Pick of the paperbacks
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Edith Wharton by Hermione Lee
Hermione Lee concludes this magnificent biography with a visit to Edith Wharton’s grave in Versailles, where she is moved to clear away the overgrown foliage obscuring the tombstone. Her compelling, sympathetic retelling of Wharton’s life and career is a more fitting monument - one that affirms the writer’s reputation as America’s greatest female novelist.
Wharton did not publish any fiction until she was 37, but she would later enjoy immense popular and critical success. Lee examines her literary apprenticeship through the telling lens of Wharton’s novels and short stories.
Fin-de-si%26egrave;cle New York was a stifling place. Wharton eventually found solace and rich friendships in the welcoming climates of Italy and France, where she spent her last 30 years. Lee devotes much of her book to this period, and rightly so; only in France could Wharton make her escape into the consolatory realms of fiction. Her scholarship is exhaustive and her readings are consistently subtle and insightful. TM
The Auto-biography of the British Soldier by John Lewis-Stempel
