I absolutely love Edith Wharton, so when I found this in a used bookshop I snapped it up right away. Alas, I gave up on it halfway through. The writing was as good as I've come to expect from her. But I like to read short fiction before bed, and these stories were longer than those in other collections so it often took me several evenings to finish one. That would have been okay, if the stories were engaging. But every single one was a complete downer, mostly about lost loves and broken relationships. Wharton was definitely drawing on her life experiences, but who decided all of these belonged in a single book?

I really enjoyed Roman Fever and Other Stories, and recommend it over this book if you're interested in reading Edith Wharton's short fiction.