Ethanfrome5/23/2023 One day, when the snow is heaped in white waves, a storm prevents this unnamed narrator from getting home. He seeks the story of Frome’s sorry circumstances in fragments from others but doesn’t get the full explanation until he enlists Frome’s services in driving him to and from the train station. He is immediately intrigued by Ethan Frome: a taciturn “ruin of a man” with lopsided shoulders and a scarred gash on his forehead who was involved in some sort of “smash-up” two decades previously. A stranger comes to town, working on a job connected to a nearby powerhouse that generates electricity. The story is told like Wuthering Heights in miniature, minus its ghosts and children. Its “torrents of light and air” by day and “silver-edged darkness” by night cast a penetrating spotlight over the area, rendering the actions of its inhabitants as crystalline as the flakes that continually coat the ground. It shapes moods, hastens life-altering decisions, and provides the perfect stage for a tragedy that couldn’t happen at any other time of the year. In the remote New England village of Starkfield, winter’s beautiful torpor rules everything. Mostly, though, it’s because of the seasonal setting.
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