Not one of her best, but reading a Wharton novel has never been a waste of time for me. I love her way with words and the world of the idle rich - a world that feckless couple Nick and Susy Lansing hang on to by their fingernails - is well realised. Beautiful evocative descriptions of some of my favourite places in Europe, Como, Venice, Paris...I did have to re-calibrate my imagination part way through as this book is set in the 1920s.I had problems with two things.This is a romance based on The...

“Here were two people who had penetrated farther than she into the labyrinth of the wedded state, and struggled through some of its thorniest passages; and yet both, one consciously, the other half-unaware, testified to the mysterious fact which was already dawning on her: that the influence of a marriage begun in mutual understanding is too deep not to reassert itself even in the moment of flight and denial.”

It’s only a paper moonHanging over a cardboard sea,But it wouldn’t be make believeIf you believed in me.It’s a Barnum and Bailey worldJust as phony as it can beBut it wouldn’t be make believeIf you believed in me.**************************Say you don’t need no diamond ringsAnd I’ll be satisfied,Tell me that you want the kind of thingsThat money just can’t buy.I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love. This is the story of Suzy and Nick Lansing, two newly-weds who hang with the

Nineteenth century first world problems

The Glimpses of the Moon is set in that magical time of the roaring '20s. Books from this time period always seem to be saturated in the exuberance of the era. The wealthy lived their lives like there was no conceivable end to their money, and everybody seemed to be reveling in the relief that the Great War had come to an end. The Glimpses of the Moon is steeped in this atmosphere.As for the main storyline, the book is about the fragility of the love that is developed and shared between the two

Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget--Imagine if Lily Bart and Lawrence Selden from Wharton's THE HOUSE OF MIRTH had given it a go and gotten together--this might have been the result. Nick Lansing and wife Susy have nothing between them but social popularity and an ability to live off the generosity of others. In a moment of "madness," they decide to get married, figuring they have a year before the money is gone and they may have to give each other up.Although Nick reminded me (not in pleasant way...

Susy and her beau Nick have both grown up around rich people though their own families have lost their fortunes. Susy makes her way in the world flitting from invitation to invitation acting as an unpaid but rewarded assistant to her rich friends. Nick has dreams of making a living by his writing. They meet and fall in love but one rich matron from Susy's circle tells her, in effect, hands off of Nick because she has designs on him. Susy tells Nick they have to part and why but by then they've f...

The Glimpses of the Moon is a 1922 novel by Edith Wharton. It was made into a silent film of the same name in 1923, but this is now lost. The title comes from Hamlet .The first sentence of this book drew me in immediately. "IT rose for them—their honey-moon—over the waters of a lake so famed as the scene of romantic raptures that they were rather proud of not having been afraid to choose it as the setting of their own."Two newlyweds, Susy and Nick Lansing, are the 'them' in this introduction.Fro...

If you're comfortable dealing with the assumptions Edith Wharton makes about money and the classes who have it (basically the assumption that the green stuff is worth writing about, thinking about, being torn about, etc etc) then her often painful observations are beyond brilliant. And what carries you through those observations is this exquisite sense of longing and desire that permeates each page. At the beginning it's more of a longing to escape, but in her later novels it's distinctly sexual...

If you've ever wished that The House of Mirth were a comedy (view spoiler)[ with a happy ending (hide spoiler)], that Lily Bart might be matched with a loving but penniless man, and that lovers' misunderstandings might be eventually ironed out, then this is your book. It's lightweight Wharton, for sure, but the leads are an attractive pair who are genuinely in love, the portrait of louche affairs quite shocking for the times, and Wharton's sharp eye for the ethics of money as acute as ever.

So this is the life of Lily Bart as a comedy rather than a tragedy? Susy Lansing does all the things I hoped Lily would do, but couldn't bring herself to: she marries whom she loves and renounces a life of luxury to be with the person she really wants to be with.Why am I still feeling so sad and frustrated after closing the book? Is it because I don't approve of Susy's husband Nick and his glib and hypocritical double standards for men and women? I honestly don't know why that should bother me m...

7.5/10 🌟I begin my re-reading of Wharton mid-way through her career with this novel. While it provided a pleasant dalliance with post-WWI society, it shows a few signs of moral tiredness, as if Wharton couldn't quite get up steam on this one.Both Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, the main players, are more than a little world weary, and it shows in their actions: deciding too swiftly on marriage and even more swiftly, almost whimsically, on divorce. Why they are married is a mystery, as it hardly be...

The Glimpses of the Moon has been compared to Wharton's great classic, The House of Mirth, and it's protagonist Susy Lansing to the tragic Lily Bart, and while similarities do exist, Glimpses falls short of House of Mirth. The Glimpses of the Moon was published in 1922, 17 years after The House of Mirth, and one year after The Age of Innocence, so Wharton was at the peak of her writing ability, but Glimpses falls just short of the greatness of the aforementioned novels. It's still good, worth re...

Published in 1922, this was Wharton's last completed novel. It is also my fifth Wharton - I've previously read The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country and Summer.There is something about Wharton that pierces me to my very soul. Glimpses of the Moon was no exception to that effect. No one wrote arid wealth and the oppressive customs of society better than Wharton - she explores the impact of narrow convention on characters at the same time that she ignored those conven...

This is a romance set among the wealthy residing in Europe. Two Americans without money but desiring the life of the rich make a deal--they will get married and live off the wedding gifts for a year. They are given gifts and money and dozens of invitations to come and spend their honeymoon abroad, with their wealthy friends, just as planned. Food and housing and parties and dinners out, all on someone else’s money. It was agreed that when better marriage opportunities arose for either, each woul...

I really love romances. The disdain I have shown over the years towards romance novels might conflict with this statement, but I truly adore a good love story. But why do I never find well-written, logical! (is that too much to ask?) but smutty romances? Why aren't there any novels as superbly written and plotted as The Glimpses of the Moon, but with some sexy in them?So, The Glimpses of the Moon. Nick and Susy are a part of 1920th American high society, but they are penniless. They have no mean...

This was a very interesting, highly introspective read set in the glittering world of the 1920's in Europe, with people so far removed from our own reality in thoughts and manners as would make it impossible to relate to anything, were it not for its universal themes coupled with Wharton's astute study of character and perception of the human mind. When two young penniless elite Americans decide to join forces and get married in order to better encroach on their rich friends, theirs is a union s...

I'm so glad I read this book! "It's not House of Mirth," the reviews kept saying. "Well, neither is Anna Karenina War and Peace," I answered, and kept on reading.A marriage of two penniless socialites begins with a business bargain and ends. Or does it?

4-1/2 StarsEdith Wharton was a master at keeping the reader on the edge of their seat. Will the ending be happy or sad, will the lovers end up together of apart? These questions are not answered until the end. But Wharton doesn’t leave it simple. The reader, based on their own romantic concept of happiness is left to decide, does the couple live happily ever after? Or does the need for material things hinder their future. Me, I'll go with happily ever after.

'There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.'Cleverly written, poignant romantic story. I loved the dreamy quality of it, the discreet sense of humour and the fairy-tale ending some critics find implausible :) Thank you, Lisa, for recommending it - quite an enjoyable read :)