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Loading... The Maytrees: A Novelby Annie Dillard
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I coud not finish it. Maybe I can`t appreciate the lyrical prose in this book. It bored me to tears. (  ) brigitte64 | Nov 12, 2009 |  With descriptions such as "a clumsy beach" and "a greasy sky," Annie Dillard's "The Maytrees" is nothing if not poetic. This book is perhaps best described as the concept of a book; rather than a detailed rendering it is an impressionistic portrayal. In beautifully poetic language Dillard gives us glimpses into the lives and thoughts of a love triangle as Toby Maytree first marries quiet and reserved Lou Bigelow and then, after fourteen years of seemingly happy marriage, later moves to Maine with dynamic and colorful Deary. But the plot is the fuzzy background; foremost are the lush descriptions and bemusing dollops of insight that, swirling around the characters and the setting, make for a full and poignant story of love, loss and forgiveness. (  ) stonelaura | Jul 18, 2009 | I enjoyed this gorgeously written story of Toby and Lou and their life in Cape Cod. Sounds so simple. Prose so rich. (  ) jaspezia | May 25, 2009 | This is the love story of the Maytrees, beginning with Toby Maytree's shy courtship of Lou Bigelow, fresh from college. Maytree is an impecunious carpenter-poet, and they settle down to an idyllic life together, enhanced by the birth of their boy Petie. Midway through the book, their happiness together is shattered by Maytree's sudden and inexplicable abandonment of Lou and Petie for another. The concluding chapters portray a near-unbelievable level of grace and forgiveness in Lou when, years later, her husband and the woman he left her for are desperate for her help. The book is quite well-written, but Dillard tries to elicit a sympathy in Maytree that is unreallistically difficult to sustain. ( ) burnit99 | May 21, 2009 | This is an atmospheric love story of Lou Bigelow and Toby Maytree in Provincetown. Their story begins shortly after World War II and moves forward in time. He's a poet and she's a painter. Their orbits merge in a community with loose social boundaries on Cape Cod. After 14 years of marriage and a child, there is a betrayal and 20 year separation. A reunion is brought about by failing health. The writing is more prose than narrative. The landscape of a peninsula in water is thematic in the story. The story challenges the reader to ponder love, solitude, acceptance, and the boundaries that we humans establish for ourselves. ( ) tangledthread | Jan 21, 2009 |  no reviews | add a review
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| Book description |
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Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. Hands-off, he hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems.
In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. Lou takes up painting. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. But years later it is Deary who causes the town to talk.
In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts nature's vastness and nearness. She presents willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Annie Dillard's original body of work.
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:03 -0400)
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