Roman Fever, and other stories

Roman Fever & Other Stories / Edith Wharton
Collier Books, 1993, c1934.
304 p.

I enjoyed slowly reading through this collection of some of Wharton's best short stories -- well, 8 of them anyhow! I picked it up because I wanted to read Xingu, a story of snobby book club ladies of the 1910s who are bamboozled by one of their members. So funny! It really delivered. 

And then I just kept reading the other stories, bit by bit. The contents are: 

Roman fever (1934)

Xingu (1911)

The other two (1904)

Souls belated (1899)

The angel at the grave (1901)

The last asset (1904)

After Holbein (1928)

Autres temps (1911)

This gives a range of her writing both in theme and in date, with the stories ranging from 1899 to 1934. The title story is a masterpiece, so good and so unexpected. Each of the stories is memorable, but I especially liked The Angel at the Grave and After Holbein as well. Wharton writes without flowery flourishes, for the most part, but she is so good at description. The places and situations she evokes are clear. 

As with most of her novels, she is looking at the wealthy classes in her stories and skewering pretensions, although not in a mean spirited way. In fact there is quite a bit of compassion in some of these stories, you feel for the poor deluded souls who seem to be out of step with their times. 

She touches on divorce, relationships, mother/daughter issues, and the change between generations. The older characters can't seem to understand the freedom of the younger ones, as so many of the societal 'rules' they carefully learned have now gone by the wayside. Those changes are elements of many of these stories. 

Well worth exploring, and best I think to take some time to think about each one before starting the next or they might blend together a bit. Great collection, of just a handful of her many, many stories.