The stranger in the last chair also has intelligence of events she shouldn't possibly know about. The haughty, repressed reputation of Mrs Wharton is set to be blown apart.
The story comes to us in three ways: Edith's reactions in the afterlife, the novella charting the travels of Sara, a modern day woman tasked with uncovering Edith who ends up on a journey of self-discovery, and a manuscript that the stranger, Mrs Gerould, would like to run past Mrs Wharton.
The ghostly assembly is shocked, cruelly amused, heartbroken and hurt by the revelations. Edith is scandalised, humiliated, vindicated, tempted to reveal her full self.
Edith is revealed in all her complexity. Not just the suffering wife of a disturbed husband but a passionate lover, intelligent and articulate writer and garden designer, widely travelled and admired by many.
The novel is a glimpse into how life goes on after us; the characters are unaware of what the others did and said after their deaths, until events are disclosed to them through the novella and Mrs Gerould's uncanny revelations.
The Night of All Souls is a refreshing, absorbing novel. The chance to see one's life after death, to recreate the narrative and see it as a newly rounded thing is a fascinating concept.
Edith Wharton is newly minted within these pages, finally broken free of the constraints of the society in which she lived.
