I have yet failed to read anything less than 4 stars from Wharton and this is no exception.
For most people "Summer" is about first love, sexual awakening and the constraints society put upon women during the era the book was written. For me altogether different tones resonated in this short novel. Despite the lush New England summer being the setting the novel was claustrophobic. Charity leads a life in a small village and an attempts to escape it. She also questions her own place in society as an individual but all her attempts and actions lead to grim results. In the end all the male characters got what they wanted and Charity had to accept what was on the table for her, with no actual choices.
It has been compared to Ethan Frome a lot, but Frome was much more melancholy, heartbreaking and wholesome in my opinion.
Cannot tell much without giving away the plot but if you like Wharton, this pretty much delivers.

I was going to give 4 stars but the ending deserves an extra star.

Reading about the way of life in a small town in the very early 1900's is like reading about a different planet. Charity was brought down from the mountain people to be raised in town. The mountain people are almost like animals- think Deliverance. The town is average for a small town of the time: no shops; no theaters; just some houses and a church. It's so hard to think of people living this way! Charity works part time in the library, a library rarely used by anyone. What are these people doing for fun, if not reading?! I guess they were too busy surviving, since everything had to be done by hand: making and mending clothes for instance or growing vegetables or raising chickens for eggs. The setting here is like another planet!

The basic story is sex out of wedlock and it's consequences, also about the limited choices women had. The description of the main character and her feelings ring true: wanting a change/ not knowing what you want/ feeling restless/ it all rang true. I didn't like Charity at first. Her bad grammar, lack of drive to do anything ( she could have gone to school or learned a trade), her lack of imagination, her lack of curiosity ( she works at the library but doesn't read) made me irritated with her. She seemed to have the genes of the mountain people she came from.

The book is well written, I cannot say this strongly enough, and very moving. I thought the author would go for some cheap shots for pity for the character, but the author never does. Absolutely beautiful.

I was told this book was dirty, and ...well, to be fair, I was told it was dirty "for Wharton," which I suppose is true as far as it goes, but still: oblique references to illicit trysts aren't exactly begging for the fap when you fade out after they hold hands. Remind me this though: next time I'm sitting next to a leathery woman from Lowell on the bus and she's all "Hey, what are YOU reading?" and I say "Edith Wharton" and she mishears me and thinks I said "It's for work," and gives me a lecture about reading for work on buses, which apparently is bullshit, not that I disagree, the right response is not "No, Edith Wharton, and it's gonna be cool because I heard it was dirty." You won't really get a disapproving look - I mean, wtf, she's from Lowell, that's probably the nicest thing she's ever heard on a bus - but she will decide that you're now buddies and you might want to see a picture of a cat her friend died red, white and blue for the Superbowl. Because, y'know, the cat is a Pats fan. I'm not kidding about any of this. You know I don't kid. And I guess it's working; we're up 17 - 9 in the third quarter. Dear Boston, the only reason I looked up the score is so I could reference it in this Edith Wharton review I'm writing during the Superbowl; after this I'm gonna go back to reading Nathaniel Hawthorne. I ain't gotta defend my masculinity to the likes of you. Wharton and Hawthorne were both here before the Patriots were so don't go yelling at me about loyalty, yahdood.

I was hoping to find a strong girl entering into the womanhood, but instead found a young adult coming of age with her failures and maybe "wrong" choices. And that's ok because life happens. In the world, there are a lot of people, who grow up without having the "mentor" in their lives, without having the strong will or the ability of self transformation.

This is my first Wharton book, and even though I admired her writing, I had so much conflict with the main character. It seemed to me that she wasn't the protagonist, she was a girl in the background, about whom you don't care and later forget she was even in the book.

The only caring part for me was the motherhood theme. I still don't get it if I liked or disliked Charity, but I could understand how she felt about her future life in the end. However, I felt that this wasn't the conclusion I was seeing and hoping for. Truth to be told, I have no idea what that my conclusion would be.

I think I might change my mind about this book in the future - so vague for me so far...

Lots of plot elements revealed here about Adam Bede and Summer.

I am far behind in my reviews, partly because GR has been so slow for me that it is barely manageable; partly because I feel overwhelmed by the distance between the reviews I want to write and the reviews I have it in me right now to write.

Today GR is working a little faster (don't get me wrong, I still have to wait a good twenty seconds for a page to load). I am going to try to write something rather than nothing.

