The Audio Book Club

Slate’s Audio Book Club Returns

Listen for Edith Wharton’s The House of Mirth on May 10.

You still have a week to read the latest Slate Audio Book Club selection, The House of Mirthby Edith Wharton.

Here’s what book-club member Stephen Metcalf says about the choice:

The Book Clubbers chose The House of Mirth because, though we wanted to talk about Hermione Lee’s new (and supposedly terrific) biography of Wharton, book-club listeners couldn’t be expected to read it through, at least not in great numbers. Instead, we decided to choose a Wharton novel and then supplement our discussion with bits from the Lee biography. We settled on TheHouse of Mirth, I think, for several reasons: It’s one of Wharton’s three best (along with The Age of Innocence and TheCustom of the Country); it’s a very moving book; and it’s explicitly about themes that have re-emerged in this, our new Gilded Age.

So, track down a copy of The House of Mirth—and, if you’d like, Hermione Lee’s Edith Wharton: A Biography—and join us next Thursday, May 10, 2007.