Old New York, published in 1924, consists of four novellas by Edith Wharton, each set in a different decade,starting in the 1840s and ending in the 1870s.  In each, Wharton recounts the subtle drama of characters navigating societal expectations, gender roles and the interpersonal chess game that determines their place in the New York of the era.

 Introducing us to a diverse cast of characters, ranging from a Civil War veteran to an unwed mother, the book charts the perils of getting too close to the edge of violating New York's social rules, which can result in characters' getting snubbed -- as Wharton says, 'cut' -- when peers' judgement turns against them.  Wharton masterfully describes the emotional nuance and anguish that show up in hints, glances and gestures that can make or break her characters' standing and futures.  She reminds us of the impact -- and serendipity -- of birth and blood ties, and the accumulation of small decisions that allow her characters to be masters of their fates, or, more often, involuntary casualties of human nature and society. 

In Wharton's fiction, what we perceive on the surface is not always the truth.  She paints her characters with depth and complexity that makes them identifiable and relatable.  Not surprisingly, Wharton based her novels on people she knew, and is one of few fiction writers to have documented New York's 'leisure class,' with details on clothing and customs, decor and menus,  places and people we might have encountered at the time.  It's a fun time machine, helped, in many cases, by a dictionary or the internet to look up specifics so we can picture more vividly what she describes.

Reading Edith Wharton can feel like leafing through a family photo album.  Her novels are stories of howgenerations build family histories.  And her novels are family albums of the US, as old, Dutch-descended New York clashes and gives way to industrial-age nouveaux riches, setting the stage, in post-Civil War America, for a more democratic, materialistic and less tradition-bound world.

Old New York was published after Wharton's classics -- House of Mirth (1905), Custom of the Country (1913), Age of Innocence (1920) -- were released, but it reads like a collection of etudes that could have preceded them, introducing themes and characters we see in her great novels.  If you're not up for reading Wharton's longer works -- or even if you are -- I recommend Old New York's 50 to 100 page novellas for an absorbing sampling of Wharton's tales.

 Lisa Frusztajer