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The Innocents

Francesca Segal (Goodreads Author)

3.18 · Rating details · 5,351 ratings · 833 reviews

WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2012

What if everything you'd ever wanted was no longer enough?

Adam and Rachel are getting married at last. Childhood sweethearts whose lives and families have been intertwined for years; theirs is set to be the wedding of the year.

But then Rachel's cousin Ellie makes an unexpected return to the family fold. Beautiful, reckless and trou ...more

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Hardcover, 282 pages

Published June 5th 2012 by Hachette Books (first published January 1st 2012)

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Apr 26, 2012 Jeanette (Again) rated it liked it

Shelves: europe-and-british-isles, domestic-and-relationship-fiction, all-fiction

Don't be put off by my three-star rating. The writing is superb. Quite stunning, really, for a first novel. It's just one of those stories in which very little occurs, aside from the dailiness of life in a wealthy, tightly-knit community. This novel is modeled after Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, which is also a well-written book in which nothing much happens.

The most appealing thing for me about the story is its Jewishness. For a non-Jew like me, there was a lot to discover. ...more

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Jul 05, 2019 Elyse Walters rated it it was amazing

This is another - debut - book I’ve owned ( Hardcover), and wanted to read since it was first released in 2012. Only took me 7 years.

I did however read and enjoy Francessa Segal’s 2nd book called “The Awkward Age”....a few years back.

Segal’s 3rd Book “Mother Ship”...was released last month ( June, 2019). I’m hoping to see a Kindle release....but right now it’s only in Hardcover - $21.95 on Amazon.
I’d love to read it.
“The Innocents” - Inspired by “The Age of Innocence”, is simply funny - heart ...more

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May 13, 2012 switterbug (Betsey) rated it really liked it

This is an enjoyable and relatively conventional suburban drama of a close-knit Jewish community in NW London. Likewise, I applaud this debut author's unspoken but sublime irony and chutzpah in her choice to revitalize but change the original version of THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, a novel written by the celebrated, anti-Semitic author, Edith Wharton, that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921! (Wharton, Scott Fitzgerald, and Henry James were all privileged people of their times) Segal gets the last laugh by This is an enjoyable and relatively conventional suburban drama of a close-knit Jewish community in NW London. Likewise, I applaud this debut author's unspoken but sublime irony and chutzpah in her choice to revitalize but change the original version of THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, a novel written by the celebrated, anti-Semitic author, Edith Wharton, that won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921! (Wharton, Scott Fitzgerald, and Henry James were all privileged people of their times) Segal gets the last laugh by writing this tidy, classy novel about manners and family, and security versus passionate spontaneity. THE INNOCENTS takes place in contemporary times.

Twenty-eight-year-olds Adam Newman (cf. Newland Archer in AOI) and Rachel Gilbert (May Welland) have been together for a dozen years, engaged to be married, and comfortable and secure in their tight knot of overlapping and extended family and friends. Rachel has never been with any other man but Adam, and Adam’s experience is limited (by today’s standards). He is smug in his knowledge of Adam and Rachel, Rachel and Adam. Although his father died when he was very young, leaving an unresolved grief in his heart, Rachel’s father, Lawrence, has embraced him like a son, even hired him to work as an attorney in his firm. They are as close as in-laws could be. The marriage in a year will seal the deal, and bring the families even closer.

“There was no life event—marriage, birth, parenthood, or loss—through which one need ever walk alone. Twenty-five people were always poised to help. The other side of interference was support.”

In walks the prodigal cousin, returned from New York, Ellie Schneider (Ellen Olenska in AOI), a twenty-two-year old statuesque, bottle-blonde beauty. She was kicked out of the MFA creative writing program at Columbia for making a skin flick that surfaced, and is mantled with controversy for her ongoing affair with a famous married art dealer in NY, a scandal that is about to hit the media, and started when she was only sixteen. She dresses provocatively, which doesn’t go down well with the relatives at synagogue, especially on a High Holy holiday such as Yom Kippur, where this novel opens.

Adam is transfixed and ignited by the sight of her even as he is repelled and intimidated by her cavalier independence from the strictures and reproaches of their insular community. He cannily aspires to accidentally on purpose run into Ellie, bringing himself closer and closer into dangerous territory, like in AGE OF INNOCENCE. They develop a muted, cryptic, but inwardly tender kinship, circling around each other, chastely, also similar in spirit to Wharton’s book. Meanwhile, Rachel’s wedding plans are irritating him, because he wants to be married “quickly” and without fanfare, to be wed and put stray longings to rest.

Segal paints a vivid portrait of this clannish society’s mores, although most of the secondary characters are set pieces to further the story. There’s Ziva, the 88-year-old grandmother, (Rachel’s), an erudite immigrant who survived the Holocaust; Adam’s mother, still a grieving widow after all these years, and other people that serve as color and background or to advance the plot.

The middle section moves gradually, perhaps stiffly at times, and includes a few hard-to-swallow events. For example, Lawrence put Adam on as Ellie's private attorney, to help clean up her scandals, if possible, and do damage control to her public persona. No matter how much Lawrence trusts Adam, I can't imagine any man placing his almost son-in-law in the position of private confidante to the provocative Ellie. Lawrence is quite socially conservative and protective of his own family. Even if he can trust Adam, why throw him to the lions? There's support and then there's just not thinking. In the author's defense, Archer helped Ellie in AOI, but, here, it feels inorganic.

