The Wine of Astonishment

by Rachel Mackenzie

Overview

The Wine of Astonishment is a rediscovered classic: a portrait of two unmarried sisters in upstate New York during the early twentieth century. Esther and Martha are confined to their estate, nearing middle age, and wholly unfamiliar with independence. Sudden death relieves them of their imperious mother but unwittingly exposes them to stifling social rules. Affairs and desires sow dissent and defiance within the joined selves of two sisters, eternal interlopers. Fateful and ironic, MacKenzie's novel is a humble account of the courage it takes to appreciate life exactly as it is.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781885983176
Publisher:	Turtle Point Press
Publication date:	09/28/1997
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	207
Product dimensions:	4.76(w) x 6.90(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Rachel MacKenzie (1909-1980) was an accomplished and beloved American editor and author. Born in Shortsville, New York, MacKenzie taught literature at the College of Wooster, Radcliffe College, Tufts University, and the Bread Loaf Writer's Conference. She was a longtime fiction editor for The New Yorker. The Wine of Astonishment was her only novel.

What People are Saying About This

Issac Bashevis Singer

With this book, Rachel McKenzie has entered American literature. It is a work deeply rooted in the soil of this country...a work with an address.

Editorial Reviews

It comes as no surprise that the author of this quietly moving tale of two well-to-do sisters was, from 1956 to 1978, fiction editor at the New Yorker: the elegiac refinement of the novel (first published to acclaim in 1973) couldn't be more redolent of the late, lamented "old" version of that magazine. When religious matriarch Emmeline Henderson ("Hendersons were the backbone of First Presbyterian Church") dies in the Finger Lakes town of Pliny Falls, N.Y., early in the century, she leaves behind two grown daughters so sheltered that the townspeople worry what will become of them. One of them, 32-year-old Martha, falls for David, the new minister in town, but their shy courtship progresses slowly. Twenty-nine-year-old Estherwho despite her mother has already enjoyed a (quickly suppressed) romance with "a godlike young man the Mormons had hired to put on an Entertainment"now begins an affair with the married man across the street. Mackenzie captures with vivid subtlety the lack of privacy afforded by a turn-of-the-century small town as Esther's affair grows from planned encounters at the cemetery and post office into a scandal that threatens to disrupt the placid surface of Pliny Falls. At times, the tone of this slim novel is almost too reserved (one has the feeling these characters never raise their voices above a whisper), but it offers a glimpse of a vanished and charming world, and it does so with an all-but-vanished charm of its own. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly