Tame by today's standards, "Summer," Edith Wharton's most sexually explicit novel, probably shocked more than a few readers when it was first published almost 100 years ago. That it is also one of only two novels Wharton placed in a rural setting makes "Summer" even more unique among her novels.

Charity Royall is bored with her little North Dormer community and only works as the town librarian so she can save enough money to escape the life she endures there. She cares little for books and is perfectly willing to allow them to self-destruct on the shelves while she daydreams about a more exciting existence. But, as it turns out, her fate will be forever linked to the little library.

Lucius Harney, a young architect, has come to North Dormer to visit his aunt and to study and sketch some of the old homes in the area. When he wanders into the library one day in search of a book about the old houses, Charity is smitten with him and unknowingly sets the course that will alter the rest of her life. It is the start of a relationship that, even though it begins innocently, is best kept from the prying eyes of the town gossips. Charity knows that her guardian, Lawyer Royall, the man who did a better job of raising her before his wife died than after, would never approve the match - and that there are those in town who would relish the opportunity to tell him about it.

Secrecy, though, requires privacy, and privacy often leads to a degree of intimacy that results in tragic consequences for the unwed. Only after Harney returns to his life in New York, does Charity realize that she is pregnant - and on her own. As Wharton makes clear, a woman of this period facing Charity's dilemma had few options: illegal abortion, being sent away to have the baby in secrecy, running away in shame, or perhaps the unlikely luck of finding a sympathetic man willing to marry her.

Charity moves from desperation to despair when she realizes how limited her choices have become and that the life she was already unhappy with has been forever changed, and that change being for the worse. As she moves from one poor decision to the next, at times risking her very life, one is reminded of how greatly American mores and values have changed in the last five decades.

"Summer," even though it was governed by the stricter limits of its time on language and theme, is a memorable portrayal of what it was like for a woman to be "in trouble" during the first half of the 20th century. That it still can have a strong impact on the reader today leaves one wondering why it was not more of a sensation when first published. Edith Wharton fans should not overlook this fine novel.

Rated at: 4.0 ( )

This is romance gone wrong in the most realistic of ways. I couldn't help feeling, at the end, that though Charity ended up with someone who really loved her - still she lost something undefinable because she gave herself away to the first rush of strong emotion. Like many classic works, this one leaves a feeling of unsettledness. ( )

The most memorable characters in fiction are not perfect. It's the imperfections that get imprinted in your mind.

Charity Royall is full of imperfections. In fact, she's a walking imperfection.

All in all, it's a story of a young girl and a first love. It's nothing a million girls haven't or would not do.

Another thing that gets imprinted in your mind is a story that ends with uncertainty. We're left without knowing how Charity truly felt. Everything happened so fast for her, that I don't know if she had come to grips with it yet, and before I knew it, the book had come to an end.

This story is truly something to ponder. ( )

1385 Summer, by Edith Wharton (read 17 Apr 1976) This book is laid in western Massachusetts, as is Ethan Frome (which I read Sept 6, 1948) but does not have the impact I still vividly recall Ethan Frome had on me. The account of life the central female character had in her simpler earlier life seems grossly overdrawn, although supposedly it is not. I found the story distasteful, though Wharton writes like a great. But the story repels. ( )

The first thing that struck me when I finished this book was how times have changed. This was considered extremely provocative when it was published, yet Charity and Harney are only described kissing a few times, and are never described doing anything else. Charity strikes me as a very unhappy young woman, and even ungrateful. She lives with her much older (and yes, imperfect) guardian, and treats him with nothing but scorn throughout the entire story, even though he took her in and cared for her for almost her whole life without any obligation. He gets her the job she desires, and she treats it with scorn also, often abandoning it to lay in the fields for the afternoon. I can see that she is lost, but I found little reason to want her to have a happy ending. How Harney treats her is unfortunate, but she also looked at him with closed eyes. Harney fails to get his due, which I suppose is mostly a sign of the times — the man always gets away with it, and the woman is left to clean up the mess. The ending — Charity basically giving up on her dreams — may seem sad to most, but the way I see it, she had other choices and her own blindness and stubbornness led her to that ending. ( )