The Scarlet Letters

by Louis Auchincloss

The year is 1953, and the coastal village of Glenville, on the opulent north shore of Long Island, is shaken by scandal. Ambrose Vollard, the managing partner of a prestigious Wall Street law firm, gets word of an alleged affair in his family. Most astonishing, the adulterer is Rodman Jessup, Vollard's son-in-law, junior partner, and most likely successor. Until now Jessup has been admired for his impeccable morals and high ideals, so what could explain his affair with a woman of fading charms? All is on the line for Jessup, who threatens to upset Glenville's carefully calibrated social order. As each family member learns of the affair, the story reveals layer upon layer of abiding loyalties and shameless double-crossing.

Genres: Fiction, New York, Literary Fiction

177 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American novelist, historian, and essayist.

Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.

Reviews

[BlackOxford · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gatsby Uber Alles

Once upon a time the simple folk of Glen Cove (oops, Glenville), the Upper East Side and Wall St. got themselves in a state about some hanky-panky engaged in by some of their mates. Since these were the people who lived across the bay from Jay Gatsby in the previous generation, they knew how quickly standards breached become standards ignored. And a life without standards creates unbearable frictions in a civilised community. They know their gentility as well as their dominant economic status is doomed. But like the Boers of South Africa, they are defending their particular brand of apartheid to the very end. Their world has been built around the complete separation of public and private life. Private law partnerships and family run finance houses provide an effective buffer between the two. But the corporate menace of new business encroaches, incrementally but persistently. People entirely without standards are beginning to run the show. And indeed it has become a show for all to see. This is but one cost of the new corporate life. The insulating barriers are decaying. Survival is essential, but assimilation is so distasteful. Gatsby is on the verge of triumph.

[Tatevik · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was informative rather than a fictional book for me. The author was a Wallstreet lawyer. Needless to say how well the pre and post-WWII legal firm life was presented. Interesting how many things became illicit and unethical or vice-versa during these years.
As for a book as fiction, actually it was not that bad, but it was not good either. The characters were undeveloped, lacked emotions, I didn't like any of them, was indifferent to what will happen to them. Still, the author could keep me reading, the prose was strict, simple, but imposing. The story was unfinished, but not in a way to make you ponder about it. It just ended.
However, this was the only fictional book I've ever read that had anything to do with my specialization as a lawyer, and I loved to read about it!

[Mark Lisac · Rating 3 out of 5]

Style along the lines of Henry James, sentiments along the lines of George Bernard Shaw. All with direct language about sex as accepted in novels in 2003. The story is essentially about socially prominent New Yorkers coping with the demands and rejections of morality. Auchincloss was a chronicler of New York upper social circle life in novels published from 1947 to 2008. He was simultaneously a successful lawyer, which no doubt accounts for the sub-theme of the waning, or at least changing, of moral scruples in Manhattan law firms in the 1950s and '60s. It's all entertaining. The brisk pace makes for easy reading; it also makes the story seem at times more sketched than condensed. The storyboard feel may be related to the fact that Auchincloss somehow managed to produce a book a year while also practising law. The characters are all believable, although all are surprisingly familiar enough with classic literary works to make allusions and even quote from them. Does it say something that the two most morally intense characters (Ambrose Vollard and his sometime son-in-law Rodman Jessup) are rather remote? Vollard's Prospero-like wife Hetty might think so.

[Susan · Rating 2 out of 5]

This wasn't bad, just okay. The setting is New York City and a town on Long Island, but there was no local color, and the characters were flat. The story was interesting, but on the whole it was a bit dull.

[Darlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pithy portrayal of a lawyer's evolution from idealist to pragmatist, as the Siren's song entraps both his ego and his past reservations in a changing corporate world.

