The Innocents

In the wake of the 150th anniversary of Edith Wharton’s birth, there has been much discussion of the writer, from Jonathan Franzen’s polarizing New Yorker piece to the inevitable “Downton Abbey” comparisons.

But in many ways, Francesca Segal’s The Innocents is the most ambitious commentary of them all. In this impressive debut novel, Wharton’s masterpiece…