One Sunday Morning: A Novel [Hardcover]

Amy Ephron (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 26, 2005

One Sunday morning four women at a bridge party in the elegant Gramercy Park Hotel see a beautiful young woman whom they all know leaving a nearby hotel with a man who is not her husband. The sight of twenty-year-old Lizzie Carswell with Billy Holmes is shocking and potentially ruinous. And though the ladies do not know the whole story -- and despite their mutual promise to keep what they've seen to themselves -- it is only a matter of time before one of them talks . . . with heartbreaking consequences for them all.

In One Sunday Morning, author Amy Ephron brilliantly navigates the social contradictions of Jazz Age New York society and brings a remarkable time and place to glorious life with a riveting drama of gossip, indiscretion, secrets, and betrayal.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* If Ephron has yet to establish a devoted readership--she has written two stiletto-precise historical novels (A Cup of Tea, 1997, and White Rose,1999)--her third should certainly do the trick. It meets the beautiful standards set by its predecessors; all of them are presented in brief but not undeveloped chapters, are told in language mesmerizing for its simultaneous punch and brevity, and provide sharply drafted pictures of social conventions and out-of-bounds romantic entanglements in the U.S. of yesterday. The time period Ephron has selected here is the 1920s; her chosen settings are New York and Paris. It's the Jazz Age in cities where old traditions still rise, as imposing as the mansions lining Fifth Avenue, but also where new views and different modes of behavior have blossomed in the wake of the recent world war. Through the prism of the lives of four well-heeled, socially connected women friends, Ephron casts a subtle drama arising from this conflict between old behavior and new, as scandal threatens to ruin the reputation of one of the women. This is Edith Wharton territory, and although it is not rendered quite as profoundly as the work of that master, it is, perhaps, rendered more sprucely, in a style more compelling to contemporary readers. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

“A jewel of a book.” (Reader's Digest )

“Amy Ephron is our Edith Wharton. . . . [she] is a master storyteller” (Bookreporter.com )

“An exquisite, Edith Wharton-esque novel” (Newhouse News Service )

“Ephron maintains the suspense through this evocative, smartly paced novel of romantic intrigue.” (People )

“An elegant fable . . . a charming package, a smooth blend of period romance and contemporary wisdom.” (Miami Herald )

“Ephron writes beautifully . . . a Jazz Age take on Sex and the City.” (Entertainment Weekly )

“Ephron has written another historical novel destined to please her fans. . . . it will entertain you.” (Seattle Times )

“Book clubs will treasure the precisely rendered atmosphere in this jewel of a novel.” (Chattanooga Times Free Press )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow (April 26, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060585528
• ISBN-13: 978-0060585525
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,396,380 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I have a theory that single women who buy champagne by the case rarely end well. Disclaimer: I've been known to make generalizations based on a case study of four.
From "Loose Diamonds...and other things I've lost and found along the way", in the story titled, 'Champagne By the Case' which was also published in The New York Times' "T" Magazine's August 2011 womens' issue.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite a lot can happen in a 214-page novel by Amy Ephron, April 30, 2005

By 

Bookreporter (New York, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: One Sunday Morning: A Novel (Hardcover)

If Edith Wharton were alive and writing now, who would she be? Dominick Dunne is the first novelist who comes to mind, especially his first few novels. But Dunne's books are, more often than not, jump-started by a crime; for Wharton, a social gaffe was sufficient to fuel a plot. And Wharton's books were rich in subplots and subtext.

You could, I think, make the case that Amy Ephron is our Wharton. This seems, on the surface, improbable. Ephron lives in Los Angeles, where roots do not run deep and Society goes back only a handful of generations. She has worked --- gasp --- in the movie business, where people with a provenance rarely venture. And she writes novels that are painfully short: ONE SUNDAY MORNING runs to 214 pages only because the book is small and the margins are vast.

What Ephron shares with Wharton: Her books are not so much written as carved. Every word counts. And, like Wharton, every word is about the story --- there are no digressions, no riding of an authorial hobbyhorse. And, like Wharton, Ephron is concerned how a small event can be inflated into a large one.

In ONE SUNDAY MORNING, the event is a view from the window of a Gramercy Park townhouse: young Lizzie Carswell leaving a hotel in broad daylight with Billy Holmes, a man engaged to one of her friends. Lizzie's mother had to go abroad because of a scandal; have mom's degenerate genes been passed on? And what will Clara Hart, Billy's intended, do when she hears the news (as she most assuredly will)?

Wharton material, to be sure. But there's a tension here you wouldn't find in a Wharton novel --- the story is set in 1927, and so, very much bubbling under the Society plot, is the reckless mood of that era. Alcohol. Drugs. Homosexuality. These add a Fitzgeraldian spice to the strict moral tale that is Ephron's legacy from Wharton. And, just in case you're nostalgic for Somerset Maugham, there's a man just back from very interesting travels in Asia. Maybe he's a lost soul. Maybe he's a potential suitor.

This isn't to say that Amy Ephron has cherrypicked her influences (though if she did, she couldn't have done better). You read this book for itself, and for the precise portraits she draws. Sample: "Clara was nursing a gin and tonic. She had a Piaget watch on her right wrist that Billy had picked up for her at an antique store. It had a simple black band and a plain gold rim around its face so the numbers themselves were the set-piece, distinctly Piaget. Billy's linen suit was appropriately wrinkled. It occurred to Mary that they fit into Paris in a way that she never would."

Mary will, of course, get a big surprise. So will the other characters. It turns out that quite a lot can happen in 214 pages --- that is, when the writer is a master storyteller like Amy Ephron.

--- Reviewed by Jesse Kornbluth

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A tale for a summer afternoon ..., June 14, 2005

By 

J. B. Levy "Avid Reader" (Montclair, NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Sunday Morning: A Novel (Hardcover)

While hardly the heady stuff of Edith Wharton, this charming novella (it's really too brief to be classified as a novel) is perfect summer reading. The female characters are precisely drawn though I could wish she'd opted for more depth and a more lengthy story. All in all, very enjoyable -- takes no more than a couple of hours to read!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Pulse of Manhattan in the 20's, October 21, 2005

By 

Nancy R. Katz "NancyK18" (NJ) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: One Sunday Morning: A Novel (Hardcover)

One Sunday Morning like Amy Epron's earlier book A Cup of Tea provides readers with a look at society life from many years ago. This is a way too short book which enveloped me from the very first page.

The sighting of an innocent woman leaving a hotel one Sunday morning sets off a chain of events and false perceptions in the days before the Depression no one could have predicted. Evoking the era of the Jazz age and those heady days of Jay Gatsby, it as if Edith Wharton met the women from Sex and the City. When it comes to historical fiction and the pulse of Manhattan society in those days, nobody does it better than Amy Ephron.

I highly recommend this book and look forward to this talented author's next book.