From Library Journal
Though Summer is not out of print, the September film release of Martin Scorsese's production of Wharton's The Age of Innocence is bound to have caused a renewed interest in all her books. Bantam's edition is the least expensive offering of this title currently on the market.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From AudioFile
Confronting one's past is a common theme in movies and literature of the 1990's. Writing in 1916, Edith Wharton mixed this theme with summer romance to craft the story of a young couple. The heroine is a small-town librarian, set in the Berkshires. No contemporary librarian would identify with Charity Royal as she disdainfully crochets lace in a disorderly room full of musty books. Reader Grace Conlin distinguishes both men's and women's voices easily, using hushed, intimate tones to convey the sweetness of the romance. Yet an ephemeral quality in her delivery casts a shadow of reality on the story and reminds the listener that seasons change. D.W.K. An AUDIOFILE Earphones Award winner (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

FROM OUR EDITORS

Trapped in her existence in the decaying town of North Dormer, and living with her much older guardian under the shadow of a mysterious personal past, 18-year-old Charity Royall finds her life changed when a young architect walks into the library where she works.

ANNOTATION

The beautifully sensuous novel from the author whom Cynthia Griffin Wolff considers "perhaps, the greatest woman novelist that America has produced."

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Considered by some to be her finest work, Edith Wharton's Summer created a sensation when first published in 1917, as it was one of the first novels to deal honestly with a young woman's sexual awakening. Summer is the story of proud and independent Charity Royall, a child of mountain moonshiners adopted by a family in a poor New England town, who has a passionate love affair with Lucius Harney, an educated young man from the city. Wharton broke the conventions of woman's romantic fiction by making Charity a thoroughly contemporary woman—in touch with her feelings and sexuality, yet kept from love and the larger world she craves by the overwhelming pressures of environment and heredity. Praised for its realism and candor by such writers as Joseph Conrad and Henry James and compared to Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Summer was one of Wharton's personal favorites of all her novels and remains as fresh and relevant today as when it was first written.

SYNOPSIS

American author best known for her novels about the upper-class society into which she was born. This remains what some consider her finest work and was one of the author's personal favorites. Best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning Age of Innocence (1920) and her long tale Ethan Frome (1911) this work was praised for its realism and candor in depicting a young woman's sexual awakening. Eighteen year old, proud and independent Charity Royall is portrayed as a thoroughly contemporary woman.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal