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    Summer
    Summer
    Summer
    Audiobook6 hours

    Summer

    Written by Edith Wharton

    Narrated by Lyssa Browne

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Summer, set in New England, is a novel by Edith Wharton, published in 1917. The novel details the sexual awakening of its protagonist, 18-year-old, Charity Royall, and her cruel treatment by the father of her child. Only moderately well-received when originally published, Summer, has had a resurgence in critical popularity since the 1960s.

    Edith Wharton, January 24, 1862-August 11, 1937, was a Pultizer Prize-winning novelist, short story writer, and designer. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1927, 1928, and 1930.

    Wharton combined her insider's view of America's privileged classes with a brilliant, natural wit to write humorous, incisive novels and short stories of social and psychological insight. She was well acquainted with many of her era's other literary and public figures, including Theodore Roosevelt.

    Lyssa Browne started performing in theatre when she was very young. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Theatre and Dance she moved to Seattle where she has performed in many area theatre companies. Lyssa's voice can be heard as many different characters in Nintendo and X-Box games, as well as the narrator of documentaries for the Discovery Channel and others.

    Public Domain (P)2014 Lyssa Browne

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherListen & Live Audio
    Release dateOct 26, 2023
    ISBN9781593166977
    Author

    Edith Wharton

    Edith Wharton was born in 1862 to a prominent and wealthy New York family. In 1885 she married Boston socialite 'Teddy' Wharton but the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1913. The couple travelled frequently to Europe and settled in France, where Wharton stayed until her death in 1937. Her first major novel was The House of Mirth (1905); many short stories, travel books, memoirs and novels followed, including Ethan Frome (1911) and The Reef (1912). She was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature with The Age of Innocence (1920) and she was thrice nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. She was also decorated for her humanitarian work during the First World War.

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    Reviews for Summer

    3.5/5

    527 ratings40 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this short novel by Edith Wharton. The writing is beautiful and evokes the small town, countryside and behaviors of the unsophisticated townsfolk and the renegade Mountain folk living on the fringes of Society. None of the characters are sympathetic, but written so fully you feel you know them well. The protagonist, Charity Royall is by turns ungrateful, petty, naive, impulsive and impressionable. All in all, a very satisfying tale by one of America's best writers.
    • 3/5
      This is my 3rd Wharton and it is in the middle with Ethan Frome being at the top and The Age of Innocence being at the bottom. This is classic Wharton, high society versus lower social classes; high society courts low society, leaves her in a lurch to marry his own kind. 144 pages
    • 3/5
      This is my 3rd Wharton and it is in the middle with Ethan Frome being at the top and The Age of Innocence being at the bottom. This is classic Wharton, high society versus lower social classes; high society courts low society, leaves her in a lurch to marry his own kind. 144 pages
    • 4/5
      Everyone reads Ethan Frome in high school, and nobody reads Summer. I think it's because everyone likes to imagine New England as a cold, wintry place.Charity Royall is the heroine, adopted by a prominent family in a tiny town in the Berkshires from the lawless Mountain. She longs to widen her small world of North Dormer, and gets her wish when a young New York architect shows up and takes an interest in the area's older buildings, and Charity.The way Harney is written is very interesting - he's most attractive to Charity when he's very vulnerable. Wharton has a sneaky way of transposing gender roles, and exploring a space in which women are both powerful, and incredibly powerless.Harney isn't compelling as a romantic lead, unless through Charity's eyes. Although, there is that one scene at Miss Hatchard's. Yeah, you know which one I mean.Marilyn French's Introduction is a capable biography of Wharton and description of her contribution to American letters. If you've only read Ethan Frome, get on the Summer in New England bandwagon!
    • 4/5
      Charity Royall is a charity case who is rescued as a 3-year-old from a gritty mountain clan. She was brought up by a small-town lawyer and his wife who died while Charity was a child. Her schooling was almost nonexistent so it's quite ironic that she becomes the town's part-time librarian. Her only goal is to save money and move away from "a hideous parody of the fatherly old man she had always known." Fate intervenes in the form of a young architect who presents new possibilities in her dreary existence.Set in a remote part of New England, Wharton compares Charity's sexual awakening to the sensuality of nature. Many beautiful passages attest to the likeness of the sun-warmed earth to a young woman in love. But nature can be cruel...and so can life. Whether or not you like Charity as a character, I think her story is one to get caught up in and illustrate a new sense of the idea of home and belonging. I recommend this one for a change of pace from the usual New York City society books by Edith Wharton.
    • 4/5
      A most daring novel for 1917, and more in line atmospherically with Ethan Fromm, that her sophisticated novels of society, Summer is about the sexual awakening of 17 year old Charity Royall who lives in a small New England town and takes care of the local library. Charity had been adopted from disreputable mountain people, but is bored and unhappy until the architect Lucius Harney comes to town. The romance that blossoms between these two is as lush and erotic as the summer countryside, but when summer is over, its consequences are disastrous. Vivid and poetic, this short novel is one of Wharton's best.
    • 4/5
      I read this for my June reading group, so there may be more comments after that. That I read it just after finishing Nancy Isenberg's White Trash was interesting. The novel is centered in the exact divide between the people of the town, with their manners and habits, and the people on the mountain, clear emblems of the lowest level of society. Charity Royall, saved from the mountain folk she was born into, grows up in the town, as a foster daughter to the Royalls. By the time she is of age, only Mr. Royall is left. When Charity falls in love with the polished nephew of the town doyen, predictable things ensue.What interested me most was the tension between Mr. Royall and Charity, mostly the normal one between a parent and teenager, but also between a lonely man and a young woman; the suffocating attention of small town society; and the distinctions of class so well portrayed. Nothing surprised me, but the writing is lovely and full of details of nature and dress and feeling. I anticipated the ending, but not its tenderness.
    • 4/5
      Summer by Edith Wharton is a short novel set in rural New England that was originally published in 1917. This story was rather controversial in it’s time dealing as it does with some sensitive issues like sexual awakening and unmarried pregnancy. Like many of this authors books the themes revolve around social class, and the narrow margin people had to fit their lives into.While on the surface this seems to be a story about a young woman seduced and led astray, Wharton made it very clear that this story had two main protagonists, Charity and Lawyer Royall. She sees her characters as trapped in a closed society and needing to work through their moral struggles to find inner peace and acceptance. While many are disappointed in the ending of this story, I felt it was obvious that Charity made the best decision that she could as her choices were extremely limited. Her final choice would hopefully lead to a peaceful and contented life. While Summer didn’t touch me emotionally in the same way that her Ethan Frome did, the writing is wonderful, her descriptions are clear and very visual, and her characters are well defined. I can’t say that I particularly liked Charity or Lawyer Royall, but they felt complete and true to their time. Like all of Wharton’s books that I have read so far, there is a thread of sadness that runs though the narrative and helps to steer the story through both the internal and external conflicts. As always the author knows how to deliver her story and leave her reader with much to reflect upon.
    • 4/5
      This had been TBR for years, amongst all my other already-read Wharton novels. Finally picked up for #authoramonth2020 (a Litsy prompt) & #1001books and am glad I did. While not Wharton‘s strongest work, this story of 18-yo Charity Royall falling into love and then falling into tough situations resonated with me. Published in 1917 — surely would be different for Charity today, but by how much?
    • 4/5
      Charity Royall. I loved her, hated her, sympathized with her, and cried for her.

      She's a young woman at age 19, bored with her life in a small New England town. Adopted by Lawyer Royall at a young age, she was saved from a life of poverty on the "mountain". One would think she would have been grateful, but not Charity. She hates Mr. Royall for what she sees as her imprisonment in small town drudgery, and also for his proposal of marriage.

      Enter Lucius Harney, sophisticated man about town; a young architect visiting nearby. Suddenly, Charity's hopes of escaping North Dormer and her new found sexuality awaken.

      Charity learns some ugly life lessons, some sooner rather than later. This novel must have been shocking in 1917 when it was released. A young woman with sexual needs and desires was not something openly discussed in those days, certainly not in small New England towns.

