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A review by alisonraereed
The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton
4.0
I have not read such a well-written book in a long time. The vocabulary, sentence structure and imagery are unparalleled. For example, one character “struck him as having been rather gruesomely preserved in the airless atmosphere of a perfectly irreproachable existence, as bodies caught in glaciers kept for years a rosy life-in-death.”
The story itself unfurls slowly and steadily picks up strength - but not speed - until a breathless finale. In a story where there should be two distinct sides, my sympathies are with all the characters, because “they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented in a set of arbitrary signs.” What an age to set a story in.
The story itself unfurls slowly and steadily picks up strength - but not speed - until a breathless finale. In a story where there should be two distinct sides, my sympathies are with all the characters, because “they all lived in a kind of hieroglyphic world, where the real thing was never said or done or even thought, but only represented in a set of arbitrary signs.” What an age to set a story in.