You don’t have to be Jewish to like this theme-driven novel. The characters, actually, are universal, as are the conflicts that this book explores, mainly certainty in traditional values versus uncertainty in following your passion, the fallout of lingering grief, and the impact that your decisions have on others. Segal also included a subplot that reflects the economic casualties of our times, but if felt a bit forced, a plot-driven convenience.

This is a solid, four-star first novel, and it doesn’t distract by being an updated version of a classic. Rather, the presence of the older novel serves to illuminate that some things, at its heart, haven’t changed, even if the décor is renovated and a century has passed. Segal has admirable control of her narrative, and her prose is clean and smooth. I look forward to her next novel.

Thank you to Shelf Awareness for this copy from the publisher. ...more

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Mar 19, 2013 Elaine rated it liked it

Shelves: 2013

This was a 2.5, but I'm giving it a first novelist .5 bump up. This had the same effect on me as Song of Achilles -- it just made me want to re-read the source material, Edith Wharton's brilliant Age of Innocence. The central problem with The Innocents is, in fact, its source material: the entire book feels like a mental exercise -- "how can we re-create the rigid hierarchies and complex social codes of 1870s upper-crust New York in the modern world?" It's a difficult problem, since we live in a This was a 2.5, but I'm giving it a first novelist .5 bump up. This had the same effect on me as Song of Achilles -- it just made me want to re-read the source material, Edith Wharton's brilliant Age of Innocence. The central problem with The Innocents is, in fact, its source material: the entire book feels like a mental exercise -- "how can we re-create the rigid hierarchies and complex social codes of 1870s upper-crust New York in the modern world?" It's a difficult problem, since we live in a mobile, permissive and fragmented world, and Segal solves it by choosing a fairly hermetic niche with, she tells us, very strict codes of its own: London's upper-middle class, tradition bound (but not Orthodox) Jews.

But the problem is that (as Segal acknowledges) the hermetic world she builds for her characters is highly artificial and fairly illusory. I have no firsthand knowledge of the London Jewish community in particular, but it is hard for communities where everyone works and is educated in the "outside" world to stay sealed off, especially since these are not true "frummers" with any particularly rigid religious code (Age of Innocence would make sense set among Hasdiim). Therefore, Segal's main characters' resolute blindness to the outside world manifests itself as willful lack of curiousity, and frankly, dullness. Instead of May Welland, the perfect bride who makes brilliant use of the limited tools at her disposal - given her gender and social position - and ends up calling the shots, we have Rachel, a babyish brat who at 30 is called Pumpkin by her boyfriend, never has a thought that's recorded on the page, and grates for most of the novel's 300 odd pages. A similar flattening takes place with Ellie, the re-incarnation of Wharton's Countess Olenska. Ellie is a model with a taste for drugs and promsicuous past. But she never shows any of the spark, the exterior intelligence, that makes Olenska compelling, and where Olenska's sexuality is truly interesting in the world Wharton depicts, where an unmarried woman is literally virginal and a betrothed couple shows their passion in a fleeting kiss on the lips, in today's world, where even adorable Pumpkin Rachel doles out blow jobs, Ellie is reduced to exhibiting her sexuality through wearing scraps of clothing and appearing nude in all kinds of posters and movies. The central passion between Ellie and Adam remains entirely enigmatic -- neither one of them seems particularly compelling, or worth upsetting many familial apple carts for.

In short, it all becomes very stilted and dull, and somewhat irritating. Perhaps the most important aspect of Wharton's novel -- that it is written 50 years after the era she depicts (sort of a 1920s' version of Mad Men in that respect) -- is completely left out here. This means that the brilliant coda - where Archer chooses to hold tight to the fantasy that has nurtured him rather than risk either the rewards or the disappointment of reality is absent. Also absent is the distance that Wharton's anthropological lens brings -- she's dissecting a bygone world and interrogating what "innocence" meant from the perspective of an age that is anything but. Segal's story is much more straighforward- what you see is what you get.

So why did I give it 3 stars then? Because Segal writes well, and it's well realized on its own artificial terms. But it was probably closer to 2, at the end of the day. ...more

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Jul 10, 2012 Larry H rated it it was amazing

Maybe it's just me, but have you ever been reading a book that, if you didn't have other obligations, you would finish in one day, or even one sitting? If I had had the chance, I would have devoured Francesca Segal's excellent The Innocents in one day. But having to slow down my pace allowed me to savor it a little more, which certainly wasn't a bad thing.

Inspired by Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, yet set in Temple Fortune, a close-knit Jewish suburb of northwest London, the book follows Maybe it's just me, but have you ever been reading a book that, if you didn't have other obligations, you would finish in one day, or even one sitting? If I had had the chance, I would have devoured Francesca Segal's excellent The Innocents in one day. But having to slow down my pace allowed me to savor it a little more, which certainly wasn't a bad thing.

Inspired by Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, yet set in Temple Fortune, a close-knit Jewish suburb of northwest London, the book follows Adam Newman, a successful and handsome 28-year-old who has recently gotten engaged to Rachel Gilbert, whom he has dated since the two were 16 and met on a tour of Israel. The two are celebrated for their engagement and have a relationship that is the envy of their community. Rachel's strong sense of right and wrong, her devotion to family and friends, and her relative innocence are some of the things that appeal most to Adam, and Rachel looks to Adam for the solid steadiness and protection she has always gotten from her parents. But when Rachel's younger cousin, Ellie, a troubled model and actress living in New York, comes to Temple Fortune, she brings chaos, drama, and a freeing excitement that Adam has never known. Should he risk all that he has built his life upon for a chance at a different kind of happiness he never expected, or should he stay the course that he has been destined to follow his entire life?