Some folks see Summer as an erotic novel and those who don't are probably looking for outright sexual activity as opposed to a lot of natural imagery that is soaked in sexiness.

"She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to
all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in
her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under
her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the
fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the
creak of the larches as they swayed to it."

This there is a lot of. And there is no question that toward the end of the novel, sexual activity is going on.

This is a book in which a female character clearly accepts, takes charge of, and takes responsibility for her own desire as she spends more and more time with her lover. In fact, toward the end of their affair, they come close to living together in a little cottage they are semi-squatting.

Reading Summer just after finishing Adam Bede helped illuminate some things for me. I wouldn't be surprised if Summer is to some degree a response to Adam Bede.

In Eliot's Adam Bede, the protagonist is an overly innocent and honorable working gentleman whose class status is meaningful. He is a hired worker and so born into a certain working-class-status. He does not yet own his own labor, which puts him beneath shop-owners and managers of other people's labor. But Bede is a hard-working, ethical kind of fellow. He is seen by his "betters" as worthy of bringing up a notch class-wise. And he wants to marry Hetty Sorrell, the niece of the Poysers, dairy people who are, as it turns out, a notch above Bede because they 0wn/oversee their dairy. (Also they make some darn good cheese.)

Class status is important in Adam Bede, and work ethics, and privilege, are all to some degree explored. And another brave exploration is into the inner world of Hetty Sorrel, another protagonist around Charity Royall's age who is coming into a sense of herself as a sexual being.

Adam Bede has been in love with Hetty Sorrell for a long time, and comes to believe she feels the same way. Eliot does a beautiful job of showing how Bede sees signs of love from Hetty, where Hetty is really in love with Arthur Donnithorne, the 21 year old squire who will inherit the land Hetty and Adam and all their people live on.

Hetty Sorrell is in love with someone out of her class-range, and has a bit of magical thinking around the possibility of her class status changing. She is shown to be self-absorbed and perhaps overly absorbed with material things and physical pleasure, but I don't know that she deserves the punishment she gets toward the end of the novel, and neither does Eliot, though she is happy to get her out of the way so she can move on and set Bede up with a nice, though overly self-sacrificing methodist.

Sorrell gets severely punished for having an affair with a wealthier man. And Donnithorne doesn't get off easily for his "ill use" of Sorrell. He suffers the consequences.

But are Sorrell and Donnithorne wrong for getting together? They are both deeply attracted to each other. Perhaps if Hetty didn't get pregnant things would have turned out okay, though Bede scolds Donnithorne for putting ideas into Hetty's head about what options might be available to her. If she thinks that it is really possible for her to marry "up" to that degree, she wouldn't be happy with Bede. That is, at least, how Bede sees it, and he's a pretty practical guy (except, perhaps, when it comes to Hetty.) So there is the question of a wealthy man giving a woman from a different class bracket false hope about her social and economic mobility. And there is issue of Hetty being the kind of young woman who isn't mature enough to choose the love of an available person. (She's certainly not alone. And Eliot does seem to have some sympathy for the problem of attraction. Dinah isn't attracted to Adam's brother and eventually we learn that it's not just because she's 'married to God' as it were. Attraction isn't necessarily something we choose, though maybe we at least have the ability to be reasonable about it? Or maybe we don't at all, and that is what much of literature is consumed with?)

Hetty ultimately gets pregnant by Donnithorne and for the structure of the novel to work, Eliot has to get Hetty out of the picture to make room for a love for Adam that is a little more even and a situation in which the good woman desires the good man (Bede will now hopefully grow old with someone who loves him and is happy with his station, as opposed to someone who he loves unrequitedly. Maybe the spark isn't so intense, but maybe he's learned a few lessons about attraction? Much of the book seems interested with moderation being a big part of maturity.)

Summer has many similar configurations, though its differences are curious, too.

Charity Royall has been rescued from the savage lifestyle of the "mountain people" by Lawyer Royall. The mountain people are a group of non-civilized-not-good-Christian folks who in Wharton's metaphors are very often equated with non-human animals, particularly dogs.

As a child Charity is brought down from this mountain and raised in North Dormer, a sleepy MA Berkshire town, because her birth-father pleaded with Lawyer Royall to rescue and raise her.

