Everything is awesome (caveat: when you’re part of the team)¹.

Publisher: N/A
Pages: N/A
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: (Vintage’s is 978-0-099-51128-1)
First Published: 1920
Date Reviewed: 23rd February 2018
Rating: 5/5

1870s New York and young Newland Archer is excited at the prospect of marrying May Welland, looking forward to making their engagement official. But as he watches the opera in his club box, he spies a newcomer with his fiancée’s family; May’s cousin Countess Ellen Olenska has separated from her European husband and has come to stay in America. Ellen is rather different to the rest, her European ways at odds with New York society and everyone hopes she’ll reunite with her husband… everyone except Newland who is strangely attracted to her.

The Age Of Innocence is a marvellous novel with a highly ironic title. Set at a time of change, it looks at the way a society that does not favour the arts, or anything even one step away from their etiquette and mores, responds when they are confronted with a person who is slightly associated with it.

Wharton speaks of a society she was a member of and uses Newland to examine it as well. There is a lot of characterisation in the book but most of it is by rights and by design set aside for Newland. As the main character (the book is written in the third person) Wharton spends most of her time in his head. Her relative lack of characterisation of the other characters, barring Madame Olenska, is almost a theme in itself, with the society members effectively rendered as stereotypes as befitting Newland’s opinions of them, which, let’s just say, aren’t always correct (and can be frustrating at times). It’s an interesting sort of character-driven novel – there’s actually more plot than characterisation aside from Newland yet it remains character-driven.

In many ways everyone is a device for Wharton but none more so than the unsuspecting Newland who is used by Wharton to look at the perceived lack of female agency in society, as well as his own thoughts as to teaching his wife what he deems appropriate for her to know.

His own exclamation: “Women should be free – as free as we are,” struck to the root of a problem that it was agreed in his world to regard as non-existent. “Nice” women, however wronged, would never claim the kind of freedom he meant, and generous-minded men like himself were therefore – in the heat of arguement – the more chivalrously ready to concede it to them.

The young man was sincerely but placidly in love. He delighted in the radiant good looks of his bethrothed, in her health, her horsemanship, her grace and quickness at games, and the shy interest in books and ideas that she was beginning to develop under his guidence. (She had advanced far enough to join him in ridiculing the Idyls of the King, but not to feel the beauty of Ulysses and the Lotus Eaters.)… But when he had gone the brief round of her he returned discouraged by the thought that all this frankness and innocence were only an artificial product.

So the story is very clever. It’s a man’s world – is it? (You might expect a woman writer in those years to question that – Wharton and Kate Chopin would have got on well – but Wharton’s craftiness will have you wondering what’s on the next page constantly and she is a master of red herrings, nay, pre red herrings.) The author gives a lot of time to Ellen Olenska, ensuring that the woman shines in characterisation away from her role as Newland’s social interest, and allows a second interpretation to take hold in Ellen’s story. The execution of the story is flawless and the ending an absolute triumph.

At once a simple story with little embellishment, The Age Of Innocence is well worth the fairly short investment of time it requires, both for enjoyment and because it’s a worthy classic. You will not regret reading this book.

¹ The main line of The Lego Movie theme song seemed too appropriate not to use, however irrelevant it is otherwise.

Related Books

None yet

Acknowledgement and the desire to know more.

Publisher: John Murray (Hachette)
Pages: 193
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-473-65237-8
First Published: 22nd February 2018
Date Reviewed: 21st February 2018
Rating: 5/5

Our narrator looks back at the part of her life when she was considering whether to have a child, and then the subsequent pregnancy. She interweaves into this story another, of her grief at her mother’s death, as well as the discomfort she felt staying with her grandmother, and the history surrounding the discovery of X-Rays, Freud, and the work of early doctors.

Sight is a sensational novel about one woman’s journey to parenthood and the worry of being good enough; it’s also about longing and grief, and the self.

Greengrass is a master of subtlety and letting the story unfold at its own pace. Never worrying about speed, the tale is very slow but a wonder to read, the writing calling to mind novels from decades, even hundreds, of years ago, that same sense of the narrator sitting by the window at their desk writing, that is most prominent in film adaptations, here in full bloom. To be sure it is a page turner but it’s of that lovely lazy afternoon kind, the book being the perfect companion for a cup of tea and a chair on the lawn as the sun shines overhead. (The writing is similar in its subtly to the author’s short story collection, An Account Of The Decline Of The Great Auk, According To One Who Saw It, though the length of Sight allows the author to take her way of executing ideas further than she could in the short stories.)

Yes, that sounds rather at odds with the content of the story – the narrator’s anxiety and grief, the constant struggles she has to work through that her writing of them seems to help but not necessarily conquer. (It’s a somewhat open-ended work, very much a character study that nevertheless sports a conclusion.) And with all the chopping and changing of narrative – one moment in the present day, the next in the past, the next describing history – it can take a little while to find your bearings. But when you find your way (not too far into the novel, it must be said) there is a lot of literary enjoyment to be had.

