Ethan Frome in Reading 1001

Sep 08, 2017 Chinook rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1-kindle, 1001, america

This is a stark little novel - both in the desolate winter setting and the lack of options due to poverty and then the horrible ending where everybody is just miserable.

I spent most of the story thinking that the accident that Ethan was in was the result of him trying to murder his wife. That, sadly, wasn't the case. ...more

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Mar 13, 2011 Karen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories-and-novellas, 1001-books-2008-edition, 1001-read-since-joining-gr, 5-star-fiction, classics, read-more-than-once

I liked Ethan Frome the first time I read it. I loved it on this, my second reading. The prose is beautiful, and the setting is wonderfully described: "The cold was less sharp than earlier in the day and a thick fleecy sky threatened snow for the morrow. Here and there a star pricked through, showing behind it a deep well of blue. In an hour or two the moon would push up over the ridge behind the farm, burn a gold-edged rent in the clouds, and then be swallowed by them. A mournful peace hung on ...more

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Jun 25, 2010 Kristel rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-challenge, 1001-books, us-literature

Set in New England, Massachusetts in the winter. The narrator has to stay at the Frome's when the winter weather prevents him from continuing on and he learns the story of Ethan Frome. I liked it better the first time I read it but a great American classic filled with literary symbolism. A quick winter read. ...more

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Dec 31, 2015 Karen rated it really liked it

I read this years ago, I honestly can't say when, but this book evoked images that I still remembered before reading again. The images I have of this book are winter, cold, snow, bleak. I will always think of Frome from the first sight the engineer had of him.

it was the careless powerful look he had, in spite of a lameness checking each step like the jerk of a chain.

We learn that Frome had gone to a tech school in Worcester. My Mom was born in Worcester, and she grew up in small New England v ...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Jgrace rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: jgrace, kindle, judithg, women-writers, audio, american-literature, 1001-books-you-must-read-before-you, read-in-2013, play-book-tag, 19th-century

Ethan Frome – Wharton

4 stars

This book appears on the Goodreads lists of Most Depressing Books of All Time and Read These in School – Would have Preferred a Root Canal. I didn’t think it was quite that bad, but it wasn’t a cheery story by any means. Poor Ethan Frome is stuck on his hard scrabble farm in a loveless marriage to a hateful woman. In desperation, he tries to take his only way out and finds himself more irrevocably stuck than ever. The writing is strongly evocative. I felt the cold of ...more

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Apr 02, 2014 Ashley Husemoller rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: 1001-before-dying, rory-gilmore-challenge

This book is as bleak as the landscape it's set in...It was a good book and a quick read, don't get me wrong. But this is Wharton. Don't expect any warm fuzzies. 17/1,001 ...more

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