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thelizabeth 's review for:
Ethan Frome
by Edith Wharton
Found a copy of this on the street in Brooklyn. Next to a garbage can, but nonetheless. I see more books laid out in Fort Greene than anywhere ever, I swear.
So, should we talk about how everybody seems to have read this in high school? And how, according to everyone I've ever heard from and everyone I went to school with, we hated it? Even I hated it, and I was the only person who ever liked the books from class. I didn't mind. I remember being kind of grateful to Ethan Frome for giving me a way to relate to my peers! What a joyful week this was! Also we watched the Liam Neeson movie in class, and that was funny.
All I can think of is that this gets assigned to students simply because it is 80 pages long. That is its single recommending trait for a teenager. The things I enjoyed about it now are all rather different than the things I enjoyed about books when I was younger. The book is so slight that its surface scenario -- solemn adults full of regret, bitterness, and cold -- is pretty much what you get. Wharton brings a lot to the table, but I'd never buy this for a teenager for Christmas, and I'd prefer not to assign it to one either.
To my surprise, though, I liked it so much this time. What you're basically walking into in this book is an examination of the epic stuckness of Ethan, and the surprise that wrests him into turmoil over it. I found I had a lot of sympathy for this. It's something, watching him struggle to form a plan at the end of the book, and finding that you agree with him, and then he turns his decision around, and you also agree with him.
I like that the book jumps right in. When the backstory finally begins, Ethan is already in love with Mattie, his wife's cousin, and everyone already almost knows. (By the end they still just almost know.) And it's strange, as a love story, to explore the ways that a person who's fallen in love inside a trap will still seek tender moments and blare beams of feeling from his eyes. It's oddly romantic nonetheless, and emotionally at least, these parts are written with an immense realness I could recognize. I loved those moments and felt them through, though you know it's indulgent for you both. One wants the night that Zeena's away to last forever the same as they do, just to see what happens, just to see. The restraint is almost damnable.
There is a very large dose of heavyhanded symbolism throughout this whole book, and I kind of just decided to glide past it. The points get made well enough in the setting and characterization. The frame structure is also somewhat heavyhanded, though it allows us to know the story's real ending. I wondered a bit too if Wharton was trying a little too hard to write "down," the everyman tragedy of the country poor. The language, professions, and possessions of all of Starkfield's residents are written with the extreme precision that sometimes can come from being very authentic in an "up with people!" kind of way. I get a whiff of this, too, from Wharton's own introduction. I must read more of her soon, and I may alleviate that concern by doing so, but I can't be sure.
But from what I know of Wharton's usual choices, driving characters to the bleakest possible conclusion is not unusual. Though I'd read this before, I'd actually misremembered the ending, and assumed from the foreshadowing that Mattie dies in the accident. Indeed, what happens is worse. Wharton's portrayal of frigid Zeena is pitiless from the start, and Ethan shows more than a few flashes of dark selfishness throughout for all his earnest hopes. (His excitement for "mastery" is particularly unappetizing). But having everyone pretty much end up the same way is as bleak as can be. The book's moments of joy are so very dim.
(If we want to be honest about heavyhanded symbolism, I actually liked noticing the realistic emphasis on how, like, one single candle is ever lit in a room at a time. They are always in the dark and the cold. That'd be bad enough if you're happy, jeez.)
Actually, I worry that this in fact is the real reason students have to read this book all the time. It might look like an easy teach, and some English classes have a way of ripping out a significant wisp and nailing it to a wall. The abandoned copy that I found has three students' names written inside the cover, and one of them -- Patti! -- also underlined and wrote notes for her class throughout. Patti definitely tried, but sometimes they are as blunt as underlining a phrase about colors and writing "SIGNIFICANT!" in the margin. It just made me glad that I never had Patti's teacher.
(My little sister's succint review from high school: "LEAVE YOUR WIFE AND STOP SLEDDING.")
