Twilight Sleep by Edith Wharton

I was so excited to discover a reprint of an Edith Wharton book that I had never read. Instead of the usual Wharton themes of a divorced woman being banished to the Riviera or something lovely like that this novel promises remarkably modern themes "sex, drugs, work, money, infatuation with the occult and spiritual healing".

I very quickly discovered why it has been out of print for so long. Shouldn't there be some sort of licence of political correctness that allows editors to pretend good dead novelists weren't so embarrassingly racist in the past? I mean, I know some people may find it historically correct to read Edith Wharton using words like nigger but it really grated on my nerves and made me feel hostile towards the work altogether. But it does have some redeeming qualities - the best of which is the portrayal of the young daughter of the family who is somehow obliged to hold the mishmashed family unit together. It is indeed a very contemporary mix of mother and ex-husband and new husband and half brother and half sister and half sister-in-law all muddling along.

Here is my favourite passage. Pauline, the mother is too busy with her various Committees and meetings to make time for her family, so it falls on her daughter Nona's shoulders to take action when her mother's first husband is found to be drinking too much again. "There were moments when Nona felt oppressed by responsibilities and anxieties not of her age, apprehensions that she could not shake off and yet had not enough experience of life to know how to meet. One or two of her girl friends, - in brief intervals between whirls and twirls - had confessed the same vague disquietude. It was as if . . . the demons of the elder generation ignored, baulked of their natural prey, had cast their hungry shadow over the young." Well, she really is brilliant, Edith Wharton, after all. What child of Hippies or Beatniks hasn't felt that way at some time of their lives? or all the time for that matter?

There's nothing much about spirituality or healing in the book - just a bit of fanaticism on Pauline's part. Most of the plot contains the subtle threads that are pulled when Pauline's second husband Dexter develops an unconscious infatuation for his stepson's wife. That whim on his part sets off an entire chain of events, showing how the power of the patriarch still reigns in even the most liberal of families. Uncomfy stuff indeed, and also very true to life.

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