From AudioFile
Like Henry James, who profoundly influenced her writing, the American novelist Edith Wharton spent most of her professional life in Europe. THE REEF exemplifies her close observation of Americans in France, their inner lives and social conflicts. Narrator Bron's precise, patrician intonations nicely reflect the narrative personality. She does only a serviceable job on descriptive passages, jumping to life in the dialogue. Y.R. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


Book Description
Edith Wharton's insightful classic, first published in 1912, was a daring challenge to the social and sexual conventions of the time, and its penetrating look into the nature of male-female relationships is still provocative today. When George Darrow, a young American diplomat in Paris, is slighted by the woman he intends to propose marriage to, he has a brief, seemingly inconsequential affair with a spirited young woman whom he has taken under his wing. Months later, Darrow and the widowed Anna Leath mend their relationship and make plans to wed. But before they can announce their plans, Darrow learns that the engagement of Anna's stepson threatens to have a profound effect on his own.Edith Wharton has long been one of America's most celebrated and popular novelists. Her works include The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.Edith Wharton's insightful classic, first published in 1912, was a daring challenge to the social and sexual conventions of the time, and its penetrating look into the nature of male-female relationships is still provocative today. Edith Wharton's insightful classic, first published in 1912, was a daring challenge to the social and sexual conventions of the time, and its penetrating look into the nature of male-female relationships is still provocative today.

When George Darrow, a young American diplomat in Paris, is slighted by the woman he intends to propose marriage to, he has a brief, seemingly inconsequential affair with a spirited young woman whom he has taken under his wing.Months later, Darrow and the widowed Anna Leath mend their relationship and make plans to wed. But before they can announce their plans, Darrow learns that the engagement of Anna's stepson threatens to have a profound effect on his own.

Edith Wharton has long been one of America's most celebrated and popular novelists. Her works include The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome, The Custom of the Country, and The Age of Innocence, for which she won the Pulitzer Prize.


Download Description
Sitting opposite, in the compartment from which he had contrived to have other travellers excluded, Darrow looked at her curiously. He had never seen a face that changed so quickly. A moment since it had danced like a field of daisies in a summer breeze; now, under the pallid oscillating light of the lamp overhead, it wore the hard stamp of experience, as of a soft thing chilled into shape before its curves had rounded.


About the Author
Edith Wharton(1862-1937) was born into a distinguished New York family and was educated privately in the United States and abroad. Among her best-known work is Ethan Frome (1911), which is considered her greatest tragic story, The House of Mirth (1905), and The Age of Innocence (1920), for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Anna Leath, an American widow living in France, has renewed her relationship with her first love, diplomat George Darrow. But on his way to her beautiful French chateau, Givre, where he hopes to consolidate their marriage plans, Darrow encounters Sophy Viner, who is as vibrant and spontaneous as Anna is reserved and restrained. Sophy's subsequent employment as governess to Anna's daughter means that her fate becomes inextricably entwined with that of the family at Givre. And what to Darrow is a forgotten interlude becomes the reef on which the lives of four people are in danger of foundering. The first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize, Edith Wharton was an immensely popular writer in her day. She depicts the life of the American upper class—a class into which she was born—with irony and satire, exposing its lack of compassion and its stifling of human happinness.

FROM THE CRITICS

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