Twilight Sleep
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Twilight Sleep
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Narrated by:
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Carrington MacDuffie
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By:
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Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton’s superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age was a critically praised bestseller when it was first published in 1927.
Whether it is sex, drugs, or infatuation with the occult, Mrs. Manford and her extended family of socialites are determined to escape the pain, boredom, and emptiness of life through whatever form of “twilight sleep” they can devise or procure.
Far ahead of its time, this Wharton classic employed modernist techniques such as an ever-changing narration among the novel’s characters and a close examination of the characters’ self-identities and relationships with one another to tell a tale rich with irony and wit about the upper crust’s own undoing.
(P)2023 Blackstone PublishingCritic reviews
“No one captures Old New York society like Edith Wharton, and no one could perform this satirical audiobook better than Carrington MacDuffie. With a gift for tone and a wide array of character voices…MacDuffie’s strong voice is a powerful guide throughout the text…leading listeners from scene to scene with verve.”
(AudioFile)“There are only three or four American novelists who can be thought of as ‘major’—and Edith Wharton is one.”
(Gore Vidal, American intellectual and New York Times bestselling author, praise for the author)As a protege of Henry James her literary style owes much to his, and is perfectly suited to those forensic examinations of manners and mores.
In this later and lesser known novel, she is firmly transported (as are we) into the 20c. Her approach to narrative storytelling remains unchanged, but her style, is much altered. She echoes the crumbling of that rigid social framework and the burgeoning of new social and artistic freedoms with a much looser prose style. One which allows for the distinctly different speech patterns of her characters and aligns better with their internal dialogues.
This world is a generation or so on from her Age of Innocence, and House of Mirth days. These people are exposing themselves to the wider world, perhaps living more closely aligned with the ideals of the egalitarian US constitutional expectations. But they remain a privileged lot, inured to many of the harsh realities of the world by position and or choice. What they do to fill their time, where they put their considerable energy and at what cost remains Wharton’s fascination.
Its an unexpected treat to be able to see a writer develop not from fair to good or great, but from great to great across so many decades. She proves as adept in the early 20c as the writers who were then in their youth, even as she is at the end of her life. Remarkable.
Wharton in the Jazz Age
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