A classic. Most likely to be released.

This book is reserved for RoryG, who seems to have it on her wish list.

ETA: I took this book with me to the first-ever Finnish bookcrossing convention, to offer it to RoryG. However, she already had got the book from somewhere else, so I left the book on the table for someone to pick up. Someone probably did, but I haven't heard of the book since. Hopefully somebody is reading it somewhere!

It was a funny coincidence: I was travelling to southern Finland and on my way there I stopped by to check the boocrossing shelf in the library in Jyväskylä. I had only a few weeks ago finished reading the same novel in Finnish and I had the Finnish version with me. I left it on the shelf and took the English version with me. I loved the novel - it was brilliant. I only wished that I had read it in English as I thought something was lost during the translation process. I wanted to take a look at the original version and write down some quotes from the novel which I already wrote into my notebook in Finnish but was going to check later what they were in English. So I was happy to find the Age of Innocence on the bc shelf!

I absolutely love the language of the novel and the way Wharton describes the rules and conventions of the high society - norms that for us seem totally inapprehensible nowadays.

I recently travelled to Paris and came to think about this novel while being there. The end of the book was displayed in Paris and it impressed me quite much.

Hopefully this novel finds a reader soon so that we can hear more comments on the book. I will take it with me to a bookcrossing meeting in Oulu the day after tomorrow and hope for the best. :)



"Something he knew he had missed: the flower of life. But he thought of it now as a thing so unattainable and improbable that to have repined would have been like despairing because one had not drawn the first prize in a lottery. There were a hundred million tickets in his lottery, and there was only one prize; the chances had been too decidedly against him."

I took with me from Oulu bookcrossing meet up.

It took me a while to finish the book. At first I was pondering, if I really want to read the description of clothing, furniture, complex web of relations and sets of rules (I had a small baby in the house). Then I got into it and enjoyed the book. The New York of that time seems to have been a whole different than its modern equivalent. But really the book describes only the uppermost class of society which appears to be surprisingly stagnant. It happens after all only shortly after the Civil War, which does not get mentioned, and in a relatively young nation. The main characters Newland and May have first names that would imply on somewhat fresher thinking than they do present. I think May is described flatly and with annoyingly little character. There are nice quotes, I agree. The people in the book are captured by ridiculous rules but so are all the people to some extent.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

on the ground floor