Ethan Frome | Fiction - www.zzdbook.com

Ethan Frome

Nov 28, 2025 10:51 AM

Author:Edith Wharton,Elizabeth Ammons

Ethan Frome

Set against the frozen waste of a harsh New England winter, Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome is a tale of despair, forbidden emotions, and sexual tensions, published with an introduction and notes by Elizabeth Ammons in Penguin Classics.

Ethan Frome works his unproductive farm and struggles to maintain a bearable existence with his difficult, suspicious, and hypochondriac wife, Zeenie. But when Zeenie'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.

Edith Wharton (1862-1937), born Edith Newbold Jones, was a member of a distinguished New York family said to be the basis for the idiom 'keeping up with the Joneses'. During her life she published more than forty volumes, including novels, stories, verse, essays, travel books and memoirs; for years she published poetry and short stories in magazines, but the book that made Wharton famous was The House of Mirth (1905), which established her both as a writer of distinction and popular appeal. In 1920, Wharton became the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature with her novel The Age of Innocence.

If you enjoyed Ethan Frome, you might like Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, also available in Penguin Classics.

Reviews

Jean Plaidy doesn't just write the history, she makes it come alive.

—— Julia Moffat, RNA

Her novels are still very much to be enjoyed ... Any writer who can both educate and thrill a reader of any age deserves to be remembered and find new fans ... One only has to look at the TV/Media to see that the appetite for this kind of writing is still very much there

—— Matt Bates , WH Smith Travel

Plaidy excels at blending history with romance and drama

—— New York Times

Full-blooded, dramatic, exciting

—— Observer

Interesting and accurate...an absorbing novel

—— Times Literary Supplement

Henry is so well drawn that, as in real life, he always holds the stage...a vivid impression of life at the Tudor Court.

—— Daily Telegraph

Jean Plaidy, by the skilful blending of superb storytelling and meticulous attention to authenticity of detail and depth of charaterization has become one of the country's most widely read novelists

—— Sunday Times

Plaidy brings out the terror that haunted Henry's court, and the perpetual insecurity that made great men run stupendous risks...an absorbing novel

—— Times Literary Supplement

It has already been repeat-snubbed by this year's Man Booker judges. They've made a mistake. A Spot of Bother may be a novel about a humdrum family living in Peterborough, told in the third person this time, in deliberately ordinary language. Yet there is more real linguistic artistry, not to mention human empathy, at work, here than in all those poetic prosemongers, the Ondaatjes and the Banvilles... A Spot of Bother is a novel of minor incidents but it tackles big problems

—— David Sexton , Evening Standard

Like a cross between Margaret Drabble and Francoise Sagan

—— The Times

Joughin has an appealing darkness and urgency, as she potently conveys the pleasures and pains of human interactions

—— The Sunday Times

Adeptly written and enjoyable... Ruth's childhood perspectives are extremely well captured

—— Telegraph

Striking story of Ruth and Gray under the spell of famous poets' lives

—— Good Housekeeping's 8 Great Reads

Reading Joughin's second novel is like immersing yourself in a cool pool at a hazy summer party ...as addictively abrasive as a shot of cold vodka, this wil leave you both refreshed and gasping for stability

—— Time Out

This darkly comic story about unpredictable love is perfect if you're looking for some intelligent chicklit

—— Family Circle

Previous Article：Call it Sleep Next Article：The Charterhouse of Parma

Comments

Welcome to zzdbook comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.