You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
nancy_ql 's review for:
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
Wow. I can't believe it, but I was just sincerely shocked by the ending of a novel that is 102 years old. Thank you, every graduate student I ever went to school with, for not providing a single Ethan Frome spoiler!
The last line of this novel, for me, ranks as one of the most memorable (along with Flannery O'Connor's line, in "A Good Man is Hard to Find": "She would of been a good woman . . . if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life"). I appreciate the dark twist this narrative takes, as well as its complex view of human emotion (perhaps, I kept thinking as I read, if Robert James Waller had read Ethan Frome , he might have been intimidated and never written The Bridges of Madison County ). But I don't so much like the extent to which the story characterizes women as great manipulators of men, either through shrew-like bitterness or angel-sweet innocence.
The last line of this novel, for me, ranks as one of the most memorable (along with Flannery O'Connor's line, in "A Good Man is Hard to Find": "She would of been a good woman . . . if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life"). I appreciate the dark twist this narrative takes, as well as its complex view of human emotion (perhaps, I kept thinking as I read, if Robert James Waller had read Ethan Frome , he might have been intimidated and never written The Bridges of Madison County ). But I don't so much like the extent to which the story characterizes women as great manipulators of men, either through shrew-like bitterness or angel-sweet innocence.