As the temperature drops on the East Coast and the winter begins in earnest, here are two short novels to read by the fire:
Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton. The remarkable and bone-chilling book about a farmer, his sickly wife and the young girl with whom he falls in love for the first time — even as the snow and the ice foreshadow the doomed nature of their relations.
The Girl in Winter, by Philip Larkin. One of the great poet’s two early novels, written when he was 22, this is the story of a war refugee making her way in England — but is mostly a gorgeous poem in prose about winter itself.