We meet Charity when she is in her late teens and has been living with Royall for some time. She is bored with life and disgusted with her guardian, understandably so, as he he is trying to marry her (and I'm pretty sure gets drunk and makes sexual advances here and there.) He's pretty creepy and often drinks too much and behaves like a lout. And to a degree she's given up her education in order to take care of him. She could have gone to school but she sees how lonely he is and stays with him instead. Their relationship is a bit twisted and it is worrisome that he doesn't insist on her schooling. But this is the dysfunctional relationship they have.

When city-slicker Lucius Harney comes to town, nineteen year old (I think) Charity sees a ticket out of North Dormer. They become quickly entangled and enjoy long summer afternoons together. Harney is shamed by Royall at a certain point, and Harney wants to show his intentions are good, and half-heartedly offers to marry Charity. But she is proud and takes ownership of her desire, and even though her sexual activity with Harney gets her "in trouble" she doesn't demand he marry her,

It is interesting that in both Summer and Adam Bede, Donnithorne and Harney both intend to be supportive in the case of pregnancy. But neither gets the opportunity to. And though both are willing to help, neither is fully aware of the inherent trouble in the power differential. While Hetty becomes a victim and deals with her trouble by trying (and failing) to go back to life as the way it was before her pregnancy, Charity insists on her agency and insists on owning her sexual desire and activity refuses to look at herself as a victim of Harney. If anything, she is the victim of a world that has screwed up ideas about love and sex and pregnancy. This is true also for Hetty, but Charity is not, then, punished. Well, she is punished. She feels compelled to marry Lawyer Royall. But she wants to take care of her child and she has the opportunity to do this. And she has her whole life ahead of her. Who knows what will happen. If Royall and she will move to Nettleton so that she can enjoy a city life, or perhaps he will die soon enough, and leave her the resources to find her way to the city on her own. She still has opportunities to find companionship and fulfillment. Hetty will have no second chances.

I want to go back to the Charity and Hetty and their struggle to feel ownership of their female bodies.
Both Charity and Hetty fall in love and explore their sexuality with young men who don't have a sophisticated understanding of their position of power. Hetty and Charity are vulnerable in ways that the men simply cannot be. If only cis guys could get knocked up by women, the world would be a place with a lot more empathy and understanding. The young, more socially and wealth-wise privileged men in these novels are both well-meaning, and they both fall in love. Charity and Hetty are beautiful and in touch with their desire and willing to explore their desire. I don't know if there is some idealization or stereotyping in here, or association of these non-fancy-class women as more "natural." But this is what we've got. Two women having affairs with bodies that betray them.

Are Charity and Hetty in love with Donnithorne and Harney? Hard to say. They are certainly infatuated and both have fantasies of leaving places that feel stifling to them.

And both Donnithorne and Harney are to some degree held accountable or faced with their questionable behavior. But still, it's not the same.

At least Charity fares a bit better than Hetty. I suppose one might say that Lawyer Royall gets his shit together and finally figures out how to treat his adoptive child right by marrying her. Hmmm. Okay, at least he knows by the end of the novel not to try to have sex with her, so there's that. He marries her to take care of her and save her reputation, not to be physically intimate with her. Though still, it's all a bit icky. But, what can be said? Lawyer Royall, like Charity Royall and Lucius Harney, has his ups and downs. None of these characters are "good" or "bad." They are all somewhere in the middle, people trying to make sense of their messy lives, their loves and losses, their desire in conflict with their social standings and other responsibilities.

While Eliot goes on perhaps a few chapters too long, and sews the story up neatly in ways that are a bit forced, she does do a beautiful job bringing together a large cast of characters, many of whom are rather comical. Also, there are two dogs starring in the book, Gyp and Vixen (?!), and that's fun.

Wharton's Summer is genius in its construction and quite short. The first time I read it I was annoyed with how predictable it all seemed, but when I began re-reading, I was over-taken by the complexity and richness. My understanding of Charity deepens each time I look over the pages, and I admire her sense of awareness even while being frustrated with her immaturity (but she's 19!).

"The girl walked along, swinging her key on a finger, and looking about
her with the heightened attention produced by the presence of a stranger
in a familiar place. What, she wondered, did North Dormer look like to people from other parts of the world?"

