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Title: 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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