Such beautiful writing - as expected. ( )

Ann Eliza y Evelina Bunner, las protagonistas de esta novela corta, regentan una modesta mercería en un barrio humilde de Nueva York. Un día, con motivo de su cumpleaños, Ann Eliza le regala a su hermana un reloj. Este humilde objeto será el causante de que los cimientos sobre los que se asientan sus vidas empiecen a tambalearse.

The Bunner Sisters is a shop, run by the sisters themselves, who are on the verge of spinsterhood and poised to slide into a lonely, but comfortable, old age. They are happy together, have a small but thriving business, with little variety in their daily routine, and it seems to both of them that they have missed something important in life. At the opening of the story, the elder sister, Ann Eliza, buys a clock as a birthday gift for the younger, Evelina, and the purchase introduces them to the clockmaker, Mr. Ramy, and sets them on a course that will change their lives forever.

Edith Wharton is so amazing in the way in which she can draw you into the lives of her characters, regardless of what strata of life she pulls them from, and then pack the events of their lives with so much tragic meaning. Platitudes kept running through my mind as I was reading: The grass is always greener, be careful what you wish for, don’t fail to see the value in what you have, the best laid plans of mice and men, and love is an uneven thing, someone always loves and gives a bit more than the other.

For the first time in her life she dimly faced the awful problem of the inutility of self-sacrifice. Hitherto she had never thought of questioning the inherited principles which guided her life. Self-effacement for the good of others had always seemed to her both natural and necessary; but then she had taken it for granted that it implied the securing of that good. Now she perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure their transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her familiar heaven was unpeopled. She felt she could no longer trust in the goodness of God, and that if he was not good he was not God, and there was only a black abyss above the roof of Bunner Sisters.

If you have read other Wharton novels, you will recognize the overall atmosphere that permeates this novella. Wharton often gives us characters who seem to be in the grasp of events they cannot control and who are being swept along to an end which they might have avoided had they read the signs and made different choices. Lily Bart from The House of Mirth kept coming to mind, even though these women are caught in a much different web than the one Lily struggled against.

I think there are few writers who have the skill of Edith Wharton. Her novels are both character and plot driven and I can never recall ending one feeling I had been cheated or that she had failed to stir my emotions. She has a brilliant control of language, never choosing the wrong word or using four when two would suffice. She paints pictures of the human soul, in all its complexity, and she gives us all the sadnesses we visit upon one another.




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A predictable tale of spiraling into poverty set in old NYC. Two sisters manage a small and unsuccessful business that barely keeps a roof over their heads. They appear to be past dreams, ambitions, or hopes but secretly long for love. Both women privately pin their romantic hopes on the same man who is without better prospects than they.

Wharton is not given to happy endings and she doesn't shirk from holding her reader's to account for the plight of single women, whether high or low on the ladder of society, left to make their way in the world. Her Dickensian social commentary equally blames the comfortable for their smug self-satisfaction that allows them to remain blind to others' suffering, and the expensive indulgence in naivete to the ways of the world by the poor.

Wharton insists in this novella, just as she does in her greater works that fairy tales don't come true and miracles don't happen. And the Wheel of Fortune heedlessly grinds unmarried "unprotected" women to dust in late 19th C. America. ( )

The Bunner Sisters is a brief novella that I felt packed quite a punch. Wharton strays from the world of the wealthy elite and instead explores the lives of two sisters living one small step away from poverty. They have a small shop in NYC and make just enough to get by and set a little aside. They are happy, but then meet Mr. Ramy and both sisters see a chance at marrying him and having a different life. Let's just say the novel doesn't end happily.

Towards the end of the book, this passage really summed up the moral of this novella. This is the thought of the older sister, who sets aside her desires to allow her younger sister a chance for a happy life.

Hitherto she had never thought of questioning the inherited principles which had guided her life. Self-effacement for the good of others had always seemed to her both natural and necessary; but then she had taken it for granted that it implied the securing of that good. Now she perceived that to refuse the gifts of life does not ensure their transmission to those for whom they have been surrendered; and her familiar heaven was unpeopled.

As always, I love Edith Wharton's writing. ( )