The House of Mirth

By: Edith Wharton

Narrated by: Kate Petrie

Edith Wharton's novel The House of Mirth follows the social ups and downs of Lily Bart, who is a very attractive woman about to turn 30. At the beginning of the book, she is slated to marry Percy Gryce, seeing as he fits the exact description of the type of bachelor that she is looking for: wealthy and predictable. Yet through a series of missteps, Lily loses her chance with Percy and must therefore spend some time trying to regain her social standing so that she can ultimately find the rich bachelor that she desires. But Lily's luck continues to decline when she befriends the wrong people, especially a man whose devious wife tries to foil her fledgling affair with another young man. To make matters worse, the inheritance money Lily was waiting on from an aunt is not as sizeable as she had expected. The second half of the book details more of Lily's misfortunes and the sticky situations that she finds herself in. Fortunately she remains honest to herself throughout the book, even taking a job as a hat maker for a little extra money. At the end, however, Lily finally becomes the object of a young man's affection; though he is not the man she initially set her sights on, he is absolutely the right man for her.

Public Domain (P)2015 A.R.N. Publications

Pronounciation!

The reader’s voice and performance are perfect - but so many ordinary words are mispronounced! “Takit” (tacit) occurs often, and made me groan aloud - but there are many more strange abuses.

So many mistakes

The reader is mostly nice to listen to, but she makes SO many mistakes. I have never listened to an audiobook with this many errors, which include reading the completely wrong word (which changes or eliminates meaning), mispronunciations, sentences read twice, etc. It's really distracting. In the last few chapters, she pronounced the word tacit as tackit three times. On one page she mispronounced wan, convivial, adroit, heterogeneous, and metropolis. These mispronunciations are not British variations. It's bizarre, and it makes it hard to concentrate. She has recorded so many great works. I don't get it. This is just not a professional presentation.

Very well written. But main character is disappointing.

Superbly written and narrator is great, if a little fast. (I slowed it to 0.95.) However, I just couldn't find a reason to finish listening. The main character just kept being disapointing, in terms of character, and the main dilemmas she faces are just little dramas.