I really enjoyed reading this book and found it to be a very fast read. I was interested in it because I watched the BBC dramatization - which was heavily Americanized & modernized as it turns out. My chief exposure to Edith Wharton was the very short and quite depressing "Ethan Frome." I found that to be written in quite an impenetrable style and was turned off of her for years - until I saw the film and came across a copy of the book in a used bookstore.

The way she writes in "The Buccaneers" is really fantastic - she manages to show things from the perspectives of different characters - even going into the point of view of a particular character for an entire chapter. Sadly, she died before she finished this and another author finished off the book based on her notes.

I much prefer the book to the film because it is really of a cloth with the way Edith Wharton talks about the values and interactions of these social classes. I even found it interesting how she referenced changing clothing styles (I could hear the old ladies saying "young girls these days!! pantalettes? oh dear!").

Her character development was really fantastic - I got a very clear sense of who these people were and their motivations, how they spoke and behaved. Such a better story than what the film presented!

2 stars. sorry not sorry

romance novels are either a hit or miss for me, and the hits tend to be queer ones. i couldn’t care any less for these characters they were just so boring to me. i watched the show before reading this and eventhough it wasn’t a masterpiece, at least it was way better than this. the povs were so messy, quite literally jumping from one to the other every 3 seconds. lizzy mabel and virginia were barely existent in the book too.

don’t tell me im not intellectual enough to appreciate classics. if that classic was about two gay guys falling in love and one joining the army for the other, i’d totally eat it up (def not talking about ‘in memoriam’

Really interesting, this one. A group of American girls having trouble becoming integrated in the social scene of New York head to England, largely as a result of the connections of the newly-hired governess of one of the girls, where they are outsiders and therefore novelties, and try their hands there instead. We focus more on one of them - Annabel ("Nan") - more than the others. She's the most successful of them all in the rank of man she bags, but she ends up much worse for it.

The Buccaneers was left incomplete upon Wharton's death, but a Wharton scholar named Marion Mainwaring went back and completed it using the late author's outlines, so it concluded how she wished it to. The fact that anyone would come in and touch the great Wharton's work seemed to scandalize some back in the 90s when this came out, but I found her touch undetectable; in every way (maybe besides the more upbeat ending, which was not Wharton's bailiwick), this is a Wharton novel through-and-through.

As someone privy to a running joke about how dull Edith Wharton is, I picked this up as another attempt to understand the hype, and bloody hell I'm glad I did. To say I'm surprised is an understatement, I bloody loved this! Did sometimes succumb to the Whartonesque dull waffling on but all in all what a delightful, fun, slightly campy insight into a wonderful female social circle. The characterisation was fabulous, how everyone tied together was brilliant, the scandal, the love affairs, the gossip, the social anxiety, all of it was everything I've always expected from a Wharton and never gotten. It either clicked for her here (which is a dire shame she never got to finish it) OR I never really got it - I fear I need to go back and try again with her others, but I'm scared to be disappointed again after this. Big shout out to Nan, what a lovely enamouring character, I adored her, I'm glad she let the romance get the best of her and ran away with Guy, even if Wharton never got to write it. And shout out to Conchita, I adored her dramatics and free emotion. Fabulous!

After reading The House of Mirth I was so depressed that I promised myself I'd never read another book by Edith Wharton, but this one turned out differently (thank god) and I couldn't put it down.

more soon but for now, it was a solidly good read.

(4.5⭐️) Loved this book!! Top reads of 2024. Edith Wharton writing about the 1870s in the 1930s has a certain perspective/narrative that reminded me of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.. An author has lived through these experiences and can reflect, adding to the characters and plot in a way only they can. I knew that during the Gilded Age, America’s new money had daughters who married British aristocracy, but I never considered the big picture or narrative behind it. It was so interesting to compare the difference between American and British values through the character of the governess, Miss Testavalley. It was similar to Jane Austen in the way that each daughter/character represented the complex sentiments of the period. This was Wharton’s last novel and was left unfinished but with an outline. Wish just those notes were included rather what read as a haphazard ending. Iconic. Now I need to read The Age of Innocence

I found a copy of this book in a used bookstore, and hesitated before finally caving and buying it. I loved The Age of Innocence, but (as I learned from reading the book jacket while in the store) The Buccaneers is unfinished. Wharton wrote about 89,000 words of the story before dying in 1937, and Wharton scholar Marion Mainwaring picked up where the book left off and finished the novel. There's a note at the end about how Mainwaring made some changes to Wharton's draft to account for later changes in the story (and she also removed some hella racist language), but for the most part, the first two thirds of the book are primarily Wharton's. I don't like the idea of reading unfinished stories, and I can't decide what irks me more: an unfinished novel like Suite Francaise, which didn't have an ending because Irene Nemirovsky died before she could finish it; or The Buccaneers, where another author is brought in to complete the draft. Either way, it makes for a frustrating experience.

