Rating: 
Summary: Expertly Written and Structured Tale of Woe
Review: After reading the book Ethan Frome... at the age of thirty, I can't help but wish I had been assigned this one in High School. This was a very thought proking story.
I don't want to go to deeply into the story line because I really don't want to give too much away... but I must say the ending is shocking and expertly foreshadowed by Wharton.
Wharton's telling of this story through a third person narrator is brilliant. We get a little piece, a glimpse of what happens in the story in the first chapter. In this glimpse we see an aged Ethan in town with a huge scar on his face and head.... and Wharton talks of the terrible, "Smash Up" he was involved in.
When I read it, I couldn't help but race through the book to find out just what the "Smash Up" was. I love when a book gives you such motivation to speed through it. This bit of foreshadowing was masterfully brilliant and expertly done.
During the story we see Etan Frome, a conflicted and yearning young man. Stuck between his ailing wife, Zeena and her young relative, Mattie who has come to live on their farm.
What Ethan wants more than anything is Mattie... but he knows he can't have her.
The bulk of the story brings us into his thought life. I really enjoyed this aspect of the book. We see Ethan waffling, hedging, scheming and hurting. He is stuck in the life he chose and can't seem to escape it's grasp.
Ethan Frome is a conflicted and complex character. I just loved Edith Wharton's portrayal of this man... brilliant!!
Read this book it is without a doubt a classic and well worth your effort!
Rating:
Summary: Critique of Ethan Frome
Review: The novel, Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton is a very exciting and eventful story. It tells of a man, Ethan, who is destined to a life of caring for others. Before their deaths, he cared for his ill parents and now is caring for his seemingly ill wife. His wife's cousin, Mattie, comes to live with he and his wife and Ethan falls in love with her. Seeing this as his only way to escape his fateful life of taking care of his spouse, they dare to leave together. I believe that Edith Wharton's novel is full of suspense and passion, which also contains an ending that is unforgettable.
The author is telling the story of a very unhappy man. Mattie gives him a sense of youth and fun that attracts Ethan to her. When his wife comes to the conclusion that Mattie may be a threat, she sends her away. When Ethan realizes he cannot live and be happy with Mattie, they decide that they will die together. In their attempt, something tragic and unsuspected happens. This shows that when one is faced with a problem, many people believe it is easier to avoid it than actually deal with it. Wharton's theme shown here is very evident and true. This is just one theme of many that are present in her work.
Wharton's work is very well-written and has made me a big fan of her writing. Her way of expressing the themes of her writing is very unique and informative. I believe that Ethan Frome is a wonderful novel with great themes and concepts.
Rating: 
Summary: Ethan Frome
Review: Ok... I picked up this book for my english class mainly because my sister said is was good. To my disdain, I found it be rather dull. Ethan Frome is no more the a love sick man who can't live with his life as it was. I thought that this book was boring and I could have slept through it. The best part is that Ethan and Mattie got what they deserved at the end of the book I would recommend this book to anyone who likes the romantic-type novels.
Rating:
Summary: When love goes sledding
Review: "Ethan Frome" is the story of a married man who is in love with another woman, but it has an ending so shockingly original and confounding that any review that mentions the premise risks giving the wrong impression. In setting and characterization, it is far removed from Edith Wharton's normal milieu of the New York upper class, but it is just as thematically grave and as beautifully written as her best work. The place is a small town in rural Massachussetts called Starkfield and the title character is a relatively poor and unassuming man who owns an unprofitable farm and a sawmill. He is unhappily married to a woman named Zeena, his cousin actually, an obvious hypochondriac who complains of an unidentifiable illness and is almost always bedridden. Ethan is attracted to her younger cousin Mattie, who is living with them to nurse Zeena and perform the household chores, and the interest is mutual but the prognosis is bleak. Zeena stands in the way of their illicit love and, after an incident involving a broken dish she treasured dearly, gives Mattie her walking papers with the intention of hiring a new girl. Ethan considers that he could run away with Mattie, but he is too conscientious about Zeena to leave her alone on the farm unable to support herself. How he and Mattie decide to resolve this dilemma is startling and even a little sickening, with an outcome that is as unforgettable as it is unforeseeable, for the lovers as well as for the readers.
