Hand Yelling The Age of Desire

I read this evoacative, atomospheric and compelling book - a novel about a novelist -  last week while on my own book tour which was an M.C. Escherish experience.

I really enjoyed this intimate exploration of Edith Warton's sexual awaking even though at times I wasn't overly fond of Edith herself, or the choices she made. Which does make this an odd endorsement I suppose.

But the book is beautifully written and compelling. Especially fascinating for fans of Warton - since the author based so much of the story on actual letters - it was fascinating for me to learn the story of Warton's loveless marriage and the man this brilliant woman chose to fall in lust with.

 “Somewhere between the repressiveness of Edith Wharton’s early-20th-century Age of Innocence and our own libertine Shades of Grey era lies the absorbingly sensuous world of Jennie Fields’s The Age of Desire . . . along with the overheated romance and the middle-age passion it so accurately describes, The Age of Desire also offers something simpler and quieter: a tribute to the enduring power of female friendship.”

—Boston Globe