

Edith Wharton

Even a short novel like Madame de Treymes shows you what a masterful writer Edith Wharton was. It is a captivating portrait of turn-of-the-century American and French culture. Inspired by Whartons own entré into Parisian society in 1906 and reminiscent of the works of Henry James, it tells the story of two young innocents abroad: Fanny Frisbee of New York, unhappily married to the dissolute Marquis de Malrive, and John Durham, her childhood friend who arrives in Paris intent on convincing Fanny to divorce her husband and marry him instead. In hopes of finding a solution, Durham meets with Fannys sister-in-law, the enigmatic Madame de Treymes, who suggests that she might be willing to appeal to her brother on his behalf if, that is, he will help settle her illicit lovers gambling debts. Such a proposition surely wont have a catch...

Sanctuary

Edith Wharton

Kate Orme is a young woman whose illusions of marital bliss are shattered when she comes face to face with the dark secret harbored by her fiancé, the wealthy and deceptively ebullient Denis. Kate decides to go ahead and by societys willingness to overlook such transgressions, nevertheless marries him. Years later, her son faces a moral crisis similar to the one that showed her his fathers moral weakness. With the precision, beauty, and sharp awareness of the cracks in upper-class New York society that made her one of the great writers of the twentieth century, Edith Wharton offers a subtle critique of the nature versus nurture debate that raged in the early 1900s. Sanctuary is a spare and moving investigation of the forces that impel human beings toward sin, self-doubt, and redemption.

Siostry Bunner

Edith Wharton

Co lepsze: smutek braku perspektyw czy gorycz porażki? Anna Eliza i Ewelina, choć są siostrami, różnią się od siebie jak ogień i woda. Starsza stale się poświęca i podporządkowuje odgórnym zasadom. Młodsza nie ma tendencji do współodczuwania, skupia się raczej na sobie. Młode kobiety prowadzą wspólnie mały sklepik na przedmieściach Nowego Jorku i do tego właściwie ogranicza się cała ich życiowa aktywność. Sytuacja ulega zmianie, gdy starsza kupuje młodszej na urodziny zegar w sklepie prowadzonym przez interesującego mężczyznę. Anna Eliza pierwszy raz w życiu nabiera odwagi, by zawalczyć o siebie. Czy dostanie wsparcie od siostry? I czy dojrzały mężczyzna odwzajemni jej rozpaczliwe uczucie? Głęboka powieść psychologiczna laureatki Nagrody Pulitzera. Idealna propozycja lekturowa dla miłośników twórczości Marii Kuncewiczowej czy Zofii Nałkowskiej.

Summer

Edith Wharton

Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Whartons Summer created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young womans sexual awakening. Seventeen-year-old Charity Royall is desperate to escape life with her hard-drinking adoptive father. Their isolated village stifles her, and his behavior increasingly disturbs her. When a young city architect Lucius Harney visits for the summer, it offers Charity the chance to break free. But as they embark on an intense affair, will it bring her another kind of trap? Praised for its realism and honesty by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flauberts Madame Bovary, Summer remains as fresh and powerful a novel today as when it was first written.