I thought Francesca Segal did a fantastic job with this book. The characters, while familiar in some ways, were unique, complex, and flawed, and you're truly not sure who to root for. She pays close attention to detail and has created a community and a circle of interconnected family and friends that you'd expect in a book twice this size. This book has humor, sadness, excitement, and hopefulness. I found myself hooked within the first few pages and wasn't able to let go until I finished reading. This was definitely a quick read, and a tremendously well-written one at that. ...more

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Nov 22, 2012 Elisha Singer rated it did not like it

I really had issues with this book. I can't count the number of times where I wanted to physically shake one character or another. I think that is the crux of my problem with this novel: I had a difficult time liking the main characters. Adam, our "hero" (and I use the term loosely) is a putz. I wanted to smack some sense into him and force him to make a decision. There were so many times I wanted to stop reading because I genuinely didn't like him. His fiancée also got on my nerves. I wanted he ...more

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Aug 16, 2012 Jennifer rated it did not like it

When I started reading this book, right off the bat, I thought "this reminds me of 'The Age of Innocence'". And then I read a bit more and realized, this IS "The Age of Innocence" except the names, place and religion of the main characters is different! Instead of late 19th century New York, the story is set in 21st century London, in a close-knit Jewish community. It is almost like she had an Age of Innocence template, and inserted (date), (name), (place) and the computer spit out this book.

The ...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Rebecca rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed-bookkaholic, updated-classics, best-of-2012

(4.5) What a stunning debut from Francesca Segal. A 32-year-old first-time novelist has no business writing such a sophisticated, pitch-perfect homage to Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Her strategy is that of Zadie Smith in her gorgeous On Beauty: giving a classic novel a new home in contemporary north London, but staying true to the emotional content – the interplay of love and desire, jealousy and frustration (in Smith’s case, the model is E.M. Forster’s Howards End). And yet knowledge (4.5) What a stunning debut from Francesca Segal. A 32-year-old first-time novelist has no business writing such a sophisticated, pitch-perfect homage to Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Her strategy is that of Zadie Smith in her gorgeous On Beauty: giving a classic novel a new home in contemporary north London, but staying true to the emotional content – the interplay of love and desire, jealousy and frustration (in Smith’s case, the model is E.M. Forster’s Howards End). And yet knowledge of the parent text is entirely unnecessary. Both On Beauty and The Innocents are thoroughly accomplished stand-alone tales.

Segal’s love triangle is set in a world I know very little about: the tight-knit Jewish community of northwest London. Adam Newman has been happily paired with Rachel Gilbert for nearly 12 years, since they were Jewish secondary school sweethearts. Now newly engaged, Adam and Rachel seem set to follow in Rachel’s parents’ footsteps into the role of pillars of the community. But suddenly, inevitably, their perfect world is threatened by the return to London of Rachel’s bad-girl American cousin, Ellie Schneider. Her first appearance is certainly striking: she shows up to synagogue in a wildly immodest model’s outfit, an instant visual metonym for her bold, seductive persona. Ellie has been dishonorably released from her creative writing course at Columbia University for appearing in a pornographic ‘art film’, with her sexpot image further enhanced by the scandal surrounding Marshall Bruce, a New York art dealer and socialite. Among his extramarital relationships was one with Ellie, who was underage at the time he was paying her monthly deposits. Porn star? Paid for sexual favors? Making a living from her physical attributes? She is everything the safe, predictable Rachel is not, and Adam quickly becomes utterly enchanted with her.

The rest of the novel plays out as a (somewhat predictable) will-they, won’t-they game of manners. My limited knowledge of Edith Wharton’s work (I read Ethan Frome a little under seven years ago) suggested to me that whether the would-be lovers got together or not, there was no possibility of their dalliance ending happily. And yet Segal is remarkably kind and gentle to all her characters – we as readers feel sympathetic to Ellie’s orphan-waif loneliness, Adam’s conflicted love and loyalty, and Rachel’s jealous guarding of her ‘ordinary’ life all at the same time. We don’t take sides because Segal lets us see the beauty and validity of all sides.

Each character is expertly drawn, from Adam’s sex-obsessed best mate Jasper to 90-year-old Holocaust survivor and matriarch Ziva. It is clear that Segal knows her Jewish community intimately, such that she can portray it both lovingly and critically. She is particularly good at depicting holiday and family celebration scenes, with, for instance, impressive descriptions of spreads of food. The book is strong at the level of language too, with a deliberately elevated diction that echoes Wharton and even Jane Austen. Rather than seeming strained or overreaching, this strategy works remarkably well.

I have vague memories of the Hollywood film version of The Age of Innocence (1993, dir. Martin Scorsese, with Daniel Day-Lewis, Winona Ryder and Michelle Pfeiffer), but can’t recall whether every character and plot element has a one-to-one correlation in The Innocents. I wouldn’t be surprised if the themes of moral scandal and financial ruin come directly from Wharton. Segal’s story of longing and dissatisfaction in London’s Jewish suburbia pairs brilliantly with Wharton’s elegant examinations of upper-class New York society life. The Innocents is astoundingly successful, and Segal’s is a masterful new voice. ...more

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Dec 22, 2013 Jan Rice rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction

In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats, but they were not to be sown more than once. Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence

This epigraph marks the start of The Innocents, so what instigated my reading The Age of Innocence a little while ago is now apparent. The Innocents is a modern retelling of the classic. Fun!

