Notes From Sickleburg

Tag: edith wharton

  • Book diary: The Custom of the Country

    Finished Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country this morning. I really got the sense that Wharton knew the settings of this book intimately, each one a slightly bigger gilded prison than the last. That prison is what the title refers to: the rules of polite society that bind Undine Spragg, the main character. She’s…

  • Reading Diary: The Custom of the Country

    I’m about halfway through Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country. I’ll have some more to say soon. For now: what good character names! The main character is brilliantly named “Undine Spragg,” but my favorite is the society painter Claud Walsingham Popple, who is exactly like how his name sounds.