A FEAST OF WORDS The Triumph of Edith Wharton

Great art, like ripe fruit, can only come from a fully mature tree. One that is stunted will only bring forth stunted fruit. Cynthia Griffin Wolff traces the process by which Edith Wharton emerged from such a troubled life to literary triumph. Repressed from her youth, Wharton does battle with the monsters that haunt first the young artist, then the mature woman, to become fully both in the end. Fields’s powerful reading is richly seductive and melodic, but careful as well: She deftly shifts intonation slightly between Wharton and Wolff so that the reader never confuses the two. In the end, she reads a satisfying and scholarly portrait of the woman as artist. P.E.F. ©AudioFile, Portland, Maine [Published: JUN/JUL 98]