The Innocents opens with a quote
from Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence (and adapted in a 1993 film by my favourite director, Martin Scorsese), and it wasn’t until after I’d read
the novel and googled it that I twigged The Innocents is actually a modern day
reworking of said novel. Whilst this probably says more about my horrific lack
of knowledge of literary classics more than anything, there could not be a
better advertisement for Wharton’s book than The Innocents, which moves the
setting from 19th century New York to London, but aside from the
setting, the themes, characters and decisions that are central to the novel transition
effortlessly.