**Spoiler Advisory** This book is based on a classic so of necessity some plot points may come up. If you've never read The Age of Innocence or seen the movie ...more

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Apr 23, 2013 K rated it it was ok

Shelves: jewish

I never read The Age of Innocence, so I can't judge this as a retelling. But as a stand-alone book, it really didn't work for me.

The basic story is that Adam, who has dated Rachel for 12 years and is finally engaged to her, suddenly falls passionately in love with Rachel's cousin Ellie, your classic angsty manic pixie dream girl, gorgeous and troubled and dysfunctional and also brilliant and deep of course, lest you think this is just about lust or anything. The subtext, if you can call it that I never read The Age of Innocence, so I can't judge this as a retelling. But as a stand-alone book, it really didn't work for me.

The basic story is that Adam, who has dated Rachel for 12 years and is finally engaged to her, suddenly falls passionately in love with Rachel's cousin Ellie, your classic angsty manic pixie dream girl, gorgeous and troubled and dysfunctional and also brilliant and deep of course, lest you think this is just about lust or anything. The subtext, if you can call it that when the theme is hammered repeatedly at you, is that Rachel is safe and represents community, conformity, and predictability while Adam is discovering that -- surprise! -- he may find spontaneity/impetuousness more appealing.

It's an interesting premise and theme, one which must have worked well in the hands of an author like Edith Wharton. Alas, Francesca, you are no Edith Wharton. I already alluded to the lack of subtlety -- how many ways and times can you tell me that adhering to a rigid set of social norms presents a dilemma of feeling safe vs. feeling confined? God bless Stephen King, who in his infinite wisdom reminded authors not to get hung up on developing themes; just to tell the story and let the themes develop organically. Clearly advice ignored by Francesca.

Not to mention that while setting the story in a Jewish community with rigid norms was a pretty good idea, given the anachronistic nature of conventionality's stronghold in the story, the community being described was like none I've ever seen. Maybe it's because I've never been to London and maybe things are different there, but I think characterizing a Jewish community with a powerful tradition-driven social structure should go beyond a few superficial rituals, an anti-intermarriage stance, and overuse of the word "meshuga" (surely additional Yiddish words might have made it into these people's lexicon, no?). It would be interesting to write this story as taking place in a strictly Orthodox community where the demand to conform is so deeply ingrained as a divine mandate, but here the hodgepodge of ignorance and apathy and laxity when it came to Judaism coupled with intense social pressure to do the Jewish thing when the Judaism seemed so superficial and intellectually dishonest was a hard sell for me. (If readers want to comment and tell me that no, I don't know what I'm talking about and their Jewish community was exactly like this, that's fine. But as an author, Francesca should have made this more convincing. I simply couldn't see it.)

Not to mention stilted dialogue ("So -- we're going to be cousins now." Does any engaged person actually open a conversation with a new relative that way?) and blah characters. What the heck did Adam ever see in Rachel, anyway? What an incredibly superficial and boring twit. Did she seriously like being called Pumpkin? And while Ellie was clearly intended to be the appealing manic pixie dream girl who's also deep and a closet intellectual, her characterization really didn't work for me. Even the grandmother, clearly meant to be cool and hip as only old people in books can be, set my teeth on edge.

Well, as you can see, I really wasn't a fan. One star would probably be a more accurate rating, but I'm not sure I hated it quite enough for that. It was a quick, mildly entertaining read which didn't demand too much from me. And it inspired me to seek out the original, so I'll grudgingly grant it the extra star. ...more

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Apr 18, 2012 Bonnie rated it liked it

Shelves: arcs, literary-fiction

Thank you to Hyperion Books for my early copy of The Innocents!

'The Innocents' is a story which delves into a man's pre-wedding fears and how he wavers between doing what he knows is right and what his heart is telling him. The story which is fashioned after Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence' is a classic that I have yet to read so I can't be too sure how closely the two stories are. I don't believe that this would have been a story I would have snagged off the shelf to take home with me; ho ...more

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Jul 08, 2012 Lydia Presley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: contemporary, 2012, fiction, favorites, family

I've read so many good books in the last few weeks, and I like to think it's because I'm finally improving in my selections. The Innocents by Francesca Segal is another notch in that thought-process belt, because this is one story that packed a punch for me, subtle as it was.

I hadn't heard of this title until it cropped up on a list of modern day adaptations of novels that should be read. The cover of this one caught my eye, and although I haven't read Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, the i I've read so many good books in the last few weeks, and I like to think it's because I'm finally improving in my selections. The Innocents by Francesca Segal is another notch in that thought-process belt, because this is one story that packed a punch for me, subtle as it was.

I hadn't heard of this title until it cropped up on a list of modern day adaptations of novels that should be read. The cover of this one caught my eye, and although I haven't read Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, the idea of a modern-day story which calls to mind Jane Austen appealed to me. Then, of course, there's my own Jewish family routes, and my desire to read anything and everything I can about what my grandfather's life must have been like.

