Reviews - Ethan Frome | The StoryGraph

2.32k reviews for:

Ethan Frome

Edith Wharton

3.31 AVERAGE

kellyjreads's review against another edition

3.0

I'm not a huge fan of the classics, but Ethan Frome wasn't to bad. Depressing for sure, and not to realistic, but if you don't over analyze it, it's a good read! Short too!

sedeara's review against another edition

4.0

I liked this book a lot more than I expected to. Although it takes place in New England, as a Midwesterner I related to the loneliness and hardship of a long winter. Edith Wharton captured the setting as well as the working class families who inhabited it perfectly, even though, disappointingly, she is a bit condescending to this class of people when she talks/writes of them outside her fiction. I was also impressed by the accuracy with which this book describes the yearning that accompanies a love that is not acted upon, which became all the more poignant in its subtlety. Although the ending is depressing, it took a different turn than I expected, which I appreciated. Whether the fate of the characters offers "justice" or not is up for debate, although I imagine the less compassionate reader would assert that each of the three principle characters got what was coming to them. I took out of it a message about the difference between love as an escape and love as a lifelong commitment, which keeps this particular love story from veering into melodrama.

christina339's review against another edition

3.0

This book was required for school. It was so boring and hard to understand. The ending was the weirdest one I've ever read, hands down... I'm glad I'm done with it. That is all I have to say.

valerieloveland's review against another edition

4.0

Boy did I pick the wrong day to read this: the coldest day, and while I was feeling kind of down.

The writing is wonderful. It is the first book I've read by Wharton, and I am impressed. She really knows how to make me care about her characters and wreck everything for them.

oofym's review against another edition

4.0

emotional sad tense medium-paced

This book was a finely crafted, mini masterpiece in my humble little opinion. It was tight. Wharton fills every page with exactly what needs to be on it to provide an engaging and beautiful concoction of characters, emotions and setting. Ethan Frome is bleak and borderline claustrophobic, the trapped in setting of a rural village cut off by snow, and the out of the way farmhouse inhabited by three people who certainly don't get along very well with their current arrangement. It all provides for a story that hooked me from the first page to the last.

I see people complaining about the ending, which I don't understand as a criticism, I think the ending works perfectly. Ethan and Mattie realise they can't escape their rather miserable fates in the material world, so they opt for a lover's suicide instead. But it turns into an even more depressing parallel to Romeo and Juliet, it turns into suicidal ideations biggest nightmare: What if you don't die? And instead cripple yourself for life. This is what happens to the pair, and they end up back on the farmhouse with the testy, difficult Zeena looking after them, who happens to be Ethan's wife. A crippled pair of forbidden lovers, trapped in a place they don't wish to be, taken care of by a woman they don't want to be taken care of, and unable to express their love. What a horrible fate.

The reason this ending works perfectly is because it's a terrific example of what Wharton was primarily concerned about when it came to the poor rural folk. She thought about how horribly stuck they were in life due to a lack of money; they're forced into conditions and destinies because they simply don't have the cash to up and leave. Ethan Frome's ending makes you really contemplate this unfortunate dilemma; that Mattie and Ethan's fates would have worked out a lot happier if they'd just had a bit of money.

The descriptive writing talent Wharton possesses shined throughout this entire novella, I was honestly incredibly surprised and impressed, and just for that skill alone I'll have to read more of her works in the future. There's this ethereal, almost cosmic ambience to the setting of Ethan Frome, all due to Edith's masterful word craft.

Long story short: Read this, let yourself be fully consumed by the atmosphere, and while reading ask yourself this question the whole time: Would this story be as miserable if these characters had access to more financial means?