Honestly, I read about half of these. I did really enjoy Roman Fever and Xingu.

The first tale is wonderful and worth getting the book but after that the stories felt too dated and upper class.

My love of Wharton went head-to-head with my dislike of short stories, and the dislike won. I think it must be how, in short stories, something pivotal has to happen so fast that it feels artificial to me. At least, that's how "Roman Fever" felt. Great title and premise, but the bare-all conversation of the two middle-aged ladies felt forced, and the "twist" too contrived. I didn't try the other stories...

I had a blast reading this collection. Wharton skewers upper class society and its contrivances brilliantly. She wrote these stories between 1899 and 1934 and I preferred the later stories. Roman Fever (1934) is a masterpiece.

You can't go wrong here. My favorite story was After Holbein, in which two twilight-years social scenesters meet for a dinner party. I don't want to give anything away, but it was a perfect gem of a story, sad and funny, with every character given a real personality in such a short space.

Read it here, or buy your own copy: http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200...

Another solid selection by Edith Wharton.
Of the 8, I had previously read 3 in another collection.

The title entry, Roman Fever, appears to be the overwhelming favorite.
A story of two widows, also lifelong friends, on a balcony in Rome,
talking about their two daughters, and their own young lives in Rome.
I found it interesting how so many readers were shocked by the ending.

After Holbein took some interesting twists and turns before settling into a very apt ending.

And in The Angel at the Grave, the triumph of a life not wasted.

Roman Fever and Other Stories includes eight intriguing, surprising and brilliant short stories. They describe the society of the time they were written, the changes that were going on, in a real but comical way. The stories are just the right length, they start kind of suddenly, without any introductions, so it takes a few pages to understand what´s happening and they end a bit suddenly as well, the reader has to figure out the solution on her/his own, which I quite liked. Wharton offered me exactly the kind of social criticism and drama that I enjoy reading about. I can´t wait to see what she can accomplish in a longer novel form.
If I´d have to choose my favorite stories they´d be Roman Fever, The Other Two, The Angel at the Grave and After Albein. Though it is extremely rare to come across such an evenly good collection - I very much liked each of the stories, there were no big differences in my enjoyment of them. So this truly was a fantastic way to get acquainted with a new author, one that I´ll most certainly read more from in the future!

Excellent short story.

It's a good round of short stories of Edith Wharton's changing times of the rich leisure class of old New York and transatlantic society. Roman Fever definitely deserves top billing with it's dramatic, soap operatic twist at the end, and I've never heard of Roman Fever before, however true the fever is, so that was cool to read. I also liked Souls Belated, The Angel at the Grave, and The Last Asset. Autres Temps was nice and funnily enough, mentioned the town I used to live in, Ridgefield, CT quite a bit as an interesting destination for this class of people which I guess is still true, and Xingu was kind of fun in it's twist on fooling some wannabe academics. With the exotic name, I went in wondering if it would be like Burmese Days by George Orwell and it strikes a similar chord. As a short story collection it stacks up well and I think is a good companion to Wharton's society novels.

Solid writing, but too monothematic (divorce) to give it a higher rating. The title story contains a rather epic mic drop, which I was not expecting in a tale of two borderline senior ladies dining in Rome.

For class!

The title story, "Roman Fever," is of course the best and should be read by all. Many of the other stories are very good. A couple are not quite as interesting as the others, but there is nothing written by Edith Wharton that is not well crafted.