The Reef

The Reef (1912) is one of Edith Wharton's finest and most compelling novels, admired greatly by Henry James. A minutely rendered anatomy of social ambiguity, focused on the intricately interdependent lives of three American expatriates in France, The Reef is also an obliquely autobiographical work which reveals Wharton's ambivalent sense of both her newly adopted country, and her unexpectedly awakened sexuality. The Reef is a brilliant and compelling work, both as a neglected and genuinely distinguished novel, and as a revealing document in modern sexual history.