Edith Wharton's little discussed Jazz Age classic, The Mother’s Recompense (1925), finds Kate Clephane returning to New York society, after abandoning her husband and three-year-old daughter years before. American Kate Clephane has lived in Europe for twenty years, the ghosts of a failed marriage and abandoned daughter haunting her as she drifts along the French Riviera. It is an aimless, turbulent life, lived in the company of other expats and outcasts, the scars of World War I still evident across the continent. When Kate is summoned back to New York by the very daughter (now a wealthy heiress) she once abandoned, Kate leaps at the chance to re-enter the world that previously shut its doors on her. Just as Kate is on the cusp of reclaiming the life she forfeited, Chris Fenno, her former lover, returns to the scene, this time as a suitor for Kate’s daughter. For Kate, this disaster cuts two ways, for not only is Chris an opportunistic and feckless man, but he also remains the love of Kate’s life. Thus begins a complex and intricate dance of secrets, desires, scandal, and shifting motives. The Mother’s Recompense is a brilliant commentary on freedom, motherhood, agency, and duty. It explores the full weight of the choices we make as we try and fail to reinvent and reimagine ourselves. Wharton’s gifts for wit, dialogue, and image are put to stunning use in this riveting social drama that sees New York society shaken to its very foundations.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2026-11-26
Mått127 x 196 x 23 mm
Vikt227 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieSmith & Taylor Classics
Antal sidor272
FörlagUnnamed Press
ISBN9781961884939

Tillhör följande kategorier

Moderna och samtida romaner inom Skönlitteratur

Edith Wharton was an American writer and designer. Wharton drew upon her insider's knowledge of the upper-class New York "aristocracy" to portray realistically the lives and morals of the Gilded Age. In 1921, she became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction for her novel The Age of Innocence. Joanna Biggs is the author of A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again and a finalist for the 2023 National Award for Arts Writing. She is an editor at The Yale Review. Jennifer Wilson is a staff writer at The New Yorker covering books and culture. Previously, she was a critic at The New York Times Book Review. She holds a Ph.D. in Russian literature from Princeton. Allison Miriam Smith is a co-founder of Smith & Taylor Classics. She is also an Acquiring Editor and Publishing & Publicity Manager for Unnamed Press. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English & Creative Writing from the University of Southern California where she was an assistant curator for the USC Doheny Library George Cassady Lewis Carroll Special Collection. She later went on to earn a Masters in 18th & 19th c. Literature from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, working nights at the library. Before Unnamed Press, she was a bookseller at Skylight Books. She lives in Los Angeles, CA.