Customer Reviews

One Sunday Morning: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

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!

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.

I read Ms. Ephron's 'A Cup of Tea' and really enjoyed it, and I wasn't disappointed with 'One Sunday Morning'. It did seem to go a bit slower than 'Cup of Tea'...but it was a good read nonetheless.

This book only took me a couple hours to get through, and held my attention the entire time. Granted you don't find out the meaning of everything until literally the last two pages, but your need to know keeps you turning them.

I can't say the character's were very well developed, or that the story had much meat to it, but keep in mind...it's a tiny little book that's more for passing the time then challenging the mind.

Overall I definitely recommend this if your looking for a light, quick read on a nice day, or if your in between books, and are looking for a filler. Ms. Epheron sure knows how to tell a good short story, and I'll absolutely be keeping an eye out for her future work.

I found this book on the table of the bookstore and finished it within a span of two days. I loved it! It's about socialites in the 1920s in New York, and they take a trip to Paris. It's very minimalistic and great. I love the scenes set in Paris. There's a fabulous scene where one of the girls walks the Champs-Elysee and I swear I almost cried. It's like I know the girls. Even though it's the 1920s, I found so many comparisons to today's culture, the way that today we're up against a conservative backlash in the country not unlike prohibition and the way that people still talk behind each other's backs, and the way that things aren't always as they seem. Highly recommend this book!!

This is the story of Mary Nell and her society friends in New York during the 1920s. One Sunday morning, 4 women watch out a window as another member of their group leaves a hotel with the fiancee of a friend. Tongues begin to wag and tales begin to travel, weaving in a murder mystery and several love affairs.

This is a very fast read and well done, but without much depth. If you are hoping for a complex tale of 1920s society, this isn't it. The ending is anti-climatic at best. However, overall the story is engaging and light, perfect for a rainy afternoon. I would like to read more about these people to discover what happens next. A good read in general.

This book kept my attention and I couldn't put it down. I am still puzzled. Who was the dead guy and what did Lizzie have to do with it?

Our characters are delightful enough but there isn't much depth into them or anything really. I did feel like I was on the ship but that is about as much detail as we get.

Don't get me wrong. I loved it. We have four ladies who upon seeing ONE thing presume and the dominos start to the chain of events that makes this book. This book didn't end happy ever after but I want to know those few things!! Please write another one!

`"She never did understand what it meant to be proper" said Betsy Owen as she turned away from the window in a sweeping motion as though her skirt alone propelled her across the floor. And, there it was, in that one understated sentence, an indictment of all that Lizzie Carswell had ever hoped to be and an acknowledgement that there was a story behind the seemingly innocent act they had all witnessed.'

Perhaps if the story centered on answering numerous questions, rather than NYC gossip of four young women prior to going to Paris to continue speculation of Billy Holmes and Lizzie Carswell during the height of the Jazz Era in 1926, ONE SUNDAY MORNING may have been an enjoyable novel. But Amy Ephron tried too hard to marry Edith Wharton and Jay Gatsby. The end result was a horrid, but quick read. Mary got exactly what she deserved. Iris, so judgmental, behaved her character's polar opposite. And Betsy approved Geoffrey's behavior toward Mary and Lizzie, though she decreed that Lizzie doesn't understand what it meant to be proper.

We readers get a cheap patchwork of a couple of plotlines and characters who are not well defined. We are also left with many questions. Is Billy Holmes a drunk, drug addict and homosexual? Why would Clara marry him if he was any of three? What really happened that Saturday night prior to the ladies sight of Holmes and Lizzie coming out the Gramercy Park Hotel? Why take the story to Paris? Unfortunately Amy Ephron never answers these questions to this reader's satisfaction; she just ends the book with the same passage she opened the small novel.

This was an average story at best with no real wrap up.
Maybe this is the real crux of my issue. As with a previous Amy Ephron story; Cup of Tea, she just ends the book. It does not seem like a natural ending. It just ended. To me it just seemed like a chapter or two was missing. This might be a new technique, but I don't like it.

The story itself was average, a tale of gossip among some relatively well to do society young people, in a time when who and where you were seen mattered more, than what was the back story...oh wait that's still true. But, it was a time when judgements were harsher on women and innuendo could ruin lives. Without ruining the story, things are not all what they seem and at worst, at the end, you're still not sure what was going on. Or I could be dense.

The pity of it is, Amy Ephron is a great writer, the story flows. It's just the story is lacking.

Given this was my second Amy Ephron book, after reading the wonderful Loose Diamonds, I will stick to her newer stuff.

It is a quick read about some pretentious females during the time of Prohibition in Manhattan. Not nearly as good as her other book "A Cup of Tea". The women in this book are so concerned about appearances. After about 100 pages into the book, my response was "who cares?"