Ethan Frome

Rating:
Summary: Some of the Good Things in Life Come in Small Packages!
Review: I was simply surprised to find that so many reviewers found this book to be boring! This book is anything but, and the beauty of it is that it's short and easy to read (for all of those with extremely busy schedules)
It is a tragic love story but, so goes life. I found the characters to be wholly believable and their trials to be something most of us can or will be able to relate to at some point within our lives.
I say, if you are looking to read something that appeals to a vast array of emotions,without having to commit to a 900 page novel, this is worth a try. It only took me one day to read for Christ's sake...what do you have to lose?

Rating:
Summary: Very slow and boring...
Review: This is probably the worst book I have ever read (in terms of entertainment, I'm sure it might have some good lessons, but what's the point if you don't want to read the book?) I could not even finish it because it was so bad. Slow, depressing, and boring.

Rating:
Summary: Ethan Frome, possibly literatures' most tragic figure
Review: Ethan Frome is a superb tragic love story that unfolds as the most pivotal moment in Ethan's life.

Ethan falls in love with Mattie Silver, the daughter of one of his wife's cousins, who came a year earlier to help with the house chores while his wife convalesced. This love becomes the only bright spot Ethan can ever remember having. He had to give up his barely begun career as an engineer to go back to the family mill to take care of his invalid father,before he died,and then his mother,who became sick and invalid as well. It is during this time he met his wife Zeena and,after the passing of his mother, they were married.

At the time he falls in love with Mattie, he is hopelessly in debt, teetering on the brink of ruin, and trapped in a loveless marriage to a woman he really only feels a sense of duty toward rather than love. Edith Wharton's description of these pressures and the longing love he has for Mattie make this a story that immediately engrosses the reader, pulling them into an exhilirating tale of the one true love finally found that is at the same time torturously, maddeningly beyond all hope of attainment.

Wharton's best work in this story, however, is the ulra-tragic twist she gives it at the end. I won't say anything more about it. Its just one of those things that makes reading worth doing.

The novella is only 81 pages long but packs such a furious punch in each of its' pages by forgoing the overly descriptive scenery and doubling up its' focus on the characters. The story moves along quickly at a great pace. Take the 2 hours to read it. What else you gonna do, watch Seinfeld? You've already seen it.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but not Wharton's best work
Review: ...
I'm a 32 year old graduate with a major in English, am well-read, and frankly, while this novel is well-written, and the scenery and imagery brilliantly detailed, the plot is far too simple and brief to be taken seriously. Reading this book reminded me of watching the movie "Road to Perdition," where you feel great when the movie is over, but upon further inspection, come to realize that there really wasn't much there to work with.
For a woman, Wharton is as good as they get. If you really want to enjoy Wharton, read The Age of Innocence. I will NEVER forget the powerful emotions, stunning plot, and thought-inducing ending. This too is a story of forbidden love, but there's just so much more to it than Ethan Frome.

Rating:
Summary: A Sophisticated Romance Novel
Review: Sometimes look at the thousands of generic love novels resting on a shelf in K-mart. They are almost identical in form: each cover has a beautiful girl, and a well-built man with his shirt off. When you read them, all of the discriptions and allusions are the same, and the characters always have sex at the end. This disgusts me because true love is not expressed in these novels; only a popular common fantasy among housewives is. Ethan Frome is a far more sophisticated romance novel, for the far more sophisticated romantisizer.

Rating:
Summary: Short but Boring
Review: I had to read this book for summer reading before AP English Language. Basically, it is a cold and depressing novel with a cold and depressing setting. It does have some suspense, such as towards the end, when they are on the sled, you really want to know what will happen. Could they be crazy enough to run into a tree?!

All in all, I did not enjoy this book. However, I enjoy contemporary literature more than older books. It is a romance novel, although Ethan and Mattie are never together as a couple. His decrepit wife Zeena returns to her role as a caretaker in the end, but Mattie is still the third wheel in a sense.

Ethan Frome is a fairly quick read because it is only a 77 page book. However, it took me a few days because reading is was pure drudgery! I want something that is uplifting and will make me smile and feel better after I finish it. Ethan Frome will NOT do that. It will however, make you appreciate the modern convienences we have such as lighting and air travel.

If you are looking for a good romance read, try Message In a Bottle! That is a book than had some great romance and a tear jerking conclusion!

Rating:
Summary: Good thing I was older...
Review: I hated this book! It was to hard to follow, the story line was boring and hard to understand! This is what i would have said if i read this book as a teenager, like most do in high school. I was introduced to this book as an adult in my thirty-something's.
"Ethan Frome" is full of the same life struggles that we all face today, not only in making a living but, also in love and family duty's. What makes this a sad story is the fact that Ethan's longing for education and not being able to complete it. His whole life is ruled by his family duty and the lack of money. You start to wonder what life might had been like for Ethan if he was a man of mean's
I loved this book because i could see alot of myself in some of the struggle's Ethan incountered. I would recomend this book to everyone!

Rating:
Summary: Premarital Counseling
Review: Proving once again that there are indeed some fates worse than death, _Ethan Frome_ should be required reading for any young man contemplating matrimony:

"Must he wear out all his years at the side of a bitter querulous woman? Other possibilities had been in him, possibilities sacrificed, one by one, to Zeena's narrow-mindedness and ignorance. And what good had come of it? She was a hundred times bitterer and more discontented than when he had married her: the one pleasure left her was to inflict pain on him."

Wharton really piles on the pain and pessimism, but there is a wee bit of humor and a final note of plain-spoken compassion.

Rating:
Summary: Ethan Frome
Review: Ethan Frome is a wonderful book about a tragic love story. This story to me was very depressing because Ethan cheated on Zeena with Mattie (her cousin) and Zeena showing true love stayed by Ethan's side. This story was in an understanding context. I really liked this story because it displays morals teachings that can be applied to life today. I'm looking forward to reading books by Edith Wharton.

Rating:
Summary: Loved it since high school
Review: Trapped in a loveless marriage to an invalid wife, New England farmer Ethan Frome's colorless existence changes when his wife's enchanting cousin, Mattie Silver, comes to visit and help out on the farm. Ethan finds himself paying attention to his appearance and wanting Mattie to admire him. The forbidden attraction grows when Ethan's nag of a wife, Zeena, leaves home for a brief period. Wharton makes Ethan and Mattie's plight achingly optionless, and her observations of human behavior are, as usual, dead on. Although Wharton is best known for her novels about New York high society, "Ethan Frome" remains not just my favorite Wharton novel--but also one of my favorite "classics."