Publisher's Synopsis
Wharton came from a rich family, but she wasn't idle. She defied the conventions of her time to write at all, let alone to slip a needle-sharp little claw into the pretensions of her own class. Here, the title story, "Xingu," is a sly comedy about the great-great-grandmothers of today's ladies-who-lunch. These "huntresses of erudition" meet to discuss culture, and none will admit she doesn't know what "Xingu" means. (Bonus points to the reader who does.) "Kerfol" is something else, though -- a creepy mystery. And "Brunner Sisters" is a full-blown melodrama about two women who shouldn't "oughter" let a no-good man come between 'em. High-brow as she was, Wharton also knew words like "oughter," and she understood the Brunner sisters' run-down world of low expectations and yellow teeth. In "Autres Temps," she writes about a woman whose life has become "a tight little room of habit and association." Wharton knew the feeling, but in this collection, she escapes it.
