I'm generally reluctant to read books from a different century, and they certainly had a bafflingly venomous attitude towards divorced people 150 years ago - hoo! - but now that I'm done I kindof miss being in this flowery proper Victorian world.

I'm grateful I watched the TV show FIRST or I may have been deeply miffed by the artistic choices. But experiencing the book SECOND, I could just enjoy the journey and be grateful for very clear mental pictures of most of these characters.

I think/hope the book club will have some fun stuff to talk about here.

The last and unfinished novel, by one of our greatest female writers, Edith Wharton. It was finished by a Wharton scholar, Ms. Mainwearing, and she did an exceptional job. In this her last novel, Edith wrote about the nouveau rich in the NYC of the 1880's, and their struggle to fit in with the older, rich families. Edith Wharton belonged to one of the oldest, elite families in NYC, and she wrote about what she knew best, her own class and their prejudice and snobbery (which she detested). This book is so good, it's like eating a box of Godiva chocolates. Also made into a PBS movie, which is also worth watching.

The fact that I completed two years of AP English Literature and never had to read Edith Wharton is a colossal failing of the American education system. She slayed so hard, even though she literally died while writing this. I know something is high-class literature when I start relating Taylor Swift songs to it, so here they are: the last great american dynasty, ivy, and New Romantics.

As is quite often the case, Wharton's later work doesn't quite measure up to her earlier masterpieces, such as Ethan Frome, which is what I would recommend to anyone new to this writer, and being her last (unfinished) novel it lacks the polish of her other books. Marion Mainwaring has done a pretty good job of completing it though.

Wharton has fun exposing the petty snobberies of New York society as well as the pointless traditions of the British class system, as when the Dowager Duchess of Tintagel says "What would happen next, as I said to her, in a house where the housekeeper DID take her meals with the upper servants?".

This is a story of the clash of the Old World and the New, of marriages of convenience, of infidelities and boredom. But the key character throughout this book, the person who holds the plot together, is Laura Testvalley (or Testavaglia which is her original name) who belongs in neither camp being the daughter of Italian immigrants. An unmarried governess with spirit and allure, she perhaps points to a more independent style of womanhood and provides a contrast to the other female characters in this novel.

The story ends on a note of hope and optimism in contrast to other novels by Wharton which end in sadness and despair. Is that the ending she envisaged, or was this tacked on to make the book more appealing to modern readers?