      I have a fondness for Edith Wharton's work. She lived not too far from me, in a home she designed and had built herself. To me, she has always represented a fighter against the rules of society and their effect on women of the day. Unfortunately, the women in her stories often lose their fights. In this case, I choose to view the ending as a victory for Charity. She certainly made out better than poor Lily Bart.

      Recommended for fans of classics and readers that enjoy social commentary disguised as an entertaining tale.
    • 4/5
      This book by Edith Wharton is set in New England in the rural area, small town, unlike her novels that are often set in New York. This one reminded me more of her book Ethan Frome. The story is about Charity Royall, a young woman from the mountain raised by the Royals. Its themes include social class, the role of women in society, destructive relationships, sexual awakening. Charity Royall is rather dull person. She has a job at the library but knows nothing of books and sits there making lace which i gather She is not very good at. She is hired to be there a certain amount of hours but thinks nothing of leaving early. I was only impressed with her ability to set limits and boundaries with men but even that was short lived. In the end, Charity does make at least a decision that will ensure a future and safety. Lawyer Royall is the other character and some might say he is the main character. Lawyer Royall went up the mountain and rescued Charity after her father was sent to prison and made the request of Royall that he do so. Lawyer Royall and his wife raised Charity and even though she used his last name, she was never officially adopted. After the death of his wife, Charity remained with Royall. Their relationship is conflicted. The other man, Lucius Harney, really is the weak male who leads on Charity but in the end he fails to take charge. He is an architect who has come to study the buildings in the area and he takes an interest in remodeling the musty library. Both Royal and Charity are merciless to each other in telling the other of their flaws and both don't "fit" well in North Dormer but have chosen to live there.
    • 2/5
      This is one of Wharton's shorter novels and is set in the NY countryside amongst the relatively poor instead of the city wealthy like most of her novels. While I loved this setting in Ethan Frome, I have to say that it didn't work for me this time. I found it predictable, dark, and fairly hopeless - not really what I was hoping for right now.The story surrounds Charity Royall, a young woman who is adopted by the Royalls and taken away from the Mountain where a group of poor, hopeless people live, to live in a small town in the valley. When Mrs. Royall dies, Mr. Royall propositions Charity and she makes it clear that she will never have that sort of relationship with him. Then Mr. Harney comes to town. He is young and attractive and interested in Charity. They develop a relationship and then the inevitable happens she gets pregnant, he leaves, and she finds out he's already engaged to another, wealthier woman in the town. There is no fairy tale ending here. Wharton's writing is wonderful as always, but I thought this story was predictable and so hopeless that I just couldn't get on board. This is the first book of Wharton's that I've found disappointing.
    • 3/5
      SPOILERS!|||||||VThis book seems shocking for a well-regarded author in 1917. Seduction is the least of it--a single woman pregnant, an female doctor who can "solve the problem" (indicating how not-uncommon her predicament was, the the word "abortion" is not used), the actual mention of "the babe". And then she marries her adoptive father? I can't help but wonder--given he had already asked her twice--if that was considered perfectly acceptable then? Because a century later, that is the most disturbing part of the book.There are so many things going on here that could be discussed--city boy vs country girl; young woman with a job she can't do but got through her adoptive father; nature vs nurture in her coming from the mountain. Definitely still relevant, but also dated.
    • 4/5
      I was the only person in my sophomore English class that enjoyed reading Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome" so it's no surprise to me that I really enjoyed her novel "Summer" as well all these years later. I find Wharton's characters to be unlikable people that you really want to root for anyway, (and that is a difficult balance to achieve in my experience.)This novel is the story of Charity Royall, who was "brought down the mountain" and raised by a lawyer and his wife. Mrs. Royall dies and her benefactor sets his sights on marrying her. Charity also experiences a sexual awakening when she bumps into Mr. Harney at the local library.While this work was controversial in Wharton's time, it is pretty tame today. I liked the story overall and Charity's growing knowledge of her circumstances was portrayed very well. I wouldn't put this up there with Wharton's best work, but it definitely was a worthwhile read.