The story centers are Adam and Rachel and Ellie. Adam and Rachel have been a couple for 12 years and they have just become engaged (they started dating as young teenagers - so don't go tsking at Adam!). One week into their engagement, the wayward cousin Ellie shows up and... things get interesting. While certain things about The Innocents are highly predictable, what I found I appreciated most was the change in lens on how Adam viewed those around him. It was the gradual growth and decline of relationships that makes this book shine, and as much as I loved certain characters at the beginning I, like Adam, found myself disenchanted with them as the book drew to a close.

That, friends, takes skill. I've read quite a few books and I admit to being stubborn when it comes to taking sides when I find a character I like - and frankly, I didn't like Adam at all. So for me to be convinced to side with him against characters I thoroughly enjoyed ... well, color me impressed.

I don't recommend this book lightly, with all that said. You have to be prepared to settle down for a quiet, calm sort of story. There's no big drama, no cat fights, no worrying about what might be around the next page. Instead, this is a civilized look at life in the modern day, at community, at family relationships, and most of all it's a lesson that should be taken to heart by each and every one of us - a lesson which says simply to appreciate what you have, who you are surrounded by, and know that life is short - so make the most of it. ...more

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Jan 08, 2013 Lucy Aughney rated it did not like it

I really really disliked this book and everyone contained in it. By moving Wharton's Age of Innocence to a close-knit Jewish community in NW London, I guess Segal has updated the stifling nature of social convention within a society, but, really, so what. The Innocents travels the exact same paths as Wharton's novel of passion, restraint and duty, which is disappointing and lazy. Also, I really dislike Adam and the snide way he views his wife, mother, unmarried sister, mother in law and other wo ...more

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Mar 19, 2013 M rated it liked it

Retellings are a complicated genre for me. On the one hand, they strike me as lazy and glorified plagiarism, and I therefore feel the stakes are that much higher. Can this book stand on its own? Should it be able to? Is it offering new insight to the previous work? Does the story suffer for having to meet a contrived criteria rather than grow organically?
I have had some bad experiences in the world of retellings - Edgar Sawtelle, for one, where it seemed to just be "ha ha, look, the uncle's name Retellings are a complicated genre for me. On the one hand, they strike me as lazy and glorified plagiarism, and I therefore feel the stakes are that much higher. Can this book stand on its own? Should it be able to? Is it offering new insight to the previous work? Does the story suffer for having to meet a contrived criteria rather than grow organically?
I have had some bad experiences in the world of retellings - Edgar Sawtelle, for one, where it seemed to just be "ha ha, look, the uncle's name is Claude, like Claudius!" and then both as a retelling and as its own story the book was pretty much a fail. Same with On Beauty (oh, ha ha, here they left a cell phone in the theatre instead of Forster's umbrella - what a kick!) and countless others.
But then there is Bridget Jones and its clever commentary on how the more things change (women's lib) the more they stay the same (Pride and Prejudice). And a lot of Simpsons and Seinfeld episodes where the retellings were witty satires. And so I guess retellings have their place when they are charming, clever, and or offer new insights by juxtaposing two seemingly opposing things.
So then there is The Innocents. This book takes The Age of Innocence and, with some minimal but rather major plot changes, super imposes it onto a quasi Orthodox community in London. The same questions went through my mind - is the story its own story, or is it merely a mock up? In its mock upness, is it telling something new? Are the characters only seeming dull because I know who they are based on, or is the story doomed from the start because this character needs to be this way, and that character etc?
In this version, Adam Newman (Newland Archer) is engaged to the perfect (but actually rather silly and sort of frumpy) Rachel (May) amid the tightly knit community where everyone knows everyone and there are lots of rules. Enter Ellie (Ellen Olenska) who is the scandalous cousin and, well, you know.
So the thing is this. The book is smartly written (perhaps too much so - see Partial History of Lost Causes, except that was far superior despite its overwrittenness) but I often felt like I was distracted by the efforts at matching its original, rather than marveling at how it develops/contributes. In addition, the community did not ring true to me - as an "insider," there were a lot of inconsistencies - I found it odd that a community maintaining many Ortho traditions would not raise an eyebrow at a twelve year courtship let alone a lot of the general activities - but perhaps these societies do exist - still, it didn't ring as true or as potently as Wharton's Old New York - but then, is that fair? Or is that in fact very fair because with a retelling comes that responsibility?
The tricky thing is whether or not I even enjoyed this book. Sometimes it was cute - Adam sending an itune song to his faincee every day as opposed to May's roses - and the tension with Ellie was, mostly, well played. But I read this and kept wondering what the point was (something I didn't do with the original) and I think, in retellings, there needs to be a bigger picture, because just creating a knock off, to me, seems a rather unjustifiable pursuit.
In itself, this is a three star read - the writing is good, if at times boring or convoluted, and the story is well paced, if at times contrived. I always get a kick out of seeing Orthodox Jews in fiction, though this felt heavily fictitious. But it is hard for me to say what Segal's goals were in writing this, and whether or not they were achieved. ...more

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Aug 22, 2012 Mary Beth rated it liked it

Probably I would have enjoyed this book a bit more if so many reviews hadn't compared it to "The Age of Innocence." Who could live up to that? Really? Sure, the parallels are there, but Wharton's book is a classic, and Segal's pretty forgettable.
The writing was flowing and the portrayal of Jewish life in London's upper crust neighborhoods was very interesting. It was the central characters that I roundly detested.
Adam Newman? A stupid young man who makes predictable choices when he thinks with ...more

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Nov 08, 2015 Kelly rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2018-read, 3-star, brit-lit, israel-jewish, cover-me-green

1870s New York becomes 2010s London in Francesca Segal's retelling of The Age of Innocence - not my favorite classic. I enjoyed Segal's The Innocents much more, and appreciated that she was able to sub the incestuous and impenetrable clan of North London Jews for Wharton's upper-class Manhattanites.

