Most of the smart ones get away

I've put aside several books in the last couple days. Nothing seems to be grabbing me in. Last night (finally), in just a few short pages, Edith Wharton gave my book roaming pause.

I'm only one chapter into her novella Ethan Frome...but I'm already hooked. A small New England town during the snowy winter. An anonymous narrator. A mysterious figure. And - of course - nosy townspeople who love to talk:

"It was not that Mrs. Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superiority to the people about her; it was only that the accident of a finer sensibility and a little more education had put just enough distance between herself and her neighbours to enable her to judge them with detachment. She was not unwilling to exercise this faculty..."