"As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."


This book is about the pioneer experience in Nebraska, particularly that of Eastern European immigrants, and is also the coming of age story of Jim Burden (narrator), and Ántonia. While the book is told from Jim's point of view, I felt more connected to Ántonia. Jim and Ántonia are friends from the moment they meet, and as the seasons and the landscape of Nebraska prairie change, so do Jim and Ántonia. They eventually take very different paths, but their friendship remains. Jim is a romantic, and very nostalgic about the past. Ántonia is the symbol of the past for him. I was wrapped up in his feelings of nostalgia, and longing for the past. As I was reading, I felt them too. I particularly loved his descriptions of the Nebraska prairie.


CAWPILE Rating:

C- 9

A- 10

W- 10

P- 6

I- 9

L- 10

E- 10

Avg= 9.1= ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

#backtotheclassics (Classic from the Americas- includes the Caribbean)
#mmdchallenge (a book published before you were born) ( )

I'd give it six if I could ( )

I first heard of Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America. I was ten years old then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and my Virginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived in Nebraska. I traveled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, one of the hands on my father's old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was now going west to work for my grandfather. Jake's experience of the world was not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train until the morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world.

I adored this book. I cannot remember why, only that I loved it. ( )

This is only the second of Willa Cather’s novels that I have read. The obvious autobiographical content about the Nebraska prairie in the 1880s, her interest in the importance and meaning of a place, and her rich nostalgia all contributed to my enjoyment of this great work. I also found it interesting that she felt the need to make the narrator male after reading about her life.
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My only complaint is the inclusion of the old ludicrous story of the wolves attacking sleighs during a winter in 19th-century Russia. I wanted to accept this as just a story that the characters might have believed then, but two of the characters have had their lives traumatized by their involvement in this fiction. Oh well, nothing is perfect. ( )