"I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome." -- Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan ...
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"I want to put my hand out and touch you. I want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick and when you're lonesome." -- Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome The classic novel of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual undercurrents set against the austere New England countryside. Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent. In one of fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read book.
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This is a classic which is still used today in many psychology classes. A romance in marriage gone wrong. Another woman? This has all the twist to make it a great read. It has an ending like no other! No, you cannot guess the ending.
PeachTea
Mar 10, 2009
Zzz
I supposed I was biased against this book since I had to read it for a class, but found it dull and depressing. The characters were 2-D and there was little time for development. The story itself held an interesting (if worn) concept, but Wharton didn't do much /with/ it. I decided I felt more sorry for Ethan's wife than anything else, and that was about all this book made me feel or think. I wouldn't advise you to spend your time on it.
