The Custom of the Country
“Laurel Lefkow gives a stellar performance…The story features one of literature’s least likable heroines, Undine Spragg. Lefkow gives her a simpering, cloying, sometimes whiny voice, which is perfectly suited to this shallow, spoiled, and self-absorbed young woman…The story is slow paced and filled with richly detailed locales. Lefkow’s warm, articulate voice makes for a highly enjoyable listening experience. Winner of the AudioFile Earphones Award.”
AudioFile
Winner of an AudioFile Earphones Award
Singleminded and spoiled, Undine Spragg arrives in New York determined to procure for herself a social status to match her family’s wealth.
Ambition, greed, and an arresting beauty soon secure her path to marriage—and also to divorce. The Custom of the Country (1913) is a sophisticated commentary on both , touching on the implications for a woman of ending a marriage at a time when the author herself was navigating that very situation.
As the splendidly mismatched Undine and Ralph travel to Europe, Wharton contrasts the pecuniary motivation of the nouveau riche in America with European ideals of tradition, and through her array of characters and subtle insights into society, she delivers a novel every bit as immersive and entertaining as The Age of Innocence.
Praise