Ethan Frome
Contributors: Anita Shreve (Foreword)
Edition: 1st Signet Classics printing (Shreve introduction) (2)
Series: Signet Classics
Publisher: Signet Classics
Published: 2000-06
Place of publication: New York, USA
Language: eng
Format: Mass Market Paperback
Number of pages: 176
ISBN-13: 9780451527660
Copyright date: 2000
First sentence: I HAD THE STORY, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
Description: A marked departure from Edith Wharton's usual ironic contemplation of the fashionable New York society to which she herself belonged, Ethan Frome is a sharply etched portrait of the simple inhabitants of a nineteenth-century New England village. The protagonist, Ethan Frome, is a man tormented by passionate love for his ailing wife's young cousin. trapped by the bonds of marriage and the fear of public condemnation, he is ultimately destroyed by that which offers him the greatest chance at happiness.

Like The House of Mirth and many of Edith Wharton's other novels, Ethan Frome centers on the power of local convention to smother the growth of the individual. Written with stark simplicity, this powerful and tragic novel has long been considered one of Wharton's greatest works.

(back cover)
Notes: US/CAN