“It took a good deal of argument to convince you that we could face the ridicule of Como!” His wife instantly challenged this belittling of her capacity. So-with all respect to you-it wasn’t much of a mental strain to decide on Como.” And Monte Carlo is ruled out because it’s exactly the kind of place everybody expected us to go. “Versailles in May would have been impossible: all our Paris crowd would have run us down within twenty-four hours. His hand still lay on hers, and for a long interval, while they stood silent in the enveloping loveliness of the night, she was aware only of the warm current running from palm to palm, as the moonlight below them drew its line of magic from shore to shore. “Poor old Fred!” he merely remarked and she breathed out carelessly: “Oh, well-” But he seemed to have no desire to do so. She was conscious of throwing in the moor tentatively, and yet with a somewhat exaggerated emphasis, as if to make sure that he shouldn’t accuse her of slurring it over. It was characteristic that she merely added, in her steady laughing tone: “Or, not counting the flat-for I hate to brag-just consider the others: Violet Melrose’s place at Versailles, your aunt’s villa at Monte Carlo-and a moor!” “So we had-you wonder!” He laid his hand on hers, and his touch renewed the sense of marvelling exultation which the deliberate survey of their adventure always roused in her…. “Oh, come – when we’d five to choose from. “Yes-or the loan of Strefford’s villa,” her husband emended, glancing upward through the branches at a long low patch of paleness to which the moonlight was beginning to give the form of a white house-front. “It required a total lack of humour, or as great a gift for it as ours, to risk the experiment,” Susy Lansing opined, as they hung over the inevitable marble balustrade and watched their tutelary orb roll its magic carpet across the waters to their feet. 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. A young couple is on their honeymoon, and as they linger in the moonlight reflecting off Lake Como, their thoughts are not so much on each other as on their great good fortune in being there at all… If I had never read any of Edith Wharton’s Big Important Novels, and had picked this one up cold, what would I think? So I won’t be comparing Susy Lansing to Lily Bart, obvious counterparts though they may be. Coming to it with that initial expectation, I asked myself how it appealed to me as a stand-alone novel. It’s been many years since I read Edith Wharton’s tragic American Lit classic, The House of Mirth, but I retain enough memory of it to be able to say that The Glimpses of the Moon is, in comparison, one of Wharton’s minor novels. I’m going to give you a transcription of the opening page and a general overview – SPOILER ALERT: the ending is divulged – before sending you off to visit several other more thoughtful reviews, both of which much more fully reference The Glimpses of the Moon in relation to The House of Mirth. But it’s decidedly readable, especially if one is interested in comparing it to the much stronger The House of Mirth, with which it shares some common themes, though the author takes her characters in a different direction, and the tone of The Glimpses of the Moon frequently approaches farce. This one started out very well, but I felt it lost steam as it went on, and the ending was, in my opinion, more than slightly weak. In The Glimpses, Mercedes and multi-instrumentalist and producer Matthew Leonard create soulful tunes, steeped in haunting melodies and honeyed harmonies.The Glimpses of the Moon by Edith Wharton ~ 1922. Her music flows from folk, blues, country, rock, and jazz, reflecting the many traditions that inspire her. Mercedes Mill grew up singing in choirs and musicals, and the art of songwriting called to her from an early age.
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