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Reader recommendation: The Custom of the Country

Monitor readers share their favorite book picks.

  • By Sue Ransohoff, Cincinnati

Edith Wharton’s The Custom of the Country – not very well known – is a find. Undine Spragg is beautiful, selfish, and narcissistic. She needs money for social advancement and does not hesitate to place demands first on her father, and later on her serial husbands. She’s the protagonist one loves to hate, and this reader rejoiced when one husband was found to be equally mean-spirited. Wharton’s elegant, spot-on prose enhances a memorable story. 

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