That being said, Mainwaring does a pretty good job of continuing Wharton's novel, to the point where I couldn't tell where Wharton's writing ended and Mainwaring's began. Maybe if I was a more experienced Wharton reader I would have noticed discrepancies, but as far as I was concerned, it was a solid story.

The story opens in 1876 New York, where "new money" sisters Virginia and Annebel St. George are preparing to find husbands. They find that they can't compete with the old money families of New York, and, after one of their friends marries an English lord who was visiting America, decide to follow her to England. Guided by their British governess, Laura Testvalley, the girls make their mark on the London social scene. Two more American sisters join the St. George girls, and their group becomes known as "the buccaneers," fortune-hunting Americans invading London to snatch up all the eligible lords and dukes. Each of the four American girls ends up marrying into the aristocracy, with varied success.

The story wasn't as tightly constructed or engrossing as The Age of Innocence, but I still loved reading Wharton's perspective on the shallowness and complexity of high society in the 1800's. She also makes it clear, without needing to slam it in your face, how much it sucked to be a woman in this world. The two most engrossing characters were Miss Testvalley, a confirmed spinster who's given up all hope of finding a husband and throws herself into the job of finding good marriages for her charges; and Annabel St. George, who ends up making the best marriage and is completely miserable. Her efforts to make the best of her circumstances, knowing that she's completely trapped in this life that she chose, were heartbreaking and beautiful.

"To begin with, what had caused Annabel St. George to turn into Annabel Tintagel? That was the central problem! Yet how could she solve it, when she could no longer question that elusive Annabel St. George, who was still so near to her, yet as remote and unapproachable as a plaintive ghost?
Yes - a ghost. That was it. Annabel St. George was dead, and would therefore never be able to find out why and how that mysterious change had come about. ...
'The greatest mistake,' she mused, her chin resting on her clasped hands, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the dim reaches of the park, 'the greatest mistake is to think that we ever know why we do things. ...I suppose the nearest we can ever come to it is by getting what old people call "experience." But by the time we've got that we
re no longer the person who did the things we no longer understand. The trouble is, I suppose, that we change every moment; and the things we did stay."

Grâce à une amie qui ne pouvait supporter l'idée que je n'aie jamais lu "les boucanières", je viens de le dévorer (lumière éteinte à 3 h 30 pour le finir cette nuit ) et ça faisait fort longtemps qu'un roman ne m'avait autant plu !!
En premier le style incisif, ironique, percutant de l'auteure qui ne s'embarrasse pas de périphrase quant elle fait traiter Jacky March de "pauvre petite sotte" par Miss Machin-valley (impossible de retrouver son nom ! ) La finesse de dissection de la psychologie des personnages (particulièrement ce malheureux duc de Tintagel) est un délice : on pénètre dans les arcanes d'un psychisme, le tout dans un langage clair et compréhensible, ce qui n'est pas forcément le cas d'auteurs dits "psychologiques" !
Les deux sociétés, l'américaine et l'anglaise, sont également disséquées et mises à nu avec délectation et ironie, les mettant à peu près sur le même plan de sottise, de snobisme, de vacuité et de vanité au sens propre du terme.
On sent bien que l'auteure parle de ce qu'elle connaît, ayant été elle-même partie de cette grande bourgeoisie new-yorkaise, et elle aussi victime de ces mariages sociaux (les Japonais et leurs omiaï pourraient prendre des leçons !)
Bien sûr ce n'est ni la société anglaise ni l'américaine en général qui sont dépeintes, mais seulement ce que l'on nomme "la haute Société".
La description de la noblesse anglaise, écrasée et sclérosée par la tradition, jusque dans les coulisses des problèmes d'argent et du délabrement des châteaux emplis de trésors artistiques qui s'empoussièrent et moisissent, est sans pitié ! Le duc de Tintagel est un archétype de ces héritiers pétrifiés par le devoir qu'une tradition agonisante et pesante leur impose.
Car l'avenir, c'est Lizzy, que Mr Robinson a eu l'intelligence de comprendre et d'épouser, elle saura utiliser les ressorts des deux sociétés pour s'y créer sa place,s'y faire admettre, et par là même les changer, car elle n'a pas d'autre valeur que d'avoir le meilleur de chacune et elle s'adaptera en les adaptant !
La "petite duchesse" et son amour n'ont d'intérêt que parce qu'ils montrent que ceux qui le veulent peuvent s'affranchir de ces carcans, qu'on peut choisir même si la société ostracise ceux qui l'osent, le jeu en vaut la chandelle, comme on dit !
C'est aussi grâce à Nan que l'on peut plonger au cœur de l'esprit d'un aristocrate anglais comme , je l'espère, on n'en fait plus !!
Ce pauvre duc m'a souvent fait de la peine, détruisant avec assiduité tout ce qui aurait pu le rendre heureux au nom de la Tradition, et même sa mère a eu un moment de lucidité en se souvenant de tout ce que sa vie avait été, mouvement provoqué par le départ de sa belle-fille... mais ce n'est qu'un éclair ! D'ailleurs heureusement pour elle, si elle se rendait compte à son âge que sa vie a été perdue pour du vide, du vent, de l'inutile, c'est un coup à en mourir sur place !
Bref, en un mot comme en cent j'adore ce roman, je découvre qu'il y a une série, je vais m'y intéresser !!