But one thing prevented me from really sinking my teeth into this novel. I simply couldn't grasp the chemistry between Ellie and Adam. I understood why Adam was obviously attracted to Ellie (the inte 1870s New York becomes 2010s London in Francesca Segal's retelling of The Age of Innocence - not my favorite classic. I enjoyed Segal's The Innocents much more, and appreciated that she was able to sub the incestuous and impenetrable clan of North London Jews for Wharton's upper-class Manhattanites.

But one thing prevented me from really sinking my teeth into this novel. I simply couldn't grasp the chemistry between Ellie and Adam. I understood why Adam was obviously attracted to Ellie (the interloping cousin, modeled on Ellen in Wharton's story) - she's a world-weary, drop-dead gorgeous model, damaged and fragile and fiercely independent. What I really couldn't understand was why Ellie would find Adam remotely attractive. And I don't buy the too-simple explanation that she saw him with Rachel upon their return from the Israel Tour, in love at sixteen, and felt he was a good and a safe man. I also don't believe that she'd fall for him for his physical attributes (there has to be more than one good-looking Jewish guy over six feet tall in North London), nor for his easy access to a very charmed circle of belonging, which includes her cousin, Rachel, Adam's betrothed, her Aunt Jaffa and Uncle Lawrence, and the family matriarch, Holocaust survivor Ziva. It is pretty apparent that Ellie really isn't interested in fulfilling the role of new neighbor, especially given her spotty past and the rampant speculation about her life and her intentions. This is not a nice place in which to be an outsider.

More than that, Ellie doesn't lead Adam on. She doesn't flirt with him, pursue him, or even seem to care to spend time with him. Half the time he shows up when she's with other people, and she feels no compunction about ditching him to take an hour-long phone call, nor to surround herself with men who are obviously attracted to her if not sleeping with her - all in front of his very wide and starstruck eyes.

So... what gives? Ellie cannot possibly care about Adam; she's also not vindictive enough against her "perfect" cousin to actively try to jeopardize her happiness and drag her family down. She has tried desperately to escape her family, so the warm and loud bosom of the family base in North London cannot hold so much appeal to her that she'd sink so low as to ingratiate herself to them by marrying one of their own - especially not the golden son, that particular man, when any other from the clan would do as a ticket into their world. Also, after spending 440 pages in Adam's head, I can honestly say that he's just not that interesting a pole on which to hang one's flag and surrender to marriage; definitely not for someone as multi-faceted and life-living as Ellie.

That element, the critical hinge on which the plot lurches forward, is simply missing. There is so much subtext within the novel, however, that it's possible that I missed some of Ellie's other motivations. She's a conflicted enough character that it was hard to pin down most of her actions and responses, which is what made her the most interesting character in the book by far.

Not being Jewish myself, but having lived in Israel for the past 12 years, all of the social hubbub, the rites and rituals, were very familiar. This was all portrayed so truthfully and lovingly, yet with a heavy hand of exasperation, that you know that Segal knows her stuff - this is her clan (or one she's had intimate access to). These lines stood out:

'The repercussions reach beyond those financially affected, he's done damage to the entire Jewish community... It won't matter that he didn't steal, history shows us that it's enough that a Jew was involved and money was lost. [...] It's a truism, of course, but that's one of the fundamental rights afforded by true freedom, the freedom to be just like everyone else. For each man to be judged as a man and not as a Jew. But we're not there yet, we still have to be better than everyone else just to be tolerated. That's the reality of anti-Semitism - we have to be unimpeachable. We can't be normal, be average. What a gift Ethan's misjudgement has given to all those who hate us.' - Olivia, Adam's sister.

So true. And so easy to comment, when someone has done wrong and money has disappeared, that the perpetrator is Jewish. And if the perpetrator was Christian, that would not even be mentioned.

And Lawrence, on the ubiquitous spirit of celebration in Jewish holidays: "They tried to kill us. They failed. Let's eat." So true! ...more

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Dec 07, 2013 Simon rated it it was ok

When I was growing up in England, in the 60s and 70s, Mike Yarwood was a big presence on TV. He did impressions - I remember his Ted Heath and Harold Wilson, and there were tons of others. I love impressions like that. Also, a good cover of a song I like is way more enjoyable to me for being a cover. I feel these two passions are connected, though I can't quite see how, since impressions are better the more like the original they are, while covers must both resemble and differ from the original When I was growing up in England, in the 60s and 70s, Mike Yarwood was a big presence on TV. He did impressions - I remember his Ted Heath and Harold Wilson, and there were tons of others. I love impressions like that. Also, a good cover of a song I like is way more enjoyable to me for being a cover. I feel these two passions are connected, though I can't quite see how, since impressions are better the more like the original they are, while covers must both resemble and differ from the original to be good.