    • 5/5
      I'm adding Edith Wharton to the list of historical people I wish I could meet.
    • 5/5
      Trolling the threads of LT recently I saw a review referencing the "devastating" ending of Edith Wharton's Summer. This compelled me to pull the book from my shelf. I thought I had read it before, but as I read it I had no memory of the characters or events it describes. And devastating, indeed, the ending is.This is the story of Charity Royall, a young woman living in a small country town. When Lucius Harney, an architect from the city, comes to town, she falls in love. This book has been described as Wharton's most sexually explicit novel, and it created a huge scandal when it was published in 1917. We can experience with Charity the joy of her first experiences, but know that at that time and place an educated, sophisticated, wealthy man from the city is not going to marry an uneducated, poor, unsophisticated country girl, no matter how beautiful. And we know, as Wharton shows us time and again, that at that time the options for women were extremely limited--especially for a "tainted" woman.In the Reading Globally Nobel Prize Writers thread, there was a long discussion about the dearth of female literature nobelists (only 13 of 111 literature laureates have been women). Wharton certainly must be counted among the writers the Nobel committee overlooked.Highly recommended.4 1/2 stars
    • 4/5
      When she was a young child, Charity Royall was rescued from “the Mountain” by Lawyer Royall, who is now her guardian. Now she’s eighteen, feeling bored in the small town of North Dormer, and itching to spread her wings. When she meets Lucius Harney, an architect from the city who is visiting his cousin, her eyes are opened to possibilities she hasn’t dared dream about. Their mutual attraction garners some unwanted attention and results in gossip that Charity ignores until it is too late. Wharton wrote this circa 1917 when she was living in France. When published, it shocked readers; they were not used to reading about a young woman’s awakening sexuality. I wonder if they would have been so shocked if Wharton had set the novel in France, rather than in the Berkshires. Charity is head-strong and passionate, but also naïve. As frequently happens in Wharton’s novels, the principal characters never come out and say what they mean. They are frequently acting based on assumptions, rather than on a true understanding of the facts. Wharton knew the social makeup of turn-of-the century America, and used her novels to explore the nuances of the “rules” – spoken and unspoken – by which people, especially women, had to live. In this, as in other novels, the social fabric of the community is as much a character as any of the people in it. It’s a slim novel, and a great introduction to Wharton’s writing. I still prefer House of Mirth, but this was an enjoyable read.
    • 3/5
      A sweet, sad story of a young girl in a small town who gets herself into a bad position and then just has to live with it. Nothing unexpected or surprising, really. Just Wharton's beautiful writing to take you through it. I liked it. But I'm not sure that I'd recommend it, unless you're just a big Wharton fan and want to read all that she's written.
    • 4/5
      I adore Edith Whartons writing and was pleased to finally be reading Summer as I have heard that it is her most controversial, shocking... Unfortunately the biggest disappointment comes from the build, but if I set that aside as I should, and allow the book to stand on it's own merit, it is a good read with interesting conflict, but in no way her best work.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't sure what to expect when I read this book - certainly not a romance type novel (kind of). I was expecting more like the "Age of Innocents", with New York Society People, instead, we get a book set in a very poor town in the state of New York. We have Charity Royall - a young woman who yearns for a better life, but due to her circumstances of being uneducated and poor - can't leave. She is the ward of the town lawyer, who Charity is either indifferent to, or outwardly hates. When a young man comes to town, an educated architect, he changes Charity's world. My biggest problem was the characters. There were not likable characters in this book. Charity is annoying - she works at a library, but doesn't try to learn, even thought she doesn't understand the world and knows she is ignorant. The architect is exactly what you would expect - kind, gentle, but will take advantage when given the opportunity. The lawyer, isn't really a good man (although he redeems himself at the end). The story is interesting and well written - but I couldn't get past the annoying characters.I suspect this is one of those books you either love, or hate.
