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Title: Summer

Author: Edith Wharton

Narrator: Lorna Raver

Format: Unabridged

Length: 6 hrs and 25 mins

Language: English

Release date: 09-13-10

Publisher: Tantor Audio

Ratings: 3.5 of 5 out of 14 votes

Genres: Classics, American Literature

Publisher's Summary:

One of America's first novels to deal frankly with a young woman's sexual awakening, Summer shocked readers with its forthright exploration of desire and sexuality when it was first published in 1917. Set in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts, it tells the story of Charity Royall, a young New England woman of humble origins who meets and falls in love with the worldly Lucius Harney, an architect from the city.

In evocative and descriptive prose, Edith Wharton conveys the ecstasy of Charity's first experience in sexual and romantic love, and pulls her heroine through the throes of loving a man who ultimately cannot choose her. Wharton's tale elicits the passion and despair of all great but ill-fated love affairs and enthralls the contemporary audience with its pathos just as it did nearly 100 years ago.

Members Reviews:

Not the best Wharton, but very good nevertheless

Charity is growing up in North Dormer, a very small, very provincial village around the first quarter of the twentieth century. When still a small child, she had been brought down form the "mountain", a poverty and lawlessness ridden settlement, by Mr. Royal, a lonesome lawyer. We do not know why he has decided to bring her to his house, but now that she is a young attractive woman and his wife is dead, his view of Charity turns less patriarchal and more romantic. Charity, however, falls for a visiting young architect who visits to draw the old houses in the area. The plot centers about Charity's pride, loathing of North Dormer with its bigoted populace, and the not so golden cage of the aging Mr. Royal. The young man from New York represents everything North Dormer is not - class, wealth, breeding, style, freedom. I am not going to reveal the particulars of the plot because their discovery by the reader is important. Suffice it to say that Edith Wharton writes very very well. It is not "The Age of Innocence", the acerbic pinnacle of her writing, but her insight into Charity's brain and heart is uncanny. Not the best Wharton, but very good nevertheless

Wrestling with fate toward redemption

"Summer" is one of those books that you will think about for a long, long time. Set in the small village of North Dormer in New England, this story unfolds far from Wharton's more famous world of the Van der Luydens and the Mingotts. "Summer" has a little of the feel of "Ethan Frome", but is painted in brighter colors. Our protagonist Charity Royall is naive and unsophisticated, yet she can face facts and deal with the consequences of her actions. We feel as if the Fates have moved to New England and have woven for Charity on a future over which she has little control. The bright summer skies and flowers are overshadowed by the Mountain which broods in the distance, and the reader has a sense of foreboding about Charity's future as she develops her relationship with the sophisticated Lucius Harney. She yearns to develop herself to his level of social ability and breadth of knowledge, all the while knowing her limitations in breeding and background. The reader admires her despite her unattractive faults, such as her undervaluing of what her guardian has given her. Often she is cruel and thankless.