goodreads | The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton (Reply)

Title: The House of Mirth
Author: Edith Wharton
Genre: classic
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 329
Date read: July, 2009

The beautiful Lily Bart lives among the nouveaux riches of New York City - people whose millions were made in railroads, shipping, land speculation, and banking. In this morally and aesthetically bankrupt world, Lily, age twnty-nine, seeks a husband who can satisfy her craving for endless admiration and all the trappings of wealth. Her quest comes to a scandalous end when she is accused of being the mistress of a wealthy man. Exiled from her familiar world of artificial conventions, Lily finds life impossible.

I don't do well with books with sad endings. That's a personal quirk and I'm well aware it has no influence on the literary quality of the book.

"The House of Mirth" falls into the same genre as "Ditte Menneskebarn" and several other Danish books of that era - books that are well-written, but where the author for one reason or another decide to let the main characters fail in all his/her endeavours rather than succeed. This inevitably leads up to a depressing book, so that no matter how much I enjoyed other aspects of it I can't enjoy the book as a whole.

However, I did appreciate that Edith Wharton didn't let Lily lose her integrity along with everything else.