THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin

Very good

I subsist largely on a diet of contemporary literature. I don’t think much about it, until I read something else. Chopin’s slender, poignant novel about a woman in a unhappy marriage was written in 1899. It expresses emotions that are just as valid today, yet with a formal quality and language that mark it as not of this time. The ying-yang of the crisp, cultivated writing with the universal feelings worked on me like an elegant meal.