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Product Description
Set in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. As Susy explains, "We should really, in a way, help more than hamper each other. We both know the ropes so well; what one of us didn't see the other might -- in the way of opportunities, I mean." The other part of the plan states that if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially, they're each free to dissolve the marriage. How their plan unfolds is a comedy of eros that will charm all fans of Wharton's work.
Customer Review: Honeymoon trials
Edith Wharton won the Pulitzer in 1921, for her social romantic tragedy "Age of Innocence." What to do after a triumph like that?
Well, in Wharton's case, she went the opposite direction, with a gentle romance called "The Glimpses of the Moon." It's the cliched love-or-money storyline that's existed as long as love and money, but Wharton elevates it with some social satire and lushly sensual writing.
Nick Lansing and Susy Branch are young, attractive, clever, arty, and poor -- they are confidantes of the wealthy, but can't live like them. So Susy comes up with a scheme: they'll get married, and live for a year off the honeymoon gifts and guest houses -- and if either of them gets a better offer, they'll divorce immediately with no hard feelings.
All goes smoothly for the idyllic first months. But when staying in Venice, Nick finds that they are staying at a villa because Susy is helping the house's mistress meet up with her boytoy -- and that Susy's acid-tongued pal has just inherited a fortune. But despite their pact, Susy finds it increasingly difficult to imagine a life without Nick -- especially when he seems to be involved with a clever young archaeologist's daughter.
The story of "Glimpses of the Moon" is not the selling point of this onetime bestseller -- you can pretty much guess how it will turn out, and how many days the pact between Nick and Susy will last. In fact, it's kind of astonishing that Hollywood hasn't nabbed this one rather than the tragic "Ethan Frome" or the bittersweet "Age of Innocence."
But the beauty of "Glimpses of the Moon" is how it's presented -- Wharton's prose relaxes into a sensual feast of decayed villas, bright sunlight, rich colours and luxurious details. It slacks off as Nick and Susy's relationship deteriorates, but the first half is awash in beautiful imagery ("... a great white moth like a drifting magnolia petal"). And of course, we always have the overhanging symbolism of the moon.
And it wouldn't be a Wharton book without some social commentary -- in this case, about the idle wealthy eagerly snatching onto any trendy artist, illicit lover or amusement that will fill their empty days. And of course, the lesson that love should trump greed.
Wharton's knack for characterization doesn't hurt either -- Nick is a penniless artist hoping to keep this pact-marriage together, and Susy a social wit without many scruples, until she inadvertantly drives Nick away. The supporting characters could have a book devoted to each one as well -- the acid-tongued peer, a rather snotty young girl, and a desperate wealthy matron bouncing from one "toyboy" relationship to another.
"Glimpses of the Moon" is a simple boy-and-girl story, but with a clever social twist questioning what happens AFTER happily-ever-after. Romantic, sensual and sometimes tartly amusing.
Customer Review: "Doesn't our being together depend on what we get out of people?"
Set in the aftermath of World War I, this study of 1920s society, with its elements of social comedy and satire, follows Nick Lansing and his wife Susy, through the highest levels of European society. Though they have the credentials to be accepted, they are financially limited, always unsure where their next funds will come from. Nick and Susy have married for love, with the understanding that if either of them finds a more financially stable suitor with a long-term future, that each is free to dissolve the marriage. They spend their honeymoon year living in the empty European homes of their more affluent friends.
When they stay in the palazzo of Ellie Vanderlyn in Venice, early in the novel, Susy receives a note from Ellie asking her to mail four letters, one each week, to Ellie's absent husband Nelson, so that he will not know she is away. Confronted with this thorny problem, which she has been sworn not to reveal to Nick, Ellie agrees, knowing no way around the problem, since she and Nick depend on Ellie's hospitality.
It reveals no plot surprises to say that Susy's deception eventually undermines her superficial but loving relationship with Nick. Wounded by Susy's lack of trust and her deceit, Nick needs to get away. The separate comings-of-age of Nick and Susy occupy the bulk of the novel as each, still sharing the extravagant lifestyles of their friends, considers whether to honor the agreement to let the other person go if someone "better" comes along.
Wharton presents their dilemmas clearly--their desire to experience the "good life," their belief that they deserve to do so, the lengths they are willing to go to make it possible, the conflicts they face between their latent ethical sense and the realities of their lives, the belated discovery that each has the potential to support himself/herself, and the growing awareness that life offers many rewards that are not financial.
