I did not realize that this book was a sequel to Hudson River Bracketed. Perhaps I would have enjoyed it more if I had read that novel first, so I recommend reading them in order.

This is the story of a young self-absorbed writer, Vance Weston, and his older lover, Halo. Her husband has left her, and she in turn leaves the country with Vance -- before the divorce is finalized. The scandal created by this rash behavior creates much of the novel's tension as the lovers move among various social circles.

The novel explores two main subjects: first, how writers do what they do. One wonders how much of Wharton's own experiences as a writer become fodder for Vance's creative process -- with the twist that he is a man, and is therefore freer to be a writer, than Wharton herself was in her time. He swings between blithe visits from the Muse and tortured writer's blocks, never able to simply set himself to work because he must, as Halo advises him.

The second topic is that of the male/female dynamic. Halo does all for Vance, while Vance does all for himself. The constant shifts of power and trust between Vance and Halo, Halo and her husband, and Vance and his former flame, keep reminding us of the inequality between men and women. The solution achieved at the end will, I think (hope?) be unsatisfactory to most modern feminist readers. ( )

_The Gods Arrive_ is a sequel to _Hudson River Bracketed_, and unfortunately, I liked it even less. When it begins, Halo Tarrant has left her husband in order to live with Vance Weston and serve his genius as she tried to serve her husband's lesser talents. Inevitably, this doesn't work out, as Vance can't settle to work anywhere and is ensnared by a previous love, while Halo tries vainly to keep on supporting him.

There's almost none of the excellent depiction of the writing life which saved _Hudson River Bracketed_ for me, and that's a particularly big problem here. In order to believe that self-aware, intelligent Halo is really willing to subject herself to Vance and his career, I would have had to believe that he really is a writing genius. There were enough hints of this in the first book to keep me going, but not here. I think it's quite possible that this is what Wharton was actually after, showing this capable, smart woman in thrall to mediocrity instead of genius, but it just didn't work for me. ( )