I had never read any of Edith Wharton’s work, and knew little about her except she was American, living across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and I had a feeling she wrote short stories. So I was pleased when it was suggested we read one of her novels, Ethan Frome. I don’t know why I’d never read any of her work, I thought I had a broad American literature background, and have read or at least dipped into most of the major writers of the last two centuries… maybe her name put me off as when I was younger, Edith was very unfashionable and associated with elderly people – however, Edith is a fine Saxon name, and now becoming popular once again, so if you called out ‘Edith!’ a lot of little girls might look up and not just old ladies!
The name of the book interested me… Ethan is another popular name now and Frome is a Somerset town. I looked up Wharton and found she was born in 1862 and died and died in France where she had lived for many, many years, at the age of seventy-five. I started reading the novel and it very much reminded me of the beginning of Wuthering Heights, of an incomer marooned in a wintry village by bad weather and hearing the story of the local inhabitants through conversation with one of them… in Wuthering Heights it was Nelly Dean the servant, in Ethan Frome it is the man himself who recounts his tale. I’m about halfway through, and things are not looking good for Ethan!
One of the things which I am most enjoying about the book, is the actual writing. I had begun to think I’d lost the power of sustained reading, because so many of the books I’ve read recently, popular books by acclaimed authors, seem to have been such a struggle for me, as if I’m wading through a mud of words. Other people have enjoyed the same books and praised the writers, and I had begun to think I’m just a rubbish reader… Wharton has restored me. I know it is only a relatively short book, bt there are whole pages of description, for example, and I’ve read every lyrical word, because she s just such a fine writer.
I’m a little anxious now, though, I’m getting very worried about the tragedy which I know is going to befall Ethan!
Lois Elsden 