Join us online for lively discussions of Edith Wharton’s acclaimed works. This year we have selected The Valley of Decision, Ethan Frome, The Reef, and The Children.

Books can be found for free online viewing at Project Gutenberg, Project Gutenberg Australia, or purchased online at our affiliate Bookshop.org site.

Book Club Schedule:

February 15, 4 pm ET – Ethan Frome (1911)

This classic tale of winter reveals the tragic story of Ethan Frome, a hard-working farmer torn between his duty to his sickly wife, Zenobia, and his desire for Zenobia’s cousin, Mattie Silver. Begun originally as a French exercise and titled Hiver (French for “winter”), Ethan Frome draws upon Wharton’s time in the Berkshires. In her memoir, A Backward Glance, “It was not until I wrote Ethan Frome that I suddenly felt the artisan’s full control of his implements.”

March 21, 4 pm ET– The Reef (1912)

Published in 1912, at the end of Wharton’s affair with the journalist Morton Fullerton, this novel explores the sexual passions and jealousy of a mature woman. This work is being developed into an opera by two stars of the New York musical world: librettist Joan Ross Sorkin (bio) and composer Anthony Davis (bio), whose work, X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X, recently debuted at the Metropolitan Opera. Berkshire Opera Festival is partnering with Davis and Sorkin to produce the first public performance of their newly completed opera, scheduled for early April in New York City. This book club meeting will include members of the creative team working on the opera, with conversations on how they plan to adapt and update The Reef to excite and engage modern audiences.

April 18, 4 pm ET– The Children (1928)

Martin Boyne, a forty-six-year-old American engineer who has spent most of his adult working abroad, travels to Europe to meet up with his old love, recently widowed. Along the way, however, he befriends a group of seven children—siblings and half-siblings, a product of their parents’ many marriages. Boyne joins them and becomes increasingly drawn to the eldest child; a fifteen-year-old girl named Judith Wheater. The Children is a sometimes comic, other times caustic indictment of how wealthy parents raise their children and of men’s desire for women. It is also an unexpectedly personal book. As she wrote in a letter to a friend, “I was by many years the youngest in our family, & much thrown, at Judith’s age, with men who were my brother’s friends, men 15 or 20 years older than I was, who were, the most delightful of comrades & play-fellows. Looking back now, I see there were Boynes among them, but I was all unconscious then…”

The Mount is a Massachusetts Cultural Council UP designated organization welcoming participants of all disabilities. Please contact The Mount at 413-551-5100 or by email, info@edithwharton.org, to discuss accommodations needed to participate fully in this event.