The age of desire, by Jennie Fields

An imaginative treatment of a real period in the life of Edith Wharton.   At 45, Edith, who has her own inherited money, has for many years been in a loveless marriage to Edward “Teddy” Wharton, a wealthy man of no great intellectual depth.  They live somewhat separate lives.  They winter in Paris, which she loves and Teddy hates, and summer at “The Mount,” their country estate, where Teddy is happiest.  They also maintain a couple of apartments in New York City.  In Paris in 1907, she is introduced, by her great friend Henry James, to William Fullerton Morton, an American journalist working for the Times in Paris.  Fullerton, as she calls him, is younger, dashing, and irresistible.  He’s also a bounder, bisexual, and amoral, as we come to learn after Edith falls into a passionate affair with him, a true sexual awakening for her.  Edith had an unhappy childhood, mitigated by her governess, Anna, who is German.  Anna remains with Edith and becomes her secretary, friend, and the “first reader” of Wharton’s increasingly successful novels.   During this period, Teddy begins to exhibit what today would be diagnosed as bipolar disorder, his ill health intensified by the suspicion that his wife is under Fullerton’s spell.  Anna, who loves both Edith and Teddy, is torn by the conflicting desires that surround her.   I found the book fascinating.  I believe I’ve only read Ethan Frome of Wharton’s many books, and it reading this novel will drive me to read Wharton’s longer and more complex books (or maybe watch the movies!).   The author weaves the actual events skillfully in with the imagined conversations and scenes.  During this period, both Anna and Edith form life-changing emotional attachments that threaten to destroy their bond, and it is this relationship that the book is truly centered upon.   368 pp.