Reef

by Edith Wharton

Book Overview

"I put most of myself into that opus," Edith Wharton said of The Reef, possibly her most autobiographical novel. Published in 1912, it was, Bernard Berenson told Henry Adams, "better than any previous work excepting Ethan Frome."
A challenge to the moral climate of the day, The Reef follows the fancies of George Darrow, a young diplomat en route from London to France, intent on proposing to the widowed Anna Leath. Unsettled...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684824442
• ISBN13: 9780684824444
• Release Date: July 1996
• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

The pain of passion

You could say that "The Reef" has two themes -- that you have to risk great pain to experience great passion, and the questions of infidelity, love and class and how they clash. It also happens to be the brilliant Edith Wharton at her most contemplative, since the entire dramatic storyline takes place in a love square at a rural French chateau. While "The Reef" is a slow-moving affair, the hauntingly poetic prose that Wharton employs -- and the painful questions it raises -- are worth immersing your brain into. Charles Darrow has been reunited with his first love Anna, now a widow living in France. He plans to propose to her, but on the train receives a telegram telling him not to come until the thirtieth of the month. Angry and hurt (he's kind of a playboy brat), he salves his hurt feelings by escorting pretty Sophy Viner (Alicia Witt), a feisty young girl hoping to get a job on the stage, around Paris for awhile. Unsurprisingly, Sophy's vibrant personality leads to a brief affair. A few months later, Charles and Anna have made up their differences, and their romance is back on track. But when Charles arrives at Anna's mother-in-law's chateau, he learns that her daughter's new governess is none other than Sophy. To make this whole scenario even more surreal, Charles' ex-lover is now engaged to Anna's stepson -- and both Anna and the stepson are unaware of what happened. But though Sophy and Charles try to keep their shared past a secret, the truth threatens to ruin all four of them. Yeah, it sounds a bit like a soap opera in period dress. It's only because of Wharton's skill that, instead of a cheap tawdry story, "The Reef" becomes a languid, sun-washed study of sexual double-standards, class, and repressed emotion. The entire novel is awash in a seemingly endless sea of contemplations -- many of the characters linger for pages over their pasts, their conflicted feelings, and the secrets they hide from one another. But it's also a study of tough relationship questions -- should infidelity be forgiven, and at what stage of a possible relationship does it become infidelity? And if someone wrongs you, can you trust them again? It's also beautifully written -- Wharton's slow, stately prose is filled with exquisite turns of phrase and beautifully evocative images. Even the most mundane places painted with words as if on a canvas ("The sun lay pleasantly on its brown walls, on the scattered books and flowers in old porcelain vases"). Much of the narrative is wrapped up in the slowly shifting inner feelings, tiny gestures and veiled comments of the characters, so that half of the most important confrontations seem to happen in a sort of code. Charles is a rather flawed male lead -- he's weak, flirtatious and easily upset, and seems to regard Anna postponing their meeting as being more inconsiderate than his affair with someone else. The women's roles are far more compelling, though. Anna is a strong, wealthy woman who is trying to uncork

Miss Manners

So, this is Edith Wharton! Miss Manners, you say----like watching a bunch of stiff English folks dance the minuet in an over-stuffed drawing room. Well, yeah, but! There's this thing she does with that drill. You, know, it's the way she uses it to penetrate the deepest recesses of her character's minds, three, in particular. There's Darrow, the handsome man-of-the-world eligible bachelor. Upon first meeting, you'll wonder if there's any there there. Wharton's drill reveals all. There's also, the widow Anna, Darrow's intended. When Anna discovers that Darrow once had a dalliance with Sophy, her daughter's governess, she becomes, as the Italians say, outside of her self. Here, Wharton's drill work is akin to watching a colonoscopy on the brain. While she never really leaves her house, never raises her voice, never moves more than a few muscles of her exquisite face, what we see going on in her brain has more twists, turns, and switchbacks than the car chase scene in the French Connection. Next to Anna and Darrow, Sophy presents with quiet dignity. Yes, she has had this affair with Darrow. Yes, she is of a lower class. But, no, she is not sorry for what she did. And, she is not about to sell her soul for the bourgeoisie existence so valued by Anna and Darrow. She's the most honest of the Wharton characters, and the one most difficult to analyze. One wrong move with the Sophy character, and you could easily get pulp fiction. Instead, Miss Manners drills out a masterpiece.

A World Unknown

A beautifully written story in which the two central female characters (Anna Leath and Sophy Viner) are alternate personas who struggle and are confined by the social order of the day. The genteel, older Anna -- whose rich interior life and deep introspection separated her -- as a young girl -- from other young women of her time who understood how to connect, particularly to potential husbands. And yet, Anna's early inability to form meaningful relationships cause other mothers of her circle to consider Anna the model of all ladylike virtues. Anna believes marriage will free her, yet it confines her. As a widow, she reaches back to the unrealized love of her early life and seeks to overcome the inhibitions of her past. Contrast that to Sophy Viner, young, vibrant and utterly naive, without the protection of family or fortune. The happiest time of her life is a brief, unwitting affair with the gentleman who was Anna's early love and who is about to return to Anna. How these three characters' lives intersect, and how they each struggle with conscience, character and social entitlement (or lack thereof) results in a thoughtful commentary on men, women and society. Wharton's beautiful prose and vivid scenes of both domestic life and nature add to the reader's experience.

One of Wharton's greatest sequences

Whatever you think of "The Reef," it contains one of Edith Wharton's most wonderful scenes. Our "hero" has been dallying for a while in a hotel with the young girl he picked up on the boat dock, and he's wearying of her. We see his boredom and disillusionment through his reactions to the mere sounds she is making in the next room. He is so familiar by now with her habits and movements that he knows what she's doing without actually seeing her. A gem of a scene, in a strange jewel of a book.

Flawed Characters= realism; Great Characterization & Setting

Yes, Wharton was just a tad mean and crude in writing the male counterpart of this book, but that's what makes this book so interesting. These characters had flaws! Actually flaws! I am so sick of reading books with perfect little characters with just one evil villian. This book shows you that no one is perfect, and everyone has a little evil in them.A charming, poetic, lyrical, and beautiful book to read. Wonderful descriptions, vivid images, lovely constructed sentences. The cover of THE REEF is also beautiful. The text and lay out enhances the story, the elegance of the past, the wrong and the right. The cover was also rather of a matte type of thing, not glossy, which reminds the reader of ceramic and the older days when they turn the pages and old the book open. Another lovely read by my favorite female author of the 20th century, Edith Wharton.