"Never had her ignorance of life and literature so weighed on her as in
reliving the short scene of her discomfiture. 'It's no use trying to be anything in this place,' she muttered to her pillow; and she shriveled at the vision of vague metropolises, shining super-Nettletons, where girls in better clothes than Belle Balch's talked fluently of architecture to young men with hands like Lucius Harney's."

I couldn't help, after reading these two books, but feel frustrated with the monumental absurdity of expectations around human sexuality and sexual behavior. We're primates for f$%$ks sake. And the double standards around sexuality. Ugh it's all upsetting. But at least we have some brave authors looking closely and critically at these things and creating characters who feel entitled to love, and for whom, if there isn't celebration necessarily, there is at least compassion.

This was a captivating story and another incredible work by EW.

It’s very coming of age, but also had a sense of modernity to it, especially in the first half. The ending definitely caught me by surprise, but I didn’t dislike it as much as I thought I would. It turned everything around and started to give a bit of Jane Austen vibes.


Also, randomly, I feel like I’ve read many Darklina fanfic of this story, just slightly rewritten.

Edith Wharton was certainly a lady who could put words to a page that could definitely propel a reader quickly through a book. It was certainly true with this novel. Simply stated and told, it is a novel of the awakening of a young, unsure, woman, Charity, who seems held back in attitude by her questionable roots. Born to an unwed mother in a mountain community of dirt and squalor, she is rescued by the Royall family after her father is convicted of manslaughter. Raised within this household, Charity is eventually propositioned by her step father whom she refuses. Gaining work at the local library, she meets Lucius Harney, the man she ultimately falls in love with.

This was a sad coming of age story that seemed to have Charity's fate already worked out. Her beginnings seemed to foretell her end, and yet one could not hope that she would come out a winner in both her love of Harney and her love of self. Charity seemed a strong character on the outside, yet internally she was mush. She could not seem to back away from the mountain even though she left it at age five. It was almost as if she was fated to remain within its grasp.

There is such a sadness within this novel. One could not help but like Charity, but also could see that she would not be able to escape the town, the mountain, Mr Royall, but mostly could not run away from what she supposed herself to be. She is doomed to experience only that little bit of happiness she feels that she deserves. Her life falls into that nowhere where she will do what she needs to do to protect herself, yet never allow herself to see her true potential. She is too afraid of life to fully embrace it. So she settles for a life of sameness in a reality that she hates and will never be able to escape from.

I love Edith Wharton for her ability to make us experience the suffering of her characters. She lets one climb into their psyche and explore along with her what makes them tick.

It was the beginning of a June afternoon. The springlike transparent sky shed a rain of silver sunshine on the roofs of the village, and on the pastures and larchwoods surrounding it. A little wind moved among the round white clouds on the shoulders of the hills, driving their shadows across the fields and down the grassy road that takes the name of street when it passes through North Dormer.

On this lovely day, the one-street little place in New England might appear as an enchanting place, full of peace and promise, yet seventeen years old Charity Royall only dreams of escaping from its boredom, from its lack of prospects.
Charity might be one of the lucky people in North Dormer, a ward of Lawyer Royall, a well-to-do widower and one of the few educated men. He feels the girl should be grateful to him for being taken in from the people ‘of the mountain’, a community of rogues, vagabonds and drunkards who settled in the wild parts of the county.
Charity, fiercely independent yet romantically inclined, works part-time in the village library, hoping to put aside enough money for a ticket to New York.
Yet, on that fateful early summer day, it is the big city that comes to North Dormer, in the form of a young architect named Lucius Harney. The boy is charmed by the beautiful girl and by her wild streak of rebelliousness against village life. Together, they explore the surrounding towns, sketching old colonial houses for an architecture book and slowly becoming infatuated with each other.
Lawyer Ronyell looks askance at the young people, seeing his own dreams of changing Charity status from ward to mistress of his house go up in smoke.

>>><<<>>><<<

The beautiful prose and the delicacy of sentiment were everything I expected of Edith Wharton after my enchantment with her ‘Age of Innocence’, many years ago.
The biggest surprise in this slight yet powerful narrative of young love is that it has some very sharp teeth to it: this may be the age of innocence, and Charity Royall may be the poster child of naive romanticism, but her story is a cautionary one about the dangers of forging ahead only listening to your heart.

