By the time this review is published, Twitter may have gone the way of the carrier pigeon—but at the time of writing, it was experiencing one of its periodic debates over whether Ethan Frome had ruined one’s life in high school or had transformed the reader into a lover of literature. These discussions occur more or less biannually, marking the moments in any given academic year when Frome is typically taught or in response to bleak midwinter landscape photos. Testimonials like “I’m a voracious reader and I still cut back to nothing but comic books for a couple years after high school because of all the Ethan Frome and The Good Earth damage I received” (@David_JWest) are balanced out by celebrations like “I loved Ethan Frome so much when I read it in high school. I should revisit it soon” (@IAmDylanLewis).
Elif Armbruster testifies to the effects of high school...
