The Age of Innocence

By: Edith Wharton

Narrated by: Lorna Raver

Pulitzer Prize Winner, The Novel, 1921

Newland Archer is about to announce his engagement to the docile May Welland when he meets her cousin, the mysterious, nonconformist Countess Ellen Olenska. Edith Wharton's elegant portrait of desire and betrayal in Old New York earned her the first Pulitzer Prize for literature ever awarded to a woman.

©2007 Public Domain (P)2006 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Classic, But Why Would I care?

Man married one woman, falls for her cousin. No real connection with any of characters. we might understand their motivation but there's no depth to characters. We don't really get the depth of their personality..

Elegant landscape of New York society 19th century

The historical look into New York society at the turn of the century is illuminating, humorous and revealing. The character of Newland Archer is well developed, while the others are presented as two dimensional shadows, where the author does not reveal their thoughts or intentions.
The details of society, lifestyles, amenities are very interesting which lend value to the novel, but the story is not very compelling.

The Best of Its or Any Day

This is the best. I am an audiobook addict, and it gets no better than this. If you saw the Jeremy Irons movie by Scorsese, it is a very pale copy. Wharton's prose is rich, her characters fully alive, her acute observations succinctly worded, and her multi-generational plot quietly devastating. By the final pages of the last chapter, I had a steady lump in my throat. The reader is masterful in her pacing, clarity and array of voices...almost like listening to the author herself, communicating to us her large-canvas, minutely described vision of a world we will never see again--old New york..

wonderful classic

I have listened to it several times through the years. such a perfectly performed classic

Reflections on a very repressed era.

I enjoyed the inside look, at an era I had avoided, because of it's repression of women and men. All things revolved around ones status, family connections and wealth. In short, similar to today's hierarchy of social media fame, stardom, etc.