Ethan Frome Wharton, Edith/ Ammons, Elizabeth (CON)

I had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story. (from the first line)

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie''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 American 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 novel.

From the Publisher:
A New England farmer eking out a hardscrabble existence on an unproductive farm must choose between his duty to care for his difficult, invalid wife and his love for her vivacious young cousin. Reissue.

Annotation:
This tragic short novel tells the tale of Ethan Frome, who lives an isolated life in cold New England. When his mother dies, he marries his cousin Zeena for companionship, rather than for love. When they hire Mattie Silver as a live-in household helper, Ethan and the young Mattie fall desperately in love. Inevitably, Zeena discovers the affair.

Author Bio

Edith Wharton

Born to a wealthy New York family, Edith Wharton, who eventually wrote over 50 works, spent much of her childhood in Europe developing an appreciation for the arts. In 1885 she married a wealthy banker, Edward Robbins Wharton, and turned to writing--books on decorating, then novels. In 1906, Wharton moved to Paris where she was engaged in a passionate affair with Morton Fullerton. In 1913 she divorced her husband. By this time, Wharton had achieved fame and began spending time among a society of writers and intellectuals that included Henry James. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE, just one of her many classic works, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1920. In addition to her novels, Wharton produced poetry, travel books, and literary criticism.

Praise

Introduction
"The book to the making of which I brought the greatest joy, and the fullest ease, was 'Ethan Frome'. For years I had wanted to draw life as it really was in the derelict mountain village of New England, a life... utterly unlike that seen through the rose-colored spectacles of my predecessors, Mary Wilkins and Sarah Orne Jewett... 'Ethan Frome' was written after I had spent ten years in the hill-region where the scene is laid, during which years I had come to know well the aspect, dialect, and mental and moral attitudes of the hill-people." - Edith Wharton

Spectator
"The utter pessimisn of 'Ethan Frome'... is too bad to be true; it is Hardyesque self-indulgence..." - Anthony Burgess 12/03/1965

(unknown)
"The wonder is that the spectacle of so much pain can be made to yield so much beauty." 10/26/1911

Product Attributes

Book Format:		Paperback
Minimum Age:		18
Number of Pages:		0099
Publisher:		Penguin Books

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Ethan Frome (Paperback)

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