If ever she looked ahead she felt instinctively that the gulf between them was too deep, and that the bridge their passion had flung across it as insubstantial as a rainbow. But she seldom looked ahead; each day was so rich that it absorbed her ...

In the limited circle exemplified by the isolated community of North Dormer, the boy Harney may seem like the answer to her prayers: soft spoken, intelligent, sophisticated and passionate. The more her guardian warns her against him, the more Charity feels driven into his arms, with the expected results when two healthy young people spend their days in nature under the summer sky. Their love expresses itself in passionate embraces, with the usual results in an age when family planning wasn’t even invented yet.

She had given him all she had - but what was it compared to the other gifts life held for him? She understood now the case of girls like herself to whom this kind of thing happened. They gave all they had, but their all was not enough; it could not buy more than a few moments...

Suddenly alone, having rejected Lawyer Royall’s tentative proposals and having lost her young man to the charms of the big city and of more sophisticated young ladies of the high society, Charity has nowhere to turn to, no money and no future.
It was rather daring for the author to put her heroine into the hands of predatory hack doctors and to present the misery of poverty and abuse of women in the outlaws hamlet up the mountain, but this is for me the finest moment in the novel – its true feminist manifesto and its message of hope for the opening of the eyes to the pitfalls of romance, an entreaty to grab responsibility for their own lives for these abused innocents.

The sight of the weak-minded old woman, of the cowed children, and the ragged man sleeping off his liquor, made the setting of her own life seem a vision of peace and plenty.

... the summer days of love and sunshine are over much to soon for seventeen years old Charity Royall, but hopefully out of the ashes of her dreams will rise a new strength for her future life.

Highly recommended!

3,5/5

Una de mis escritoras favoritas es sin duda, la indiscutiblemente maravillosa autora estadounidense, Edith Wharton. Tras leer tres de sus obras, puedo afirmar que era una de las mejores escritoras que han existido. Le ha tocado el turno a “Estío”, una de las novelas que más orgullosa hacía sentir a su creadora y que fue publicada en 1915. No obtuvo un gran éxito como otras de sus obras, sobre todo “La edad de la inocencia” y puedo entender la causa pero sin duda creo que hay mucho más detrás de esta historia.

Charity es una joven procedente de un lugar donde la miseria y el salvajismo conviven, por suerte es salvada y posteriormente acogida por un matrimonio que le brinda una agradable vida en un pequeño pueblo de Nueva Inglaterra. Tiempo después, enviuda su tutor y nuestra protagonista comenzará a desarrollar rechazo hacia él, hacia lo que le demanda y hacia su hogar cargado de una atmósfera asfixiante. Un día, en la biblioteca donde trabaja, conocerá a un arquitecto que despertará en ella las ilusiones de un primer amor que no será como ella esperaba.

Estamos ante un relato francamente desconcertante, tanto por su protagonista, que a pesar de haberme agradado por sus marcadas diferencias, la he sentido bastante distanciada del lector; como por los hechos que suceden a lo largo del escrito. Siendo sincera, no he conectado con la toma de decisiones de Charity, aunque la entiendo y sé que quizá en su situación podría llegar a actuar como ella. Estamos ante un claro perfil protagónico típico de la autora, en esta ocasión también nos brinda una joven distinta, que a pesar de no pertenecer a la clase alta si vive de manera acomodada y es injustamente rechazada y juzgada por los demás por sus orígenes pobres.

En conclusión y para finalizar, esta no forma parte, ni es ni mucho menos una de mis novelas predilectas de la autora, pero sí debo decir que siempre es fascinante leerla por su maravillosa, pulcra y cuidada narrativa que no deja de sorprenderme. He añorado una ambientación estival, motivo por el cual lo leí en verano, por culpa de un título bastante engañoso. Hay oscuridad en el relato, drama, relaciones que cambian, corazones rotos, coraje y una fuerza en el carácter de la protagonista que hace de esta una valiosa y vibrante narración. Guarda un final inesperado que posiblemente no sea del agrado de todos.

n  “She had always thought of love as something confused and furtive, and he made it as bright and open as the summer air.”n

Although Wharton is best known for her New York stories, Summer - like Ethan Frome - is set in a small, bleak New England town. The story of an uneducated young girl's summer fling with a more sophisticated young man is beautifully written and remains emotionally impactful despite more than a century's worth of changes to accepted social norms.

