Tomes: The Age Of Innocence

The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
A scathing attack on the hypocrisy and insularity of upper-crust New York Society in the late 19th Century and it's collective effort to thwart a romance between the married Newland Archer and disgraced Countess Ellen Olenska, The Age Of Innocence is not only one of the most entertaining reads you'd get out of a tome slapped with the twin labels of "Masterpiece" and "Pulitzer Prize Winner", it's a testimony to Wharton's consummate skill and narrative control as a novelist that she not only manages to have you race through the pages for a conclusion that's really quite foregone, but effortlessly tells this tale not through the eyes of a woman, as would have been naturally expected, but filters it convincingly through her troubled and introspective male protagonist.

Sped through this in less than 2 days. Sharp,witty, observant and of course, wonderfully romantic in the best tradition of Austen, The Age Of Innocence is a winner, for this reader at least.

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