3.52k reviews for:

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

3.89 AVERAGE


This book is a thoughtful and lovely read; it is no wonder Wharton was the first female to win a Pulitzer and that it was with this novel. It's both subtle and incredibly unsubtle all at once, artfully written, thought provoking even today despite the period in which it was written, unabashedly feminist, and it continued to surprise and intrigue me until the last page. Very glad I picked it up.

The original gossip girls 😜
emotional reflective fast-paced

Okay, I did actually love the writing. There is something about classic novels that I eat up every time. But, I also really disliked this book. I found the main character so unsympathetic. I don’t understand him at all. He’s a member of the idle rich, who hates his lifestyle, but is so incapable of moving beyond it, whose every thought is about himself and if he ever thinks about other people it’s always about how they relate to him. Newland Archer irritates me so much, I can’t put all of it into words without writing a five paragraph essay, so let’s summarize by saying that I don’t understand why anyone ever fell in love with him. 

Read this back when the movie came out. Liked it, didn't love it.
emotional reflective sad medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This was just utterly, amazingly, profoundly beautiful. A reading blog is on my website.

(Real Rating: 4.5 Stars!)

I really enjoyed this book. I really enjoyed Wharton's writing style, and her uncannily contemporary voice, considering this book was written in the 19th century. I don't really have a single negative thing to say about it. I give it 4.5 stars instead of 5 because it didn't quite impact me the way other, similar writings by female authors of the 19th century did (e.g. Austen). But really, I loved the characterization, and appreciated the freshness of having a female author write (in such a compelling and realistic way) in the voice of a man.

Reading the Age of Innocence also made me love the Innocents even more. My friend Darcy told me to read both as close together as possible, and I'm really very glad I did!
emotional slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Coming off reading Jane Austen's Mansfield Park (and not loving it), I was really looking forward to reading another novel in that same literary vein to scratch that Austenian itch. Age of Innocence was almost that book.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. I loved the portrait of 1870s New York we got, especially as a fan of the "proper English society" genre this was a refreshing setting. I was certainly dissapointed by the ending, and felt as though Wharton essentially gave up on her own story 2/3 of the way through. There were so many avenues she could have taken to tie this novel together, and ultimately it fell flat.

I really enjoyed the characters and, though the plot was lacking, the characters were all so well portrayed that I felt I could predict their responses to nearly anything. Newland definitely strikes me as a modern day version of a mansplainer who thinks he's a feminist and I enjoyed watching him sniff after the first woman who is in any way different from the society he was molded by. Men are so simple.