[Ozimandias · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mr. Auchincloss published his first book in 1947. This book is his 59th published work. Apparently, this author enjoys writing in a rather stodgy style about uppercrust New Yorkers whose families are headed by business people or business lawyers. This is no different. Taking place in the 1950's and before, the book traces the lineages, marriages and fortunes of anyone attached to the law firm Vollard Kaye. Ambrose Vollard marries into rich, Boston stock and enters a law firm that will quickly be defined by him. Next comes his daughter Lavinia who can't overcome her being born a girl, so she marries the kind of man Ambrose would like. Rodman Jessup adores Ambrose and quickly rises to the top of Vollard Kaye, bringing with him his friend and personal Iago, Harry Hammersly, a scheming and conniving lawyer, who will eventually take everything away from the Vollards. Maybe it is just a sign of the times, or at least that seems to be what the book is implying. The people of the highest moral standing are brought down to lay in the murky, relativistic world of legal corruption, adultery and personal ambition. It is darwinism without the "social." Although I can describe the book well enough, it obviously doesn't really resonate with me and my world experience. I found it funny though that I was able to imagine and understand all this so well despite my lack of personal connection. I guess we all know the world of the elite far better than they would ever know our world.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would love to be acquinted with Louis Auchincloss. He is a very keen observer of people and his particular gift is the creation of fascinating extended families with a strong, silent matriarch and morally flawed men. He must have come from a line of fascinating women to have developed the insight and respect he has for early 20th century women's "work" behind the scenes in a family.

The Scarlet Letters is a bit of a departure from the other Auchincloss books I've read in that the character development of the men supercedes that of the women. Yet, none of the men in this book, however well conceived, have the depth of character or insight and sympathy of his best women.

This was an interesting story and a very quick read, but I somehow felt that the novel should have been developed a bit more---it felt more like a sketch than a painting--and I was looking for a bit more depth or resolution in it.

[Nan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love Auchincloss's hermetic environments, and this made me feel like I was watching the movie Carol again. He handles shifting p.o.v. with suppleness, and there's a comeuppance factor that's wonderfully satisfying. He follows a couple over the course of an affair that one of them has, beginning with one set of parents, through courtship, through infidelity, and then the aftermath. Part of what makes Auchincloss so good and entertaining is that he creates characters that on the surface and from afar seem completely homogenous, but that come to life through his descriptions.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Louis Auchincloss writes of the wealthy of New York. That's no great surprise, and this book chronicles the lives of some of the attorneys in the old established firm of Ambrose Vollard.
Here is how the wealthy handle scandal and how they gain and keep their money. It is basically about Rodman Jessup, a man of ideals, and Harry Hammersly, a man whose goals are money and social status. The book also touches on what the characters gain and lose in the pursuit of money and power.

[The Twins · Rating 3 out of 5]

The rise and fall of Rodman Jessup in the New York Society. A splendid insight into various characters and life and morals during the 1950's. Every main character has his past described up to the present time and the paths they chose. The characters and the reasons for their actions are faszinating especially Harry Hammersly's - but sometimes the storyline is too drawn out and goes off to far into comparisons with characters from plays or mythology.

[Ginny · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick read, interesting characters, lifestyle of wealthy but not necessarily happy people. Colorful. This is his 59th work. References to Hawthorne, but no actual letters. The blurb says it is "a triumphant modern twist on the legendary Hawthorne tale." I guess that is true if no punishment makes it a modern story.

[Beth · Rating 2 out of 5]

A deeply forgettable book. I know Auchincloss has a superb reputation, but I found his characters wooden, especially his women. This short book had something to do with lawyers and power and good and evil, but everyone seemed driven by the hand of the master rather than by genuine emotions --- though who am I to say what goes on in the upper crust of Manhattan.

[Patti · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing picture of a time and a generation that have pretty much passed way. It draws GIs in the 1950's, a laced-up time, and their lost generation parents, distant and unreachable in so many aspects.
I loved the clearly drawn characters, the atmosphere of change andf compromise, and the erosion of moral certainty that really filled those years.

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Auchincloss is prolific - especially on the subject here: New Your upper-class society. He is perceptive, and this book was (surprisingly, given the topic?) compelling reading. The Hawthorne allusions and specific references to New England Puritans serve to point out the allegorical aspects of this book.

[Peggy Donnelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I suspect that any reader will recognize that despite the setting in the 1950's, the sexual attitudes are modern day. The character depictions were so thorough that you identified with them. Light, entertaining, surprising story.

[Debeenz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book I have read by this author. There is no murder or mayhem, or sexual perversion, in The Scarlet Letters. It is a book about life, love and honor featuring rise and fall of Rodman Jessup, who works in his father-in=law's law firm, in New York Society.

[Rhiannon · Rating 2 out of 5]

wasn't really like the scarlet letter??