Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters (Everyman's Library) [Hardcover]

Edith Wharton (Author), Hermione Lee (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2008

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed)These three brilliantly wrought, tragic novellas explore the repressed emotions and destructive passions of working-class people far removed from the social milieu usually inhabited by Edith Wharton's characters.Ethan Frome is one of Wharton's most famous works; it is a tightly constructed and almost unbearably heartbreaking story of forbidden love in a snowbound New England village. Summer, also set in rural New England, is often considered a companion to Ethan Frome-Wharton herself called it “the hot Ethan”-in its portrayal of a young woman's sexual and social awakening. Bunner Sisters takes place in the narrow, dusty streets of late nineteenth-century New York City, where the constrained but peaceful lives of two spinster shopkeepers are shattered when they meet a man who becomes the unworthy focus of all their pent-up hopes. All three of these novellas feature realistic and haunting characters as vivid as any Wharton ever conjured, and together they provide a superb introduction to the shorter fiction of one of our greatest writers.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Ethan Frome [is considered] Mrs. Wharton’s masterpiece . . . The secret of its greatness is the stark human drama of it; the social crudity and human delicacy intermingled; the defiant, over-riding passion, and the long-drawn-out logic of the paid penalty. It has no contexts, no mitigations; it is plain, raw, first-hand human stuff.”
—The New York Times

“Ethan Frome is Wharton’s only fiction to have become part of the American mythology . . . Wharton’s astonishing authority here is to render such pain with purity and economy . . . Truly it is a northern romance, akin even to Wuthering Heights.”
—Harold Bloom

“Traditionally, Henry James has always been placed slightly higher up the slope of Parnassus than Edith Wharton. But now that the prejudice against the female writer is on the wane, they look to be exactly what they are: giants, equals, the tutelary and benign gods of our American literature.”
—Gore Vidal

About the Author

Edith Wharton was born into a privileged New York family in 1862 and died in France in 1937. In addition to her works as a novelist, most famously The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence, The Custom of the Country, and Ethan Frome, she also was a renowned interior designer, and was the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Everyman's Library (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 030726825X
• ISBN-13: 978-0307268259
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 4.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #503,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Short stuff, February 4, 2008

By 

E. A Solinas "ea_solinas" (MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters (Everyman's Library) (Hardcover)

In a way, Edith Wharton was at her best in her novellas -- her stories are lean, taut and emotionally striking.

And the novellas "Ethan Frome, Summer, Bunner Sisters" brings together three of her most powerful novellas, elongated short stories that explore love, morality, betrayal, the conventions of the time in women's live, and poverty. They're not just fascinating, but beautifully written.

"The Bunner Sisters" is one of Wharton's darkest stories, in which two timid sisters run a small, failing shop together. When Ann Eliza gives Evalina a gifts, they both become involved with the mysterious man, Ramy, who sold it to her. Ann Eliza attempts to sacrifice money and happiness for her sister's happiness, but neither knows what Ramy is hiding from them, or how it will destroy their lives.

"Ethan Frome" is the male half of a loveless marriage, with the fretful, fussy Zeena. Then Zeena's lovely cousin Mattie Silver comes to live with them, and she brings out a happier, more passionate side of Ethan. But when Mattie is sent away, Ethan must make a decision. He knows he can't stay in his horrible marriage, so will he run away with Mattie? The choice they make will affect all three lives.

"Summer" shocked the 1917 public, with its frank-for-its-time look at a young woman's sexual awakening. It takes place in the New England village of North Dormer, where the young librarian Charity lives. But when Charity falls in love with an upper-class young rake named Lucius, she finds herself pregnant and unmarried -- a destructive combination in the 1900s. There's only one respectable way out.

Edith Wharton gave unvarnished looks at social conventions throughout her career -- she doesn't judge, she just tells it how it was, whether she's talking about the Roaring 20s or the uptight Victorian era. Divorce was almost unthinkable, affairs scandalous if revealed, and women had the cards stacked against them in matters of love, marriage and sex.

So her works are even better when you set them in context, full of characters who were totally unlike her. Some were male, some timid and naive, some potentially disgraced, and some completely broken by society's dictates. Few of her characters are much like Wharton, but she gets inside their heads and makes them entirely believable.

Wharton's formal, often poetic writing style makes these stories all the richer. They're rich with light, smells, sounds and the swirl of nature, even in a city. But it's offset by the starkness of her stories -- if she took a hard look at hypocrises and social conventions, she didn't flinch from showing what happened to those that transgressed. It's realistic, but a bit depressing.

These three novellas are not easy reading -- each one is a powerful, harrowing story wrapped in Wharton's beautiful prose. Magnificent, but difficult.