I read this ages ago and recently picked it up again on a whim. I remembered vaguely not enjoying it, but couldn't remember why. Well, now I remember.

Lilly Bart, the protagonist on the novel, if that's what you want to call her, is so shockingly stupid as to make one wonder who she continued remembering to breathe long enough to get into trouble with Gus or become "dingey." Christ on a bike: this book should have been subtitled "Or How An Apparently Unbelievably Pretty Almost-middle-aged Young Woman Makes Nothing But Horrible, Thoughtless, Blunders In Judgment Or Action."

Of course it ends badly. That point, though, is generally though as a good thing by the faction of the world who, for some reason, hate books written by Jane Austen so much that they will tell you at length about it, but still really want to read novels written in the 1800s starting a woman. Some people WANT to read books in which everyone is destined to die unhappily. That's somehow a good time to them. Hey, I dig "bleak" every now and then, but don't tell me it's a better book than, say, Jane Eyre just because no one gets a happy ending, and especially don't tell me that "everyone dying unhappy" is more realistic than "the good ending happily and the bad unhappily." I'm afraid reality is a great deal more nuanced than that. If you want realism in 19th century writing I suggest you go for non-fiction, buddy, because the Victorians took the idea of The Novel seriously.

Sorry. Rant done. This book is beautifully written and fully of really stupid decisions. If you want to read something by Edith Wharton, skip this one and go for Age of Innocence. Unless, of course, you are into this sort of thing, in which case I say go for it.