4/5

Kaip Itanas Fromas, tik vasarą, sako vieni. Erotiškasis Itanas, sako pati Edith. Na, erotiką čia įžiūrėti sunku (nebent koks nuo peties nuslydęs chalatėlis jums atrodo kaip vulgarumo aukštumos), bet dėl Itano Fromo sutinku – tikrai panašiai liūdna, tik kad čia daugiau šviečia saulė. Ir todėl tik dar liūdniau – mažokai vilčių man kelia mirusi gamta, padengta ledu, bet kai aplink viskas žydi ir skleidžiasi, kvepia ir žavi, taip sunku suvokti, kad gyvenimai baigiasi dar neprasidėję. Kad viltys, net tyliausiai ir paslaptingiausiai puoselėtos, pasidengia tokiu sniego sluoksniu, kurio nenutirpdys net širdingiausi apsikabinimai. Ir kaip teisingai išsireiškė knygos redaktorė – prieš šitas kančias, kurias Wharton atseikėja savo „Vasaros“ pagrindinei veikėjai, Žemaitė rūko kampe. O aš pridėsiu, kad ir „Paskenduolė“ rodosi kaip humoreska. O baisiausia tai, kad kaip ir dažniausiai, kiaurai permatant kitų prastus sprendimus, belieka klaidas palikti daryti patiems. Gi nepaklausys, kad ir su kokia išmintimi, tariama ar esama, mokytumei.

Wharton, aišku, džiugiomis knygomis ir šiaip negarsėja, o šioji, dar ir nedidelė apimtimi, iš tiesų savyje talpina tiek pat daug, kiek ir jos ilgieji romanai. Ir temos panašumu kiek primena, pavyzdžiui, „Ledi Čaterli meilužį“, bet mano skoniui stoja visa galva aukščiau. Įvairūs žmonių ryšiai čia įdomūs, veikėjai nevienareikšmiai. O Čaritės ir jos globėjo santykis manyje permaišė tiek emocijų, tiek minčių! Na, o paskutinioji scena bene „Les Miserables“ verta. Ir Čaritė, visai kaip Wharton sukurtos Undinė ar Lili, ne tik erzina skaitytoją, ne tik tampo nervus, bet ir sukelia tokį pat jausmą, kaip beviltiškai, atkakliai ir nepailstamai į stiklą besidaužantis vabzdys. Zyzia, zvimbia, nesupranta ir kelia erzulį. Bet nesinori man jo pritrėkšti. Norisi praverti langą ir išleisti. Kad pasidžiaugtų vasara.

Edith Wharton foi efectivamente uma mulher emancipada, muito à frente do seu tempo.

Nesta história revela-nos uma versão íntima dos pequenos grandes desejos de uma jovem, na descoberta do seu ser como mulher, como indivíduo com direito a ambições.

Numa região onde nada existe para além de "falatório", próprio de quem nada mais tem com que se ocupar: "uma pequena aldeia nos montes, assolada pelas intempéries e queimada pelo sol, abandonada pelos homens, esquecida pelo caminho-de-ferro, pelos eléctricos, pelo telégrafo e por todas as forças que ligam a vida à vida nas comunidades modernas. Não tinha lojas, nem teatros, nem conferências, nem um «quarteirão comercial», apenas uma igreja que abria domingo sim, domingo não (…) e uma biblioteca para a qual não se tinham comprado livros novos os últimos vinte anos e onde os antigos se enchiam de bolor sem que ninguém os incomodasse…"

Charity é uma criatura de origens muito (demasiado) humildes. Curiosamente nem por isso deixava de ter um carácter orgulhoso, impertinente, rebelde e de reivindicações legítimas.

A descrição da Montanha, da colónia de ocupantes ilegais que vivia à margem da lei, da miséria extrema que ninguém queria ver nem assumir é poderosa. Um mistério que inicia logo nas primeiras páginas e que se vai agudizando ao longo da narrativa deixando-nos desconfortáveis.

A trama desenvolve-se à volta da paixão doce e hipnotizadora da nossa protagonista por um jovem arquitecto, Harney, oriundo da cidade e suficientemente sabido para levar a água ao seu moinho.

O Sr. Royall, é uma personagem enigmática, que se vai revelando ora benfeitor ora oportunista e que nos deixa sem saber para onde pender.

Uma leitura muito interessante!