When’s the last time you put pen to paper and wrote a letter? Not an e-mail, not a quickly jotted memo, but an actual hand-written letter, with the date at the top, a more or less formal term of address (you can never go wrong ...

What a stunning debut from Francesca Segal. A 32-year-old first-time novelist has no business writing such a sophisticated, pitch-perfect homage to Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. Her strategy is that of Zadie Smith in On...