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Thursday, March 10, 2011

Ethan Frome



Goodreads Summary:
Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie's vivacious cousin enters their household as a "hired girl", Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.

In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read novel.(l

My Review:
This is an excellent novella. It being so short, by it's nature, I think it's a book everyone should read. It implicitly asks the questions: What does it mean to be married? To be in love? and What obligations do we really have to our spouse? Sometimes a person has to live with the choices that he/she has made and oftentimes we must put the feelings and needs of another in front of our own.

It is about Ethan Frome, a man who came to great hardship while chasing after a fantasy of another life, a happy life. It is about his relationship with his wife and the complications that her cousin brings to their household.
4/5 stars

2 comments:

  1. I've never heard of this one either! I'll have to check it out. Sounds like it could take place today too.

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  2. Really? This was a required read for most in high school. I actually read it in college. It's a novella, so it's short, but a good read. This is the side of Wharton I like:)

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