Wharton's cleverness is evident in this short novel's highly effective structure, which maximizes suspense without introducing much extraneous detail. The "main" story is sandwiched by that of a nameless first-person narrator who, while sojourning in Starkfield, becomes fascinated by Ethan's mystique and the legend of his "smash-up" and, befriending the man, imagines in flashback the events that explain his present state. As expected with Wharton, the writing itself is a model of effortlessly mellifluent but economical prose which endows the story with a satisfying brevity and a palpable tension among its desperate characters.
Rating:
Summary: One of the great short works
Review: Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is one of the great short works of modern fiction. This is true not because of her plot or story, which is the age-old one of forbidden love, but because of the stark, bleak, but ultimately beautiful way in which her story is told. Set against the dark backdrop of the turn-of-the-century New England countryside, this novella tells the story of the title character, a splendid and complex creation, his domineering, tyrannical wife, and her cousin Mattie, who Ethan, in his despair, falls for. The character of Ethan is a wonderful creation, a multi-faceted person full of emotion, complexities, and also the inherent contradictions that make up all of us. He is a distinctly human, believable character, and Wharton makes us feel for him. The strength of her characterization and the beauty of her prose makes us feel both emphatic and sympathetic to the character of Ethan and also to the growing love between he and Mattie. It is also a testament to Wharton's virtuosity that she makes us positively loathe the character of Zeena, Ethan's Wife, even though she is not, when one stops to actually think about it, a very despicable character! This story, though short, is full of the kind of piercing psychological insight that has led many to label Wharton a female Henry James. This is selling her short, however: she has her own worthwhile style. She is also to be commended for not resorting to the feminist position and decrying the subjugation of women in her work, as many, if not most, female novelists, even the best ones, inevitably do in the end. Writing part of the book in the first-person from a man's point of view, featuring a male character as the protagonist, and making one of the work's main female characters an antagonist is both a daring and a brave thing for a female novelist to do, and Wharton deserves credit for it. Her prose in this book is starkly beautiful, describing the barren landscape and navigating the minefield of Ethan's mind with equal ease and latent beauty. The ending, though, is an absolute shocker. Without spoiling it for the uninitiated, I will only say that it is completely unexpected. I was emotionally turbulent for a long while after completing it, and its denouement affected me in the way that no other book has save On The Beach. This is a great piece of art and one of the classic short works of American literature from one of the greatest female writers of all-time.
Rating:
Summary: Exquisite Character Development
Review: Edith Wharton gives us a beautiful gift with Ethan Frome. She paints such vivid, lovely, yet desperate images with words; you can envision the blue colors of the snow of New England so clearly. The greatest strength of this novella is its character portrayal. Wharton makes the reader care so much for Ethan and Mattie...and even feel the great sadness of Zeena's life. The reader leaves this story with a greater amount of compassion for the needs and longings of fellow humans.
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: This review refers to the New Millennium Audio Tape of "Ethan Frome" by Edith Wharton..... Edith Whaton's "Ethan Frome" read by Richard Thomas is absolutely
mesmerizing. Thomas reads all the parts, including the women and gives an excellent performance. His voice is lulling and familiar. He puts just the right amount of inflection into each character, so we know exactly who is talking.His supberb acting ability translates the emotions beautifully from character to character. Ethan Frome is the story of a man living in a loveless marriage. He is downtroden and melancholy until the day he meets his wife's young and beautiful cousin Mattie Silver. Mattie will be staying at the Frome's New England Farm, and in the passing year, Ethan becomes a new man as Mattie brings out a passionate side in him. When Mattie is forced to leave, Ethan is desperate to make a change in his life as well. The results are tragic. Edith Wharton's descriptions of the time, the place and the people are perfect. It's easy to imagine, the snowy farmland, the dimal existance and the faces and features of the characters involved. And Thomas is wonderful at bringing them all to life. The taped set is an excellent quality. It runs a total of about 6 hours. There are four cassettes(8 sides). It is unabridged and digitally Mastered in the Dolby System. It comes in a nicley boxed set. Great to listen to in waiting rooms, where other distractions may prevent you from reading(and this one will really take you away to another time and place), on long car drives (you can block out the kids' music), or to keep you company while working around the house. I loved the story and the experience of the audio reading. Enjoy.....Laurie
Rating:
Summary: Despite it's dark overtones, Ethan Frome is a good read.
