Book 5 (2015) House of Mirth **** by Edith Wharton

I read this for a UBC course and found it most entertaining.  Hilarious writing, although Ira Nadel thinks Wharton overwrites (compared to Virginia Woolf). Apparently, there is controversy over whether Wharton says the heroine committed suicide on purpose or accidentally.   And a new letter to Wharton's doctor can be taken either way.  Other contemporary books by friends of Wharton's (e.g. Daisy Miller) had heroine's committing suicide at the end.  It was a serialized book and the ending was not written when the serials started, so perhaps that accounts for the ending, and accounts for the arguably overwritten last two chapters.   All a little too reminiscent of high school literature course nitpicking on novels that are essentially unrealistic entertainment with an overlay of meaning and allegory.