The Children

By Edith Wharton

One man on a journey across the ocean meets seven remarkable children—children on the run from their parents, children who will change his life.
 
Martin Boyne is not a reckless man. A bachelor despite being over forty, he is taking a transatlantic journey to meet with a widow whom he has nursed a cautious love for for years. He is disappointed that he never meets interesting people on his trips—disappointed, that is, until he makes the remarkable acquaintance of the seven Wheater children, travelling only with their nanny, to escape their parents. As if this were not remarkable enough, he discovers that he knows the parents, and the astonishing nature of the encounter is enough to overcome his caution, and he agrees to help them flee, despite the risks.
 
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• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Nov 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9780735252578

Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Having grown up in an upper-class, tightly controlled society known as “Old New York” at a time when women were discouraged from achieving anything beyond a proper marriage, Wharton broke through these strictures to become one of that society’s fiercest critics as well as one of America’s greatest writers. The author of more than 40 books in 40 years, Wharton’s oeuvre includes classic works of American literature such as The House of Mirth, The Custom of the Country, The Age of Innocence, and Ethan Frome, as well as authoritative works on architecture, gardens, interior design, and travel.

Reviews for The Children

[wealhtheowwylfing · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the only Wharton story I can think of that has children as the main characters; she's surprisingly good at writing them. The basic tale follows a middle-aged man who, through a shipboard friendship with a young woman, becomes the nominal guardian of seven children. The children's parents, all jet-setting superficial types who have married and subsequently divorced each other, use the children as pawns in divorce settlements and suchlike--only the children themselves want to stay together as a ragtag little family. I always want to fling Wharton books across the room when I'm done with them, and this was no exception. For all the lack of a happy ending (like this comes as a surprise), it's an almost upbeat book.

[morag_eyrie · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Why isn't Edith Wharton better known and more lionised up there with other great writers of the 20th century? I tried reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'Tender is the Night' just before this and was horrified at how badly written, hard to read, lacking in insight and dripping with misogyny and racism it was. Loved, loved, loved this. You know a writer from times past is good when the insights about human nature and relationships seem totally contemporary. Jane Austen falls into that category. So does Edith Wharton, and like Austen, this book is an absolute pleasure to read.

[gibbon_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A sad story of Euro-American society in the 1920s and its effect on a group of related hotel-living children whose parents abandon them to the care of servants while they dash from one European pleasure spot to another. The love affair of the central character, a middle-aged itinerant engineer, is disrupted by his efforts to help the children stay together in the only family relationship they have all shared; everything ends badly. It's the pessimistic obverse of the almost contemporary "Cold Comfort Farm".

[janeajones · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Martin Boyne encounters the children, a disparate group of seven siblings, halfs, and steps, as they are being shepherded aboard the first-class deck of an ocean liner sailing from Algiers en route to Venice to meet their parents. Their shepherd is the eldest of the Wheater children, Judith, who at 15 has taken on the role of mothering the tribe with some help from Miss Scopes, an ineffectual governess, and a nurse, Susan, who cares for the infant, Chip. These are Jazz-age hotel/yacht children, shuffled from one destination to another, at the whim of their parents' states of marriage or divorce or their search for pleasure and diversion. Although Boyne is on his way to Switzerland to meet with long-time friend and newly-widowed Rose Sellars, he determines to first accompany the children to Venice. Touched by their plight, and especially Judith's determination to keep the brood together, he thinks he may have some influence with their parents as he had gone to Harvard with the father and was acquainted with the mother.Wharton draws the reader in with great sympathy for Boyne, Rose and the children accompanied by disdain for the reptilian lives led by most of the adults who should be responsible for them. But as usual with Wharton, idealism faces a fierce adversary in hard-headed reality.The novel has moments of lyrical beauty, subtle psychological insights and is quite fascinating. By no means a tragedy, it does, however, leave the reader with a feeling of sadness and lost possibilities.

[stephkaye-923485 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I have to disagree with the summary, which uses the adjective "comic." This book is heart-breaking. That's really the only reason why I'm not giving it 4 or 5 stars, as I normally would for a Wharton novel. I should expect her cynical endings by now, but with a novel about seven children who only want their parents to notice them, and are always disappointed, the cynical ending is a punch in the gut.

[donna828 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I am a big fan of Edith Wharton. She wrote of a time and class that she knew well. She was also a keen observer and wrote with such detail that it is easy to get caught up in her stories. Martin Boyne is on a voyage to Venice when he recognizes his seat mate's name as someone he knew many years ago at Harvard. He is quite surprised when a lovely teenage girl sits down and proceeds to take command of a lively assortment of younger children. When he learns this is the daughter of his friend who is traveling with six "siblings", a governess, and two nurses, he takes the group under his wing. What he had thought would be a lonely voyage quickly turns into fun and games with this loosely related troupe of fun-loving children.As in all of Wharton's writing, there is a dark side. In this case it is the lax parents who come and go as they please leaving 15-year-old Judith in charge. "The Wheaters," as their children refer to them, have recently reunited after a divorce, but philandering is common in their social group and their reunion with the seven children is short-lived. Wharton shows that things haven't changed all that much in the 86 years since the book was first published. The "smart set" is more concerned with their social status than their duties as parents. As she often does in her books, the author presents difficult circumstances which lead to troublesome outcomes.While this book isn't in the same exemplary category as her more well-known works, it is very good. I just don't think it was possible for this woman to write a bad book! I would recommend it to fans of Wharton as another example of life in the gilded age.