RIP Edith Wharton you would have loved “so american” by Olivia Rodrigo

New Apple TV + series…maybe it’s good?

why watch Downton Abbey when Edith Wharton is so much better? This is very nearly a satire as much as a romance, and its ending is less tragic than I expected. It also changes POV a lot which kept me on my toes. This book is very clear that all of the wealth in this society was extracted from rapacious colonialiat capitalism and it's fascinating to see how Wharton comments on this without explicity critiqueing it. My edition included an editor's note that they replaced her ethnic slurs for modern sensibilities and now I'm both depressed and morbidly curious which ones she originally chose. I think you could do an entire anticolonialist thesis on the symbolism of poor lovely dead Paquita alone.

I wonder what Nan St George and Catherine Tilney would have to say to each other!

And I am quite torn between Miss Testvalley and Lizzie Elmsworth (yes really) as my favorites.

Edith Wharton è uno dei capisaldi della narrativa americana, per argomenti e per stile di scrittura, e pertanto o la si ama, o la si odia.

Io appartengo alla prima categoria.

Avendo letto e adorato anni fa "L'età dell'innocenza", volevo cimentarmi con un nuovo scritto di questa autrice e la scelta è ricaduta su BUCANIERI, principalmente per via dell'uscita di un nuovo adattamento televisivo per Apple TV (ne era già stato fatto uno per BBC nel '95).

Benché l'abbia trovata piacevole, si è trattata di una lettura con diversi problemi; la maggior parte dei quali derivano dalla storia della stesura di quest'opera.
Bucanieri è infatti l'ultimo romanzo della Wharton, che però l'autrice non riuscì mai a completare (morì infatti nel 1933). Fu quindi Marion Mainwarning, amica e fedele collaboratrice di Wharton, a completare la stesura della storia, seguendo il "canovaccio", che l' autrice aveva inviato al suo editore.

E proprio qui stanno i principali guai.

Già dalle prime cento pagine del libro si capisce leggendo che l'autrice non è riuscita a revisionare al meglio e/o completamente il testo.
In alcuni passi abbiamo le descrizioni precise ed evocative tipiche dello stile della Wharton, in altri invece abbiamo caratteristiche abbozzate, alcuni personaggi figurano come principali all' inizio della storia per poi scomparire di netto o rimanendo indefiniti sullo sfondo della vicenda, soprattutto Jinny e Conchita, la prima molto affascinante, la seconda odiosa quanto un brufolo nel naso.

E anche il finale del libro, come la sua genitrice, non è scampato alla falce della morte. Affrettato, quasi abbozzato, chiude la vicenda principale in un modo facilmente intuibile, ma senza dare il giusto spazio anche a vicende minori, che nei capitoli precendenti mi avevano conquistata ed anche divertita.

Nel progetto originale della Wharton c'era quasi sicuramente l'idea di scrivere un romanzo grande e complesso, che avesse al centro della discussione le differenze sociali tra la nuova neonata società americana, fatta di banchieri e industriali, e quella inglese, rappresentante d'eccellenza per la vecchia mamma Europa.
In questo scontro l' America è rappresenta da Nan e Jinny e dovrebbe ergersi come promotrice di avanguardia, freschezza e innovazione, e tuttavia sono proprio gli americani ad essere guardati come bucanieri, selvaggi senza radici, pirati dai costumi licenziosi e dalla morale spregiudicata.
Invece personaggi come il duca di Tintagel o la Duchessa, per così dire i campioni per l' Inghilterra, risultano ancorati al passato e a vecchie tradizioni, incarnando gli stereotipi di una società ancora legata all'istituzione della monarchia e a ridicoli cerimoniali, e uscendone fuori come arrivisti dall'etica torbida.

Ma le cose stanno davvero così?

Bucanieri è un dramma gradevole, ma è sicuramente la bozza di un progetto monumentale, che avrebbe dovuto raccontare lo scontro culturale tra due giganti della Storia.
Lo consiglio per approfondire l'autrice.
P.S. ho shippato tantissimo Guy e Nan, adorabili