The House of Mirth by Eddith Wharton

My exams are over! Yay! Unfortunately, there won't be time to celebrate, since prelims are coming up. But never mind the bad stuff, I have books to read, and Aunty Florence lent me 7 books, plus I'm visiting my aunt today. All this is enough to temporarily overwhelm the loom and doom of more exams.

So, yesterday, I finished this book called: The House of Mirth. If the title seems a little familiar, it's because it's part of a verse from Ecclesiastis 7:4: The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.

So, our protagonist is Lily Bart, a beautiful but poor (relatively poor anyway, since she's not working class), girl, who at 29 thinks she really should be getting married. She tries to catch one rich husband after the other, but even though you'd think the guys would be falling over her, she doesn't get married. But you know, they really do want to marry her, but she either says no (because they're married - most of the time), or she angers someone who ruins it for her. But I think that subconciously, she 'ruins' all the chances she has because none of the men are the one she loves - Selden.

The sadly ironic thing is that she doesn't admit she loves him. She dies, trying to find the word for the feeling she has, but he only said it when he was sitting next to her corpse. Oh yes, she dies (sorry for the spoiler). I won't say how, but she dies working class.

Even though she's portrayed as a gold digger, I found that I actually liked her. She's quite open about her intentions (to the reader anyway), and she's so admirable in her actions that she appears noble. -cheers-

The language of the book is decadent, which seems fitting, since it's about the American upper-class. There's a lot of snobbery too, those with and without money; those with old or new money. It seems like everyone just tries to out-do each other.

Anyway, this book, well, I hesitated before reading it because I thought it would be boring. It's not. It's no thriller, but it's enjoyable none the less.