It’s been a couple weeks since I finished “Ethan Frome” by Edith Wharton, written in 1911. The delay in making my comment is like a speechlessness wrought by its devasting emotional impact.
In the first part of the book, I kept wondering why the narrator was so concerned about Ethan’s “story.” He seems too nosy about him. The introduction informs the reader that Ethan was injured in a “smash-up” and it is this foreboding that make the story so poignant.
Once the story starts, with the chapters, it is a flashback to Ethan’s younger days. In this part, I kept wondering how Mrs. Wharton, who was born Edith Jones to one of the richest families in New York – supposedly the Joneses one tried to keep up with – could have such empathy and knowledge of poverty. I also was in wonder at her ability to describe in few words the terrain of the human heart.
This book is a masterpiece. The way such a complete picture is painted with such an economy of words is some kind of magic.
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