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It is my first Edith Wharton attempt. I read it one rainy weekend this past spring as heavy storms kept us all pent up. I highly recommend this book to every reader. I can't say more than other reviewers have already said nor can I say it more effectively. To the students assigned this book, I suggest that you look at how Wharton writes. The fascination the world has with a forbidden love is a popular theme, but Edith Wharton weaves magic into the familiar plot by adding a flair for charming description, intricate detail and symbolism that chills every reader to the bone. If you don't enjoy Wharton's novel as I and many others have, think of reading it as an experience on your to-do list. Ethan Frome should be on everybody's to-do list.
Rating: 
Summary: Hard, cold tragedy.
Review: "Ethan Frome" is a novel carved from black ice. It is a tragedy unalleviated by humor, with nothing to ease the iron grip of a malign Fate. Superbly written, uncompromisingly tragic, full of striking and memorable winter landscape imagery, with an ending that is unexpected and thought-provoking, it is undeniably great literature. I just felt that the profound sadness of the tale somehow compromised the artistic integrity. Edith Wharton experienced much sorrow in her own life and I think this somewhat narrowed her vision. So be prepared for a novel that will move you, impress you and stay with you, but is not likely to put a smile on your face or a spring in your step! In the same vein, look for Gillian Anderson's astonishing performance in the movie version of Wharton's "The House of Mirth" (a misnomer if ever there was). Not always easy to take, it is tragic acting at its brilliant best.
Rating:
Summary: Edith Wharton Writes Like Henry James if He Were A Man
Review: This spare, brilliantly observed, psychologically astute, and mercifully short novel by Edith Wharton (who "writes like Henry James if he were a man," to quote Northampton poet Connely Ryan!) is an acute observation of hopeless love between eponymous hero
Ethan Frome and Mattie, his wife's cousin, a girl struck with poverty when her ambitious father (who moves from the hilltowns to Connecticut) dies in debt. The action is pieced together in a "vision of [Ethan Frome's] story" by an intelligent , relatively
sophisticated visitor to the small town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. (Wharton, who writes an introduction only to this of all her books, describes her use of this literary device to make plausible the narrator's unwinding of the tale.) Frome's handsome but totally dejected looks, and limp, captivate the
visitor/narrator--we know something horrible has happened, but not what, and the suspense thus created is happily unwound by the reader turning pages. Wharton's simple story of mutual unrequited love is indeed a masterful combination of time-encapsulated New England vernacular, emotional insight into the taciturn, easily bruised male ego, and Chekovlike descriptions of frozen landscapes that nonetheless have more life in them than the majority of Starkfield's sickly inhabitants. She impresses upon us the way the awful landscape literally sucks the townspeople in, turning them in the end into tombstones, nature's bookmarks above the dead and frozen bones. Ethan Frome would like nothing better than to escape from his wife, a kind of sallow-faced silent henpecker, a sickly woman, expert in home remedies, seven-years-older than Frome but "already an old woman." The contrast between Wharton's descriptions of ugly Zenobia and beautiful young Mattie are striking, and the unrequited love and lust between the forbidden lovers, although it dies on the vine, is presented with such masterful delicacy that the very absence of sex here is more sensuous than many a modern graphic display. Heartbreakingly poignant, this perfectly realized novella, despite its simplicity, captures the indomitable power of the 19th century landscape to turn to ice even the most ardent hearts and truest tears.
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