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Twilight Sleep
 
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Twilight Sleep (Paperback)

by Edith Wharton (Author)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product Description

Product Description

Out of print for several decades, here is Edith Wharton's superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age, a critically praised best-seller when it was first published in 1927. Sex, drugs, work, money, infatuation with the occult and spiritual healing -- these are the remarkably modern themes that animate Twilight Sleep. The extended family of Mrs. Manford is determined to escape the pain, boredom and emptiness of life through whatever form of "twilight sleep" they can devise or procure. And though the characters and their actions may seem more in keeping with today's society, this is still a classic Wharton tale of the upper crust and its undoing -- wittily, masterfully told. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.


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Wharton's superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age--originally published in 1927. Taking her title from the sleep induced through medication to ease the pain during childbirth, Edith Wharton sketches a portrait of a society eager to escape the pain of everyday life through drugs and alcohol, secret sexual alliances, immersion in work, and the pursuit and capricious squandering of money. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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5.0 out of 5 stars One of her greatest, Nov 10 2003
By L. Dann "adhdmom" (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Twilight Sleep (Paperback)
This shockingly modern novel ranks among Mrs. Wharton's finest. Hard to imagine EW in the roaring twenties? She writes with the same personal grace and sly eye for the details behind the facade when focusing upon the moderns as when drawing the old New Yorkers. Those fading, listless aristocrats are included here as contrasts for the self-obsessed, alienated and narcissistic flappers. The novel resonates with modern themes, unfinished American themes; it may be the Jazz Age, but it is as now as anything I've ever read. It is also a gripping page turner- with characters at odds with the fates and the customs of society- as unforgettable as Lilly Bart's sipping of laudanum in House of Mirth and the farewell dinner for Countess Olenska in Age of Innocence.
Those uniquely Wharton flourishes abound; the sumptuous dinners with the invisible calculus of seating assignments, shifting winds of wars with reality and passion, all carried out in black boudoirs, silver crusted serving plates and overseen by women draped in jewels. Within it all the people suffer against an atavistic demon hell bent on tearing their refinement and their highly ritualized world to shreds. It is all here- within this fortunate reissue. If you are a fan of Wharton, I guarantee you will devour this book. Edith Wharton's novels are national treasures- and this one is one of her finest.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A psychological tour-de-force in velvet gloves, a tragedy., May 23 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: Twilight Sleep (Paperback)
Wharton is as stunningly effective as in "A House of Mirth", here conveying the frustration of a circle of people interdependent upon one another, destined to follow society's rules no matter what the cost. Each character desperately clutches at a "twilight sleep"; the mode of coping each engages to distance reality. Masquerading as habit or whim, the painted veil of illusion overlays each mode of addictive escape. Nona, the beautiful, well-bred New Yorker struggles with an imperatrix sister-in-law Lita, whose values (and their consequences) threaten the entire social order Nona's family fabric is woven of. The Marchesa dispenses her social value as Pauline erases her son's debts. Lita's tabloid exposure and screen career must be suppressed. The men escape into work while the women flail at vanity of excess. The whistle of tragedy sounds in the distance as Nona falls into love with a married man, her brother Jim hopelessly esconced in a bad marriage with a woman he idolises, while her father works himself into an eagerly embraced oblivion, while Jim's father openly drinks to forget the societal oasis he knew before his divorce. Nona's mother compulsively schedules all their lives to death, while pursuing the escapist mysticism of faith healing and the blind support of the latest guru. As the Jazz Age brings down the curtain on the theatre of old New York and its values, Art and Cinema loom. While the family coalesces at their country estate to save Jim and Lita's marriage, each battle with their chosen talisman against life and its evils. Much more is at stake and much more is lost. This startlingly psychological novel will fascinate any student of life. The sacrifice of a fragment to obtain the societal whole inevitably comes, more starkly portrayed here than anywhere, the novel having served as forceful denouement. In the tolling bells of Whartons' worlds, the death of illusion sounds the deepest peal.
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