In writing about Freud and Rontgen and other historical people – which is a factual aspect of the novel – Greengrass has used a particular type of showing. The cause of the narrator’s anxieties and doubtless depression is shown in what she teaches the reader about Rontgen and Freud – she knows about Freud because her grandmother was a psychoanalyst and she knows about Rontgen because she read up on him. These in turn, particularly the information about Freud as related to her grandmother and upbringing, help the reader to understand her nervousness about having a child, the way her mother’s passing affected her and so on. It becomes apparent that whilst, in a sense, the information about historical people reads as an info-dump, irrelevant to the narrator herself, those very facts are things that were not only something to become perhaps obsessed by as a way of working out her grandmother and her own life, but also a way of coping; in the narration of Freud and Anna, the narrator lives wildly through others without perhaps realising it.

Whilst there is no direct historical story in relation to the death of the narrator’s mother, the literary result is much the same.

Taking character further in terms of Greengrass’s subtlety, to the concept of characterisation itself, this is another factor worth looking at. The novel is very much about the narrator, in many ways everyone else mentioned is but a device, and Greengrass engages with this every so often. There’s the place wherein the narrator looks at Johannes’ role in the proceedings to good effect. As the narrator acknowledges – more so points out in terms of social roles – the way Johannes is but on the periphery of the pregnancy – not essential, a bit-player who can stay in the waiting room whilst the pregnancy unfurls, makes him irrelevant to what’s going on. This mixes in with the overall feeling that the narrator is the person to listen to – the others are not so important; whilst they may have affected her, it’s now the narrator’s time to shine.

Sight is fascinating. The narrator comes to a greater knowledge of herself but the knowledge the reader gains about her is the most important thing, and that effect makes the novel what it is. It’s both difficult in terms of content and wonderful in terms of its execution, a very self-contained and meticulously planned tale that is very effective and moving without any sort of pointing to itself to tell you so. An average person with a sad story that, when you look at it, shows just how much depth there is to every one of us and how our childhoods have a colossal effect on who we become, no matter how it pans out.

I received this book for review.

Related Books

I’m still reading the book and still enjoying it, but there’s something I’m in two minds about: Newland’s musings and inner upset – to be polite about it – over May’s personality. Expect free-writing going forward…

May Welland, Newland’s fiancée and later wife, is very much a device for Wharton to look into the way New York society women behave; by using a young woman she is also able to explain how it comes to be, the ‘creation’ of a society woman if you will.

At the beginning of the novel it’s particularly good – it’s fresh, it’s a vibrant narrative, and there is something both strange and poignant in the fact that Wharton spreads her ideas via Newland. Using a man as the person she speaks through makes for an interesting contrast to other narratives – he wants a partner with more agency and independence of thought and bearing – whilst at the same time that it is a man brings irony to the situation as Newland is obviously far freer than May would ever be.

But as the novel continues and Newland continues to think of May’s character, Wharton’s commentary starts to lose its effect. Newland’s freedom has something to do with it, but more than anything else I’m finding the fact that he is effectively complaining but doing nothing about it difficult. Of course one shouldn’t expect Newland to be actively trying to change May – that would be wrong – but in all his goings on about how she just repeats what those who brought her up taught her to say, he never really does much in the way of trying to give May space to become more independent. He has a few thoughts – particularly when he realises May may expect him to become like her hypochondriac father – but there’s never any action. To Newland, May is who she is – a dull, robotic (not that he uses that word), same-as-any-other society woman and that’s that.

Of course that Newland loves her cousin, the very different Ellen Olenska, understandably affects his lack of action in that he should really have not married May and left her when she gave him the chance. (I found that scene very interesting, the way we see that May is obviously a lot ‘more’ than Newland thinks – I wouldn’t have minded a companion book wherein May finds someone who likes her.) But it is difficult to listen to him going on about May’s limitations. And in a modern context, thinking of the way he’s treating her that likely wouldn’t be an ‘issue’ in Wharton’s time, it’s even more difficult.

I’m hoping to watch the 1993 adaptation after I finish the book and the way Wharton/Newland speaks of May I’m kind of expecting Winona Ryder’s May to be a literal robot.

I do think there’s something to be said in that Wharton keeps the theme of May’s sameness carrying on throughout; whilst the author herself likely got bored of all the limitations placed on women, nay, people full stop, in her society, at the same time that she herself was different… surely she must have thought that many women would have felt restricted, and the addition of Ellen to the cast suggests this.

I’m pinning my hopes on Wharton going for some sort of big reveal at the end wherein we see that May’s not at all boring. Particularly considering the irony of the title.

Away from that, I’ve just been surprised by Newland’s sudden wish to kill off May – sudden surprising violence that made me picture him in a dusty room in black and white a la Mrs Danvers – and I’m rooting for Ellen finding some socially appropriate way to tell her family to mind their own business.

