Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.31 AVERAGE
3.31 AVERAGE
I first read this book when I was a junior in high school. It was one I remember liking, but it wasn’t one of my favorites. Rather than re-reading one of my favorites such as The Great Gatsby or Catcher in the Rye, I decided to give this one another chance as I wasn’t sure I had fully understood the story at 15 years old.
I’m really glad this is the one I chose.
This is a book that requires some life experience to truly understand the themes. Ethan Frome is a poor man who lives in Starkfield, MA. If you’ve ever experienced a New England winter, you understand the brutality of it. The snow gets so tall that you can quite literally step from the roof of your house onto a mound of snow. Now, imagine being stuck in that in 1911 with no power, no transportation other than a horse and buggy, and a hypochondriac wife.
To be honest, I didn’t remember much of the book from the first time I read it. I don’t know if that’s because it’s been so many years or because it just didn’t leave an impression on my adolescent brain. There are a few twists in the book that I won’t spoil here, but my initial reaction toward Frome during my re-read was that he was, quite frankly, an asshole. How could he think ill thoughts of his sick wife while he takes her cousin as a mistress?
As I got to the end of the book, I realized he’s a victim of circumstance. He’d taken care of his sick mother during his teenage years and, despite the help of his wife, Zeena, his mother had died during a brutal winter only to join the headstones in the Frome graveyard that seemed to taunt Ethan. He never wanted to end up as just another headstone with an engraving that detailed his many years stuck with his wife in that house. He wanted to move to a big city to become an engineer, but poverty and desperation caused him to act on emotional impulses. Now he’s just a man with a limp stuck in the cold winters of Starkfield, MA.
If you haven’t read this classic, I highly recommend it. Edith Warton put together such a volatile story in a short amount of pages. It only took me a couple hours to re-read, and I’m sure it will now have a lasting impression on me. I’m thankful for the back to the classics challenge for inspiring me to read this, and I’m excited to dive into more classics as the year goes on.
I’m really glad this is the one I chose.
This is a book that requires some life experience to truly understand the themes. Ethan Frome is a poor man who lives in Starkfield, MA. If you’ve ever experienced a New England winter, you understand the brutality of it. The snow gets so tall that you can quite literally step from the roof of your house onto a mound of snow. Now, imagine being stuck in that in 1911 with no power, no transportation other than a horse and buggy, and a hypochondriac wife.
To be honest, I didn’t remember much of the book from the first time I read it. I don’t know if that’s because it’s been so many years or because it just didn’t leave an impression on my adolescent brain. There are a few twists in the book that I won’t spoil here, but my initial reaction toward Frome during my re-read was that he was, quite frankly, an asshole. How could he think ill thoughts of his sick wife while he takes her cousin as a mistress?
As I got to the end of the book, I realized he’s a victim of circumstance. He’d taken care of his sick mother during his teenage years and, despite the help of his wife, Zeena, his mother had died during a brutal winter only to join the headstones in the Frome graveyard that seemed to taunt Ethan. He never wanted to end up as just another headstone with an engraving that detailed his many years stuck with his wife in that house. He wanted to move to a big city to become an engineer, but poverty and desperation caused him to act on emotional impulses. Now he’s just a man with a limp stuck in the cold winters of Starkfield, MA.
If you haven’t read this classic, I highly recommend it. Edith Warton put together such a volatile story in a short amount of pages. It only took me a couple hours to re-read, and I’m sure it will now have a lasting impression on me. I’m thankful for the back to the classics challenge for inspiring me to read this, and I’m excited to dive into more classics as the year goes on.
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This might be one of the weirdest books I've ever read.
Very interesting book that I might need to read again to fully digest. The description of winter was great, starting beautiful and wonderous, but the descriptions start to wear on the reader, slowly getting more and more oppressive as the story went on, culminating in the cause of the "accident." The accident was a cruel twist, leading to a tragic, but satisfyingly fitting end.
A great read for a cold night in winter. Can be read in a single sitting.
A great read for a cold night in winter. Can be read in a single sitting.
i was going to give this five stars, then four, and then i settled on three. i liked the writing style a lot, but this already-short book could’ve been thirty pages tops. the guy hates his wife and that’s about it until the last ten pages.
dark
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
N/A
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Read this on a plane flight. There's a lot of architectural and environmental description that can be tough to make sense of, and may not even be necessary. But Wharton had me feeling for Ethan and Mattie. The framing device was excellent, and the way the book ends is a hoot. I had a big ol grin on my face when I finished.
I was a little underwhelmed by this one. I didn't buy the narrator, who had to have filled in a lot of gaps in his imagination to be able to tell this story of Ethan Frome. I wasn't compelled to pull the book from my bedside, where it sat as going-to-sleep reading. Ethan as a tragic character was just kind of lame in his wintry entrapment.
Hadde ingen forventinger til denne, også viser det seg at den bare er helt sykt mørk, sånn sikkelig over-the-top, nesten komisk, men i grunn helt perfekt - elsker det! Skal lese alt av Wharton nå, og håper at hun aldri har skrevet en eneste happy bok, vil ha mer av dette her.