Filled with trenchant observations about society and the frivolous behavior of those committed to remaining part of it, Wharton's novel draws attention to the conflict between real feelings and pretensions and between real goals and social expectations, presaging the novels of Fitzgerald. A sophisticated and elegantly written study of aristocratic society in the twenties in Europe, this is not Wharton's most thoughtful novel, but it one of her best observed. n Mary Whipple
Customer Review: Love in the Gilded Age
THE GLIMPSES OF THE MOON by Edith Wharton is an incredibly readable, engaging novel, that is accessible, interesting and involving. While it's not at the level of her better known novels The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth, it's quite worthwhile. Wharton wrote GLIMPSES in 1922, two years after winning the Pulitzer Prize for Innocence. (She was the first woman to win the prize.)
The premise of the book is that two society people from New York, Susy Branch and Nick Lansing, decide to marry. They are in love, but the twist is that their marriage is ostensibly a business deal: While they are socially connected, neither one of them has enough money to live the life of their peers. Because of this, they live off their friends' generosity and whims. They scheme to marry because with all the honeymoon gifts, money, precious items, and the subsequent lending of homes their friends will make to them for their honeymoon, they will be able to live the life they want for at least a year. They also agree that if either one of them finds a way to make a better match for him- or herself, they will willingly free each other from the marriage.
Their subsequent personal and physical journeys are the subject of the rest of the book, as they try to resolve themselves to their situations and look back on what they have together and how their future will play out.
It's hard to believe this book was written in 1922. The prose reads like a current novel, and Edith Wharton is, as always, deft at skewering the moral bankruptcy of the very rich at the same time she demonstrates a fundamental understanding of their world. Those caught between, like Susy and Nick, make fascinating studies as their characters grow toward or away from the light this lifestyle casts. Wharton also keenly portrays the very human behaviors of individuals on whom she concentrates, and shows both Susy and Nick as sympathetic and frustrating simultaneously to the reader as they each seek to come to terms with their options and their feelings toward each other in light of their current values. No one is really the hero or the anti-hero here. It seems in some ways to be a realistic portrayal of maturity and some growth, while also being a tale of the power of affluence and ease to corrupt and weaken.
As I wrote, this book is "lighter" than Mirth and Innocence, but it deserves to be read. Some aspects of it seem a little too tidy, but not completely unconvincing. Wharton is a master -- one of my favorite authors -- and this book demonstrates her abilities in a clean, straightforward story of two lovers and the impact of their community on their relationship, their values and their behaviors.
Customer Review: an entertaining oddball of a book
Given the flawlessly smooth machinery of THE HOUSE OF MIRTH and THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY, it's kind of weird to come across a Wharton novel as structurally sloppy as this one. More uncharacteristically yet, the first three chapters, in my opinion, are just plain shabbily written. But Wharton is never without her reasons, and once she's disposed of the characters' "backstory" as expeditiously (if inelegantly) as possible at the top of the book, she hits her stride in earnest and gives us all of the pleasures of a great Wharton tale -- chiseled prose, trenchant humor, sociological precision, briskly paced and compactly dramatized. Something that strikes me about this book: it'd make a much better movie, be much easier to adapt, than either HOUSE OF MIRTH or AGE OF INNOCENCE. It's got fewer locations, a much smaller cast of characters -- heck, it even has a happy ending, and an honestly earned one. (In fact, the conceit it starts with -- a couple in love who'd like to stay together, but alas, there's no money in it -- is pretty much the idea Preston Sturges started with in THE PALM BEACH STORY, an audience-pleaser for sure.)
Customer Review: Asks a Good Question While Telling a Good Story
The Glimpses of the Moon is undeniably not Edith Wharton's best work, but that doesn't keep it from being a very rich story. Wharton does one of her best jobs ever of getting and keeping her reader's interest in the main characters and their friends, society, and lives. If you have read Wharton before, you know that she does a flawless job of this anyway, so let me assure you that TGOTM is outstanding in this sense. I couldn't get over the fact that Susy defines potential self-discovery so perfectly. Wharton somehow keeps us from siding entirely with Nick, who is close to being morally perfect. Even when Susy is at her most primitive and ruthless, Wharton reminds us, subliminally it seems, that she is still a 'good' character. In a way, Wharton presents us with a question and a problem in her presentation of Nick and Susy. In a world where money is needed not only to thrive physically but also socially, there are two ways to deal with the fact that you have less of it than everyone else: You can be like Nick or you can be like Susy. They are at two opposite ends of the spectrum and they stand for two completely different forms of action. They love each other, too, and this makes the issue even more of a puzzle. Which character would you choose to act like? Even more importantly, which character's actions most defines your own actions in 'real life?' Wharton never suggests that either way is the right way. As readers, we can only examine the consequences of both characters' actions and notice how the book ends. It's not surprising that Wharton hides her answer in a love story.
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