This book is a novelistic version of a song cover and I anticipated liking it a lot for this very reason. It is a recasting of Edith Wharton's _The Age of Innocence_, set among the Jews of North West London today. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

_The Age of Innocence_ is about the intensely insular, inbred, closed and closed-minded society of New York of the 1870s. There is the protagonist, Newland Archer, who perceives and is bothered by the restrictions and makes an attempt to break free, and there is Ellen Olenska, outcast from her youth, now returning from a scandalous life in Europe, with whom he makes the attempt. In Segal's retelling, the Jewish community of North West London seems very different, and this generates some of the weakness of her version. Yes, there is a certain amount of insularity and inbreeding, but the community is a small part of a large cosmopolitan city, and its people regularly negotiate being both parts of the community and parts of the world. So the community is anything but stifling. (Indeed, it is often portrayed, reasonably enough, in very positive terms, something I think that was wholly absent from Wharton's portrait of New York.) So, what is the dilemma faced by the protagonist, Adam Newman, when he begins to have feelings for Ellie, the returning prodigal whose scandal was that she made a racy movie and was kicked out of Columbia? His problem is really an entirely personal one - he has his own psychological demons (the death of his father when he was eight), his fiancee Rachel has particular quirks that are both enticing and annoying to him, he is worried he "settled down" too early and has not sown his wild oats, etc.

But as a purely psychological novel, absent the social dimension so prominent in Wharton, this tale was unconvincing. The characters were too flat to sustain the drama; the writing, while serviceable, was nothing amazing. So, I finished wondering what the point of this "cover" was.

[ETA: This review says what I feel, but much better: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show....] ...more

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May 19, 2012 Valentina rated it it was ok

It’s a tricky task to retell a well known and well loved story. It’s rarely a successful undertaking, and this book, unfortunately, is not an exception.
This is a retelling of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence, a wonderfully complex book woven around the upper crust of Victorian New York society. In this version, the plot takes place in London, in a wealthy Jewish community. The main issue is that so much of the nuances in the original are completely lost in this version. Everything is thrown ...more

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Feb 06, 2016 Jennifer rated it liked it

Shelves: 2016, audio

3.5 Stars
This is an updated retelling of Wharton's The Age of Innocence. I'm not really a big fan of updated retellings of anything but this got some great reviews on GoodReads and I decided to give it a try. Of course, it made me realize that I never actually read The Age of Innocence and instead I'm comparing this to to the movie version (how pedestrian of me!) and throughout the story I did find myself mentally matching up events. I thought it was a great idea to set this in a very closed Lo ...more

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Jul 13, 2012 Rachel Perla rated it liked it

This book is getting a lot of publicity. I've read profiles of the author and the book in both Vogue and Real Simple magazine. May rating is as high as it is because Francesca Segal clearly knows how to write, however the subject matter is a big old bore. The Innocents is about the tight knit Jewish Community in London and their strong need to stick to convention as well as marry within their flock. The protaganist Adam who has not sowed his wild oats is regretting his upcoming marriage to a wom ...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Carol rated it did not like it

This is Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" - a rewrite of an old story in new clothes. I'm becoming weary of rewrites of old classics. I think I may write an update of "Pride and Prejudice," bring it into the 1970's, rename all the characters, have it take place in New York City, hope some publisher will buy it, publish it, I will make lots of money and be called an author!

...more

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Dec 22, 2014 Helen rated it it was ok

I have just read a book that was about nothing. No deaths, no arguments, no separations, no feuds, no fights, no divorces, no squealing of tyres - nothing! I will give one star for the jealousy-inducing descriptions of lifestyles and closeness of wealthy Jewish families in North London and, grudgingly, another for the descriptions of their lavish meals. Next!

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Feb 27, 2015 Libby rated it it was ok

I was interested in this story, but as the pages wore on, and on, and on, I felt the exhaustion and tedium I so often feel when I'm reading fiction. Too many words. 300 pages to tell a 200 page story. By book's end I was aggravated and just glad to be done. ...more

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Apr 10, 2018 Helena Wildsmith rated it liked it · review of another edition

This book was very well-written and the characterisation was brilliant. However, the real plot took a long time to take hold and then it disappeared just as quickly, which was a shame!

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Sep 06, 2014 Ariella rated it liked it

I honestly don't know how to rate this book. Parts of it I really liked, parts of it I just didn't for different reasons.

This is a modern-day take on Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" and takes place in London. Just as the Age of Innocence (AofI) is a social commentary on the turn if 20th century New York society, this book too tries to be/ wants to be/ is a social commentary on Jewish life in northwest London in the 21st century. I'm not sure it fully succeeds and it certainly doesn't rea I honestly don't know how to rate this book. Parts of it I really liked, parts of it I just didn't for different reasons.

This is a modern-day take on Edith Wharton's "The Age of Innocence" and takes place in London. Just as the Age of Innocence (AofI) is a social commentary on the turn if 20th century New York society, this book too tries to be/ wants to be/ is a social commentary on Jewish life in northwest London in the 21st century. I'm not sure it fully succeeds and it certainly doesn't reach the impact of its predecessor. Generally I am all for modern day versions of classics, be it in movies or novels. I very much enjoyed the movie "Cluless" a modern day version of Austen's Emma. It was creative and fun and lighthearted yet stuck to the story. This book however, falls short. First of all, I don't really get the title. Yes, I do get that it's a play on words of the AofI Which is cute, but a little too cute especially because I don't get who the Innocents are supposed to be in this book. Is there more than one character that is supposed to be innocent? And innocent of what? And if this is a social critique then nobody in that society is really innocent-are they? They all play a role in perpetuating a lifestyle that the author chooses to criticise. Also Wharton's title is a comment on a time period, it is actually a social critique that doesn't necessarily judge it's characters, it's the time period on which she is focusing, not necessarily the individuals she writes about . The title in this book shifts the whole perspective onto the characters themselves. For me this was just confusing. (None of them seemed particularly innocent except for maybe one-Rachel and if that is the case it should be called "The Innocent"). Furthermore there were parts of the book that were so similar to AofI that it was just annoying. Especially since I loved AofI - it was so beautifully written that I just don't think you could top it or add to it. I think the author would have succeeded much more if the references weren't so in your face. (Clueless, on the other hand succeeds because you don't really know you are watching a modern day Emma).
Having said that, there were aspects of the book I really did like- I thought the writing was good. The author definitely evoked images of Jewish London with all it's quirks and kinks and positive sides as well.