    • 4/5
      The plot of Summer is a story that we are very familiar with. A young lower class girl in a small town falls in love with a visiting wealthy young man, and starts a sexual relationship with him under the assumption that he wants to marry her. But, when she gets pregnant, she realizes that he never intended to marry her. But Wharton tells this story with such unique characters (and a slight plot twist) that it makes this novella an enjoyable read as well as giving you something to ponder about human nature.
    • 4/5
      Not my favorite Edith Wharton but still...it's Edith Wharton! Can't go wrong.
    • 2/5
      When she was 5-years-old Charity Royall was rescued from a life of poverty with her prostitute mother when a wealthy man became her guardian. Instead of growing up in the mountain community with her mother she is raised in a life of privilege by Lawyer Royall and grows up to be a librarian. When we meet her she is a grown woman just beginning to stretch her wings. After turning down her guardians’ marriage proposal (eww) she is restless and discontent in her life. She soon finds momentary fulfillment in a clandestine relationship. The material is a bit racy for its time period (which makes it tame by today’s standards.) It gives readers a tragic look at an ambitious girl who flouts the societal restraints imposed on her. It felt like a weak precursor to The House of Mirth, though it was published more than a decade later. BOTTOM LINE: For me, the ending was deeply dissatisfying and disappointing. It felt more like a morality lesson for settling down as quickly as possible. I was frustrated that Charity was left with so few options, though I understand that’s a realistic view of the time period.  
    • 4/5
      I was told this book was dirty, and ...well, to be fair, I was told it was dirty "for Wharton," which I suppose is true as far as it goes, but still: oblique references to illicit trysts aren't exactly begging for the fap when you fade out after they hold hands. Remind me this though: next time I'm sitting next to a leathery woman from Lowell on the bus and she's all "Hey, what are YOU reading?" and I say "Edith Wharton" and she mishears me and thinks I said "It's for work," and gives me a lecture about reading for work on buses, which apparently is bullshit, not that I disagree, the right response is not "No, Edith Wharton, and it's gonna be cool because I heard it was dirty." You won't really get a disapproving look - I mean, wtf, she's from Lowell, that's probably the nicest thing she's ever heard on a bus - but she will decide that you're now buddies and you might want to see a picture of a cat her friend died red, white and blue for the Superbowl. Because, y'know, the cat is a Pats fan. I'm not kidding about any of this. You know I don't kid. And I guess it's working; we're up 17 - 9 in the third quarter. Dear Boston, the only reason I looked up the score is so I could reference it in this Edith Wharton review I'm writing during the Superbowl; after this I'm gonna go back to reading Nathaniel Hawthorne. I ain't gotta defend my masculinity to the likes of you. Wharton and Hawthorne were both here before the Patriots were so don't go yelling at me about loyalty, yahdood.
    • 5/5
      This story of a New England waif at about the dawn of the Twentieth Century who finds herself under the spell of a charming young man who is engaged to someone else, and who eventually finds herself "in trouble" could be cliché. In fact, Wharton's writing lifts it far above other stories of that ilk.I love her portrayals of the characters. The heroine is no helpless victim. The man she is involved with is not particularly exploiting her. Even her guardian who enters her bedroom once, unbidden, is not especially evil. I'm sure, especially with the extremely thinly veiled reference to abortion, and the underlying sexual themes throughout the book that this was a particularly shocking book in its time. Even more so in light of the fact that the heroine was able to find a kind of redemption after having gone astray.This book confirmed, again, my love for Edith Wharton.
    • 4/5
      I love character-driven stories. Edith Wharton did not disappoint me in this regard. Her characters were entirely, sometimes even uncomfortably, real. This was a story that you could really see happening, not just some far-fetched plot to drive a book. This corner of Massachusetts was descriptively rendered, from the melancholy small town where Charity lives to the poor mountain dwellings to the gorgeous countryside.She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it.In the end, Charity received what her nature had in store for her. It all happened as it ought. The reading was not easy, but the story was perfectly rendered.
    • 3/5
