From the Bookshelf of Overdue Podcast…

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton

Start date: December 31, 2015

Finish date: December 31, 2015

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What Members Thought

Dec 22, 2012 Angela rated it it was amazing

If you read the synopsis--responsible young man falls in love with his Fiancé's cousin, internal turmoil commences--it sounds both boring and really not my kind of reading. But this book is so much more than that! The other plot--the one that is drawn out with the same subtlety that is demonstrated in the novel--is the way proper New York society in the late nineteenth century recognizes and stops this type of aberration, without any direct acknowledgement of its existence.

This novel is a work ...more

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May 22, 2018 Julie rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: sounds-like-my-life, womens-lit, book-club

A slow burn of a novel that had me under its spell with its beautiful passages (“A flame darted from the logs and she bent over the fire, stretching her thin hands so close to it that a faint halo shone about the oval nails”). Wharton has a way of capturing moments of intoxicating intimacy; subtle, unspoken human exchanges; and frustration, yearning, and resignation to one’s duty unlike any author I’ve read in recent days. I was spellbound by this novel’s atmosphere, and quietly ravaged by its f ...more

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Jun 18, 2025 Susan rated it really liked it

Shelves: off-the-shelf-2025, 2025-reads, mount-tbr-2025

This is such a clever story of societal manners and a forbidden love. Newland and Ellen are well-developed characters, but I got less of a sense of May who didn't seem to change much over the course of the book. However, it was May who got the upper hand in the end.

I read the Barnes and Noble Classics edition and the forward was helpful in giving background on Edith Wharton and her thinking when writing this novel. ...more

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