If you told me this was a longish deleted segment of Winesburg, Ohio, I would totally believe you, even taking into account the fact that one of the books was written by Sherwood Anderson and the other by Edith Wharton. Like the stories in that much revered short story cycle (no not novel), Ethan Frome concerns itself with grim characters burdened by unfulfilled dreams, dreams unfulfilled because of the strictures of society or their own inability to truly sieze the day. A chilly atmosphere, a grim sense of place, a punch in the gut ending that would be lurid melodrama if the story wasn't already so unrelentingly bleak throughout.One to read if you want to feel really bad. Or maybe to feel really good. Basically, you can close the book and sink into a funk or swallow the lump in your throat and hug your girlfriend or your wife or your boyfriend or your husband (or maybe even your cat), because you can, because you're lucky enough not to be the one who entered into a marriage of convenience rather than one of passion, that you aren't doomed to limp through life, scarred and nerve-damaged, metaphorically or otherwise.Here are some other depressing stories about sleds:
