I had a difficult time choosing between the three Edith Wharton books I've read within the past twelve months (The House of Mirth, Ghosts, and The Custom of the Country).
This novel features one of the most morally complex protagonists I've ever encountered, a social shapeshifter obsessively motivated by conspicuous consumption and class optics.
Wharton weaves satire into a fast-moving tragedy filled with shocking reversals, uniquely attentive to all the nuances and subliminal aggressions of her characters' worlds.
No hyperbole: this is one of the best novels I've ever read.
Edith Wharton’s classic story of one woman’s quest for wealth and status after the turn of the twentieth century
Beautiful, selfish, and driven, Undine Spragg arrives in New York with all of the ambition and naiveté that her midwestern, nouveau riche upbringing afforded her. As cunning as she is lovely, Undine has but one goal in life: to ascend to the upper echelons of high society. And so with a single-minded tenacity, Undine continues to maneuver through life, finding all the while that true satisfaction remains just beyond her grasp.
Hailed by Elizabeth Hardwick as “Edith Wharton’s finest achievement,” The…
Henry James is one of my very favorite writers, and his unmatchable skills are already on full display in this early novel.
The book generates drama through the psychological tensions between the artist Roderick Hudson and his benefactor, Rowland Mallet, characters who accrue archetypal charges against a timeless Italian backdrop.
Roderick Hudson represents the tensions innate to artistic creation, both on the level of individual discipline and social liberation. Holding it all together is James's unmatchable prose, so gorgeous and vivid it totally carries you away.
James Baldwin's debut novel, Go Tell it on the Mountain, is a remarkable accomplishment, so I was surprised to find his second novel even more formally polished and emotionally sophisticated.
Giovanni's Room is one of the major works of twentieth-century American literature, capturing the ineffability and intense contradictions of romantic love.
The book's psychological portraits are astonishingly rich, especially given its modest length. Like many novels by Henry James, it envisions Europe as a space of radical possibility, ludic rule-breaking, and danger.
When David meets the sensual Giovanni in a bohemian bar, he is swept into a passionate love affair. But his girlfriend's return to Paris destroys everything. Unable to admit to the truth, David pretends the liaison never happened - while Giovanni's life descends into tragedy.
United by the theme of love, the writings in the Great Loves series span over two thousand years and vastly different worlds. Readers will be introduced to love's endlessly fascinating possibilities and extremities: romantic love, platonic love, erotic love, gay love, virginal love, adulterous love, parental love, filial love, nostalgic love, unrequited love, illicit love,…
While looking for a secret place to smoke
cigarettes with his two best friends, troubled teenager Mark discovers a
mysterious shack in a suburban field. Alienated from his parents and peers,
Mark finds within the shack an escape greater than anything he has ever
experienced. But it isn't long before the place begins revealing
its strange, powerful sentience. And it wants something in exchange for the
shelter it provides.
Shelter for the Damned is not only a scary, fast-paced horror novel,
but also an unflinching study of suburban violence, masculine conditioning, and
adolescent rage.
