THE AGE OF INNOCENCE

Like an autocrat of a nineteenth-century drawing room, Daniel Henning captures the pedantic wit of Edith Wharton's keenly observant masterpiece about a "long vanished America," which won a 1921 Pulitzer Prize. It's the Gilded Age of the 1870s, and a young scion of one of New York's finest and most influential families is about to marry the girl of his dreams, also a member of New York's high society. Then he meets her exotic, sophisticated cousin, who just happens to be unhappily married to a Polish count. As our hero is torn between two loves, Henning nicely accentuates Wharton's light and ironic tone in describing the never-ending parties, the gossip, and society's insatiable appetite for scandal. A tour de force of American literature. B.P. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine [Published: DECEMBER 2024]