Cannot believe I have lived so long and read so muc (a Although I am quite thinly read compared to others.) and not read Edith Wharton and realised what simply gorgeous writer she was. I loved these stories, i luxuriated in the pacing, feeling the stories unfold like a bloom opening to reveal a glorious interior. The kind that makes you believe things are supposed to reveal themselves to us in this sublime way. I think I may have been put off trying her work by exposure to Ephram Fromm which i tried when i was too callow and young to appreciate what was going on. Then I discovered a late night tale of the marcabre I once saw was adaptedfrom one of her tales. a story about an undead spirit having a relationship with a man who knew his lover to be dead, transposed to a wind swept english coast line. A place so draped in the dark melancholy of repressed lives you could imagine such a thing taking place. For although the story was presented as a ghost story there was nothing which hapened in it which could not take place in the real world. The stories were vby turns tragic and compelling and almost always haunting. The spectre of class and social mobility are competing demons throughout these stories. A studied complexity that may or may not still exist. Wealth and position act as barriers to change but its a false economy, change is inevitable, like Thanos or Homer Simpson.