      Although I kept in mind that this novel was considered to be quite salacious when it was first published in 1917, I kept asking myself "so where's the beef?" I noticed there was one maybe not-so-chaste kiss, but all the rest was innuendo that went right over my head. The heroine, Charity Royal was taken in as a child, away from her alcoholic, dirt-poor mother by Mr. Royal, a lawyer who's wife has died and left him at the mercy of this beautiful young girl, whom he desperately wants to marry; but she despises him for having made clumsy advances at her on a drunken night. Instead, she falls in love with a young architect and spends all her time with him, when she's not working at her job as a librarian, even though she's uneducated and hates books. Probably with good reason, she holds against Mr. Royal the fact that he's prevented her from continuing her studies so he could keep her close to him. I was unhappy with the narrator Grace Conlin; her fast-paced reading fairly ruined Wharton's beautiful writing, though I did pick up on a beautiful quote:“The long storm was followed by a north-west gale, and when it was over, the hills took on their first umber tints, the sky grew more densely blue, and the big white clouds lay against the hills like snow-banks. The first crisp maple-leaves began to spin across Miss Hatchard’s lawn, and the Virginia creeper on the Memorial splashed the white porch with scarlet. It was a golden triumphant September. Day by day the flame of the Virginia creeper spread to the hillsides in wider waves of carmine and crimson, the larches glowed like the thin yellow halo about a fire, the maples blazed and smouldered, and the black hemlocks turned to indigo against the incandescence of the forest”
    • 4/5
      Charity Royall is a beautiful, limited, petulant, and yearning young woman trapped in the New England town of North Dormer, Massachusetts, and literally expiring from boredom. She is the orphaned ward of an elderly lawyer in town who manages to squash plans for her to receive a formal education. That lack of education, coupled with boredom, sets the stage for the sexual tragedy that occurs one summer when she meets the visiting young architect, Lucius Harney. Charity falls in love and gets pregnant simultaneously, and in the backdrop is a gorgeous, sun-drenched, opulent summer in which she plots meetings with Harney. When she gets pregnant, Chiarity's sense that she has no part in Lucius' real life, and her fear of displacement and alienation, throw her into the waiting arms of the lawyer, who has long wished to marry her. As Charity herself is the product of a single mother from the disreputable mountain country surrounding North Dormer, history repeats itself--without benefit of intervening culture or education to refine the powerful urges of sexual desire.
    • 4/5
      This was the first Edith Wharton book that I've read. It won't be my last. Written in 1917, it's set in the very small town of North Dormer in New England and looks at the rather dismal life of Charity Royall, a country girl who longs to get out of the country. Into her life walks the handsome and worldly (of course he is) Lucius Harney who she immediately is infatuated with. Wharton doesn't pull any punches in this rather harsh tale of lonely people trying to escape their loneliness. Could make a very good reading group selection.
    • 5/5
      As Labor Day approaches, it thought it appropriate to finish the season with a reread of Summer. Years ago, I thought it was a really atypical Wharton, chiefly because of the setting in rural New England and the protagonist who doesn't belong to wildly privileged class that Wharton emerged from. Those observations remain (though Ethan Frome falls into a similar category), but what struck me this time through were a couple of things -- the nature descriptions and a very typical Wharton-theme of the protagonist getting stuck in a dead-end situation from which there is no real escape. Charity Royall is a much more sympathetic protagonist than many of Wharton's characters; she doesn't lust after material possessions -- just wider experience and love. Born on "The Mountain," she is brought down to the small town of North Dormer to be fostered, but not adopted, by lawyer Royall and his wife at the behest of a prisoner that Royall had sent to jail. She is a child of nature* at the end of her adolescence -- her first words in the novel are "I hate everything." When she encounters Lucius Harney, a young visiting architect, in the library where she works, her boredom and lassitude dissolve.Summer must have been a startling novel in 1918. It's steeped in sensuality, much as Kate Chopin's The Awakening is, but this is an adolescent female rite of passage. The consequences of Charity's sexual awakening are predictable, but the conclusion of the novel is intriguingly ambiguous. * "She was blind and insensible to many things, and dimly knew it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as they swayed to it."