The Reef Audiobook By Edith Wharton cover art

The Reef

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The Reef

By: Edith Wharton
Narrated by: Kristen Underwood
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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 by Anna's reticence, Darrow drifts into an affair with Sophy Viner, a charmingly naive and impecunious young woman whose relations with Darrow and Anna's family threaten his prospects for success.

The affair becomes the reef on which four lives are in danger of foundering: two of them innocent and two of them burdened with experience and tinged with desperation. This is a story of the drastic effects of a casual sexual betrayal and a clear-eyed assessment of the possibilities and limitations of human love.

(P)1995 Blackstone Audio Inc. Classics

Critic reviews

"The novel...was most enthusiastically admired by Henry James, and one can see why, for it is most Jamesian....It marks the peak of her most brilliant period of creativity....And for us it is a chance to see what can be achieved in the pursuit of moral truths." (Anita Brookner)
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I’ve listened to many of Wharton’s works - novels, novellas and short stories - and this one lacks the lyrical (and often satirical) prose that distinguishes her from her peers. This feels more like a straightforward story, one action following the next, with none of the delightful phrases from her other works which I enjoy so much. Excellent narration.

Not her best

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I haven't read them all, but I've read many and for me, this is her very best. The characters are fascinating. The hero is a dolt, but Wharton makes him fascinating in his doltishness. The heroine was simply born at the wrong time, but she's touching and her fate involves you. Great narrator!

Wharton's Best?

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I have always found the work of Edith Wharton deeply compelling, because I empathize so strongly with the characters and even as I watch them make disastrous mistakes, I can't help wishing there was some way they could avoid the inevitable tragic consequences of their mistakes. This was so with Ethan Frome and The House of Mirth, and it is equally so of The Reef. However, this book ends with an odd and surprising conclusion that to my mind was ambiguous. I felt this detracted from what was otherwise a complex and powerful story.

Another compelling Wharton-style dilemma

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