Ethan Frome

"I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome." ― Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome

The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside.

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena'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 book.

A True Classic that Belongs on Every Bookshelf!

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105 pages

Average rating: 6.57

46 RATINGS

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Community Reviews

Anonymous
Dec 04, 2023
6/10 stars
This is the next one in the book club I have yet to attend and I finished it!

I chose a Librivox audiobook for this even though I had the actual book because I needed to keep knitting! The version I downloaded was 4 hours and done quite well (version 2).

I am unsure what to say about this one. I am unsure that I really like Wharton's books. I keep listening and reading because there is something about the story that gets me, but in the end, I wonder why I did. Ethan is a not very old man (52, I believe) when an outsider to the town meets him. He was crippled in an accident and we get the whole sad story. Sad. Depressing story. With a sledding accident.

At the time, Frome is about 28 and his wife's cousin comes to live with them because she has no one else. His wife, Zeena, is quite the woman. Suspicious and a hypochondriac. Mattie, her cousin, is young and pretty and she and Ethan take a liking to each other.

I suppose I could have thought this book would be hopeful. I suppose they could have went off and lived happily ever after. But a miserable existence was in their cards. And what a miserable one it is.

I need an uplifting book to read now.
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E Clou
May 10, 2023
9/10 stars
Wow, it starts out simply- you think it's just a little country story- then there are some serious highs and lows. I'm impressed by Wharton's use of pace. Didn't put it down until I finished it.

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