Audiobook · read by volunteers
Glimpses of the Moon
Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
Read by Elizabeth Klett · 30 chapters · 7 h 47
About the book
Nick and Susy Lansing are young, charming and almost penniless, and they live among the rich of the Riviera and Venice by accepting the generosity of their friends. When they decide to marry, they agree on a bold plan: their marriage will be a partnership of convenience, and each of them will be free to go. They imagine they can enjoy a spell of luxury and then part without regret. But feelings are not as obedient as plans, and the world they move in is full of temptations, rivalries and comfortable compromises. Edith Wharton watches her characters with irony and affection, and her sentences are polished and precise. The Glimpses of the Moon is a story of love, money and conscience, told with wit and a sharp eye for the manners of a restless society. It is witty, elegant and unexpectedly moving.
Introduction
Edith Wharton, who lived from 1862 to 1937, was one of the major American novelists of her time and the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, which she received for The Age of Innocence in 1921. The Glimpses of the Moon appeared in 1922, in the years after the First World War, and it turns her attention to a newer generation: young people who drift between the great houses and hotels of Europe, living on invitations and borrowed luxury.
The novel centres on Nick and Susy Lansing and on an unusual marriage that both of them think they can control. Wharton had long been an observer of how money and manners shape choices, and here she writes with a lighter, more comic touch than in some of her darker books, while still asking what people owe one another. The book has often been described as a social comedy with a serious core, and its setting is a fashionable world in which appearances count for a great deal.
This recording is divided into 30 chapters and lasts about seven and three-quarter hours. It is read by a single LibriVox volunteer, and a warm, flexible voice suits Wharton’s irony. It is an engaging choice for listeners who know her more famous novels and wish to explore a less familiar one, or for anyone who enjoys stories of love and money in a vanished world. Wharton’s attention to detail makes the settings feel real, and her dialogue is quick and often funny. It is a pleasing choice for a long listen, and it shows a lighter side of an author often thought of as austere.
Public domain
Edith Wharton died in 1937: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text