Bottom line is if you are going to go up against a giant you'd better be great or you'll fall short. ...more

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Jun 30, 2012 Sterlingcindysu rated it it was ok

Shelves: arc

This is basically a remake of The Age of Innocence. It hasn't been all that long ago that I plowed through it. If you haven't read either, this one is much easier and enjoyable to read. But if you're read TAOI, then I'd skip this--really, it's the same book except for the differences of time and setting. Sure people go and watch remakes of movies, so why not books? I'd give the story 3 stars, but I knocked one off because well, Segal knocked this off.

This was the same case with When She Woke as ...more

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Sep 24, 2012 Sarah rated it it was ok

Shelves: jodi-piccoult-terrible

I really should have just read 'Age of Innocence' instead.

This was a cheap 'modern re-telling' of Age of Innocence, and it was agonizing to get through. I actually kept leaving it alone while I read other books, then came back to it.

So the protagonist, Adam, is happy and content to marry his longtime girlfriend Rachel. They are part of a very traditional Jewish family with 'values.' Things take a turn for the unexpected when Rachel's cousin Ellie appears on the scene and Adam is ridiculously at ...more

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Jun 19, 2012 Kat Leache rated it it was amazing

Shelves: info-desk-recommendations

This book is based on The Age of Innocence, one of my favorite novels of all time. That could make me biased, but it usually just makes me highly judgmental. For example, I HATED the movie, despite its "award-winning" sheen. I thought it had no soul compared to the book. Not so The Innocents. It's very hard to duplicate, in modern times, the kind of close-knit and closed culture of early 20th century New York society, but Segal finds the perfect modern foil--a middle-class Jewish suburb of Londo ...more

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Mar 05, 2013 Meera rated it liked it

There's been a lot of hype about this book, and its not quite as clever as it thinks it is. Basically its Wharton's Age of Innocence (which I've now got to read, as I imagine its better!) transposed to modern day London and an elite Jewish enclave who live in Hampstead Garden Suburb. It is really well written, and I was intrigued about the way that the Jewish community live their lives in such an insular fashion (if what the author says is true) - I had to laugh when the protagonist Adam feels h ...more

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Jun 17, 2012 Michelle rated it liked it

Shelves: family-drama, contemporary-fiction, brit-lit, 2012

3.5+ stars. Based on an Edith Wharton novel, one of my favorite authors (this is based on Age of Innocence, though, and I personally prefer House of Mirth). This focuses on a tight-knit circle of Jewish friends/family in London (interesting choice given Wharton’s anti-Semitism). More specifically it focuses on Adam and his fiancée/new wife Rachel. The writing is sharp and funny and most of the characters clearly drawn, with the exception of Adam, which is odd since he is the protagonist. I didn’ ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Bailey's/Orange W...: December 2016 The Innocents	17	23	Feb 03, 2017 01:26AM
who do you think that adam should have chosen?	1	12	Jan 09, 2015 01:24PM
Do you think what Adam felt for Ellie was just infatuation and does he really love Rachel	2	23	Nov 27, 2014 06:34AM
Do you think that Adam and Ellie should have ended up together	2	25	Mar 18, 2014 07:20PM
Madison Mega-Mara...: The Innocents by Francesca Segal	1	3	Jun 15, 2013 11:19AM
Huntsville-Madiso...: Staff Pick - The Innocents by Francesca Segal	1	13	Jun 14, 2012 08:23AM

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About Francesca Segal

Francesca Segal

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Winner of the 2012 Costa Prize for First Fiction.
Winner of the 2012 National Jewish Book Award for Fiction
Winner of the 2013 Sami Rohr Prize
Winner of the 2013 Premio Letterario Edoardo Kihlgren Opera Prima in Milan
Winner of the 2013 Harold U. Ribalow Prize

Long-listed for the 2013 Women's Prize for Fiction

Francesca Segal is an award-winning writer and journalist. Her work has appeared in Granta, th ...more

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Quotes from The Innocents

“The marriage of a Jewish son is a bittersweet prospect. There is relief, always, that he has navigated the tantalizing and plentiful assemblies of non-Jewish women to whom the children of the Diaspora are inevitably exposed: from the moment he enters secondary school there is the constant anxiety that a blue-eyed Christina or Mary will lure him away from the tribe. Jewish men are widely known to be uxorious in all the most advantageous ways. And so each mother fears that, whether he be short and myopic, boorish or stupid or prone to discuss his lactose intolerance with strangers, whether he be blessed with a beard rising almost to meet his hairline, he is still within the danger zone. Somewhere out there is a shiksa with designs on her son. Jewish men make good husbands. It is the Jewish woman's blessing as a wife, and her curse as a mother.” — 2 likes

“There are not so many good things in life that people want to miss them.” — 1 likes

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