The first classic for Feature Fridays is Ethan Frome (1911) by Edith Wharton.
Foreword from Goodreads:
Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeena. But when Zeena's vivacious cousin enters their household as a hired girl, Ethan finds himself obsessed with her and with the possibilities for happiness she comes to represent.
In one of American fiction's finest and most intense narratives, Edith Wharton moves this ill-starred trio toward their tragic destinies. Different in both tone and theme from Wharton's other works, Ethan Frome has become perhaps her most enduring and most widely read novel.
Have you read Ethan Frome? Here's the beginning...
"I Had the story, bit by bit, from various people, and, as generally happens in such cases, each time it was a different story.
If you know Starkfield, Massachusetts, you know the post-office. If you know the post-office you must have seen Ethan Frome drive up to it, drop the reins on his hollow-backed bay and drag himself across the brick pavement to the white colonnade: and you must have asked who he was."
Read the entire book online at The Literature Page.
(If you've read this classic but want a quick refresher, go to Spark Notes. Beware of spoilers...it's a review/overview of the book.)
Did you read this book? Was it required reading through school? Do you generally like reading classic novels? Who is your favorite classic author or what is your favorite classic book?
