Twilight Sleep

Moving effortlessly between satire and sympathy, Edith Wharton paints a gleaming portrait of 1920s New York society. At its centre is Pauline Manford, indefatigable hostess and do-gooder, who rules her family with ruthless charm, Dexter the generous lawyer who is her second husband, Arthur her ramshackle first husband, Nona, her gentle daughter, and son Jim, married to the exqisite Lita. When the preposterous Marchesa arrives on the scene, trailing debts and problems, Pauline strives with increasing desperation to keep her family together, too busy to recognise the threatening truth until it explodes in a tragi-comic catastrophe.