I'm very glad I reread this, though, with a taste for existential romance. It works, it really does.
And, ok. I kind of want to watch the Liam Neeson movie again.
So, should we talk about how everybody seems to have read this in high school? And how, according to everyone I've ever heard from and everyone I went to school with, we hated it? Even I hated it, and I was the only person who ever liked the books from class. I didn't mind. I remember being kind of grateful to Ethan Frome for giving me a way to relate to my peers! What a joyful week this was! Also we watched the Liam Neeson movie in class, and that was funny.
All I can think of is that this gets assigned to students simply because it is 80 pages long. That is its single recommending trait for a teenager. The things I enjoyed about it now are all rather different than the things I enjoyed about books when I was younger. The book is so slight that its surface scenario -- solemn adults full of regret, bitterness, and cold -- is pretty much what you get. Wharton brings a lot to the table, but I'd never buy this for a teenager for Christmas, and I'd prefer not to assign it to one either.
To my surprise, though, I liked it so much this time. What you're basically walking into in this book is an examination of the epic stuckness of Ethan, and the surprise that wrests him into turmoil over it. I found I had a lot of sympathy for this. It's something, watching him struggle to form a plan at the end of the book, and finding that you agree with him, and then he turns his decision around, and you also agree with him.
I like that the book jumps right in. When the backstory finally begins, Ethan is already in love with Mattie, his wife's cousin, and everyone already almost knows. (By the end they still just almost know.) And it's strange, as a love story, to explore the ways that a person who's fallen in love inside a trap will still seek tender moments and blare beams of feeling from his eyes. It's oddly romantic nonetheless, and emotionally at least, these parts are written with an immense realness I could recognize. I loved those moments and felt them through, though you know it's indulgent for you both. One wants the night that Zeena's away to last forever the same as they do, just to see what happens, just to see. The restraint is almost damnable.
There is a very large dose of heavyhanded symbolism throughout this whole book, and I kind of just decided to glide past it. The points get made well enough in the setting and characterization. The frame structure is also somewhat heavyhanded, though it allows us to know the story's real ending. I wondered a bit too if Wharton was trying a little too hard to write "down," the everyman tragedy of the country poor. The language, professions, and possessions of all of Starkfield's residents are written with the extreme precision that sometimes can come from being very authentic in an "up with people!" kind of way. I get a whiff of this, too, from Wharton's own introduction. I must read more of her soon, and I may alleviate that concern by doing so, but I can't be sure.
But from what I know of Wharton's usual choices, driving characters to the bleakest possible conclusion is not unusual. Though I'd read this before, I'd actually misremembered the ending, and assumed from the foreshadowing that Mattie dies in the accident. Indeed, what happens is worse. Wharton's portrayal of frigid Zeena is pitiless from the start, and Ethan shows more than a few flashes of dark selfishness throughout for all his earnest hopes. (His excitement for "mastery" is particularly unappetizing). But having everyone pretty much end up the same way is as bleak as can be. The book's moments of joy are so very dim.
(If we want to be honest about heavyhanded symbolism, I actually liked noticing the realistic emphasis on how, like, one single candle is ever lit in a room at a time. They are always in the dark and the cold. That'd be bad enough if you're happy, jeez.)
Actually, I worry that this in fact is the real reason students have to read this book all the time. It might look like an easy teach, and some English classes have a way of ripping out a significant wisp and nailing it to a wall. The abandoned copy that I found has three students' names written inside the cover, and one of them -- Patti! -- also underlined and wrote notes for her class throughout. Patti definitely tried, but sometimes they are as blunt as underlining a phrase about colors and writing "SIGNIFICANT!" in the margin. It just made me glad that I never had Patti's teacher.
(My little sister's succint review from high school: "LEAVE YOUR WIFE AND STOP SLEDDING.")
I'm very glad I reread this, though, with a taste for existential romance. It works, it really does.
And, ok. I kind of want to watch the Liam Neeson movie again.