Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
My rating: 4/5 cats
spoilers?? what spoilers??
i have changed my stance on the cover. a) initially, i thought that it was showing an altogether different type of activity, and then b) when ariel called it a spoiler, i reinterpreted it to something else and was still wrong, and then c) everything that may potentially be spoiled is pretty much spelled out in the first ten pages. so is that a spoiler, or is that foreshadowing??
tomato, potato…
what is so excellent about this book is that it is not at all a depressing book while you are reading it – it is an intensely hopeful book. but then – gutpunch!! the depressing bits happen offscreen, after all the meat of the story has been … digested?? this metaphor is escaping me… but in the lacuna between when the story ends and the nosy new kid-narrator in town comes on the scene. (such a fantastic new-england type character – “hi, i just moved in, tell me all your neighbor’s secrets!!”) the tragic bits are in imagining what these characters went through between point a and point b. so shivery-horrible! and that kind of story is right up my alley. great description, great pacing – simple story, but haunting and devastating longing. and aftermath. i love aftermath.
i liked this much more than summer, and i may read more wharton based on the strength of this one.
hmmm… who could i find to advise me….???