More names would have been useful; for a while I thought Catherine the Great was indeed the Russian empress and there are lots of Mingotts to remember. The whole product is a great commentary of New York society from someone who lived it – I do wonder if that’s why Wharton decided to travel so much, to get away from it all.

I’m reading three books at the moment and they are all superbly written which is rather wonderful. Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie’s Americanah, Jessie Greengrass’ Sight, and Edith Wharton’s The Age Of Innocence.

I’ve been surprised by the Wharton. I knew it would be good because I’ve heard as such before, but the slight humour and spot on commentary was a great discovery. I’m taking it slowly; with the handful of different characters and all the information proffered upfront there’s a fair amount to remember, particularly as I started the book during a lazy afternoon. I’m using my Kobo, which is almost a novelty; I put it away a while ago when I decided to concentrate on physical books (I’ve tried, but I can’t read ebooks one after the other), and found it when clearing up.

Having read the first several chapters I found myself wanting to read up about Wharton herself and spent a few hours doing so. Hers was an interesting life; she was part of the high society she wrote about and travelled extensively. When the war reached France she decided to remain there and help rather than return to America. The house in Massachusetts, that she designed, is now open to the public and in a manner that I recently found at Avebury Manor – you can sit on the furniture and interact with objects and so forth.

Americanah is less of a priority simply due to the length. I’ve a need for shorter books at the moment but don’t want to stop reading it entirely. I’m glad for my reluctance to make notes in books because if I wasn’t reluctant most of what I’ve read so far – a few chapters – would have been scribbled over.

When my Dad told me a few weeks ago that he was planning to watch Wild that evening, I remembered I hadn’t yet seen it. I bought and read Strayed’s memoir before the film’s release so that I could watch it in context but while I did read the book I forgot the second part of the plan. So I sat down to watch the film myself and got about 20 minutes in before calling it a day. It was the inner monologue that did it for me. I’ll try again at some point but I’m not sure I’ll get through it. I liked the book enough – it wasn’t great but it was far from bad – but the film’s execution of it could perhaps be better.

In non-book news I’m still knitting avidly, and finding it to be a good companion hobby to reading. I can’t listen to music when reading, for example, but I can when I’m knitting. I’m finding irony in the fact that knitting doesn’t feel anywhere near as productive as reading but there’s a lot of satisfaction in a finished piece. I’ve completed the jumper I was making for my nephew – with help at the end as trying to sew it all together was making me want to abandon it – and started something in a thicker yarn so that it’d be quicker to knit. I definitely prefer having finished to being in the midst of making.

What are you reading and, if you’ve seen Wild, what did you think of it (whether in context with the book or not)?

My current read, Jessie Greengrass’ Sight, has two plot threads, told in one narrative by one person. In the first narrative – the main fiction, so to speak – a woman looking back at the time when she was struggling to make a decision as to whether she should have a child. The other is factual – although narrated by our fictional character – and covers the discovery of X-rays and what they could do by scientist Wilhelm Röntgen at the end of the 19th century.

Röntgen’s story is an interesting one, particularly as Greengrass includes the problems that arose due to a previous scientist having seen X-rays but not investigating – where Röntgen had seen a light and investigated it, this other scientist had seen the same light but not thought anything of it.

Most interesting to me, however, was the information that is included at the start of Greengrass’ tale of Röntgen – the author compares the beginnings of his discovery with the creation of the first motion pictures. She chooses the evening of 28th December 1895, wherein early filmmakers the Lumière brothers, Auguste and Louis, hosted the first public film screening. Ten very short films were included, and Greengrass’ nameless character speaks most of La Pêche aux Poissons Rouges (Fishing the Goldfish), which features Auguste and his daughter:

Users of IMDB have given it only 5.2/10, which kind of defeats the point…

It’s an astonishing film, really; the quality of the picture and the speed of it… when you compare it to later ‘feature’ films, it seems far ahead. (I’m thinking here of the crackly nature of black and white films, all those dots and lines, though admittedly a one shot, one angle film wouldn’t need to work with transitions.)

Greengrass moves on to X-rays from here, but I was interested in carrying on the research into film. The reputed first ever film was created in 1871. Sallie Gardner at a Gallop was the result of an experiment and technically more a precursor to film that one itself.: twenty-four photographs shown on a zoopraxiscope, creating an effect very similar to flip books.

The first copyrighted film was Fred Ott’s Sneeze, a 5 second film in which a man pretends to be feeling under the weather; Fred inhales some snuff. He breaks the fourth wall at the end. The film was shown through a Kinetoscope, a massive device created by Thomas Edison, who knew the creator of Sallie Gardner at a Gallop. When Edison exhibited his creations at the Exposition Universelle (Paris, 1889), what we would now call his stand was an acre in size and featured an entire power station.

There are a lot of very early films out there, and most of them are available to view. Thinking on why I hadn’t known about them before and why there is so much general knowledge on photography but not film, I concluded that since we are so invested in photography for the purposes of personal and societal history, it makes sense that early films – often random and very very short – would not be so well known. At least that’s my thought.

What have books taught you recently?