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For evocation of time and place, Ethan Frome is among the best; a tour de force from a New York society woman. I'm a transplant to New England and even now, I look around me in midwinter and wonder how they stood it, in more primitive times. The dark, the cold, the snow.... With furnace and electric light and snowplows and everything else that makes it bearable, I still hate winter here. And even given how depressing it must have been, so long as there was enough food stored away, perhaps the inhabitants looked forward to winter and its time of enforced idleness, a surcease from the relentless labor needed to scratch a living from rocky soil with a short growing season. I know what I've said can equally apply to other northern spots, and even more so, but Wharton got it right.
Knowing what's coming rewards the reread, adding shadow to the narrative as it progresses and breaks your heart even more than the first-time shocker, at least for me. I can pity them all, but I only like Ethan, even though he was the agent of his ultimate misfortune and ruined Mattie's life as well. His suffering redeems himself over and over, but in my opinion, it also begs the question of whether redemption serves a purpose.
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