Charmed Circle Author:Susan Ertz "How often are you lucky enough to meet a family like the Prentisses - gracious, loving, radiant and secure, happy to be a world unto themselves? Even at the turn of the century such families were rare, and Myron Prentiss took an artist's pride in his. The family and their way of life were as much his creation (and as fine a tribute to his taste... more ») as the great collection of Impressionist paintings that glowed in the rooms of the big house in New York. And, Myron confidently hoped, both would, like all true work of art, defy time and change.
London and Paris were as familiar to the Prentisses as their native city, and , often, more congenial. They were chagrined when Europe was closed to them after August, 1914: but in 1921, when their older son was eleven, they returned to the delight of the Old World and the pattern of their old life.
For a while. Then, incredibly, shockingly, Myron's masterpiece - the family - began to change. The ourside world broke in upon his children. And his children, born to flower within a charmed circle of love, comfort and fastidious pleasure, responded in disturbing ways. However stubbornly Myron and his beloved wife might refuse to see the facts, however gallantly they might deny their existence, the facts implacably were bringing Myron to the verge of losing all that he had cherished.
With its magnificently drawn people, its vivid and yet subtle detail, this long, rich novel of an American family will continue to beguile and move you long after you have read its final page.« less