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Loading... My Antonia (original 1918; edition 1926)by Willa Cather
Work InformationMy Ántonia by Willa Cather (1918)
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Unfortunately, I had a lot of several-day breaks in re-reading this book, which I had first read nearly half a century ago. Knowing so much more about cultural history now increased my enjoyment of this work significantly, but also knowing more about gender bias rendered Jim Burden a far less credible narrator than I thought he was in my early adolescence. Nevertheless, this novel tells a tale about loss and change at a time in which developments in communications and transportation changed the pace of life at dizzying speeds. Willa Cather beautifully knitted together the sense of loss — former homelands, pioneering agrarian life, childhood past — with ongoing life. ( ) The word for this novel is "exquisite". There isn't a lot of story, but there is deft characterization, and beautiful descriptive language that turns the commonplace into the iconic. Page after page I marveled at Cather's ability to show the beauty of landscape, the vitality of young children at play, the difficulties of early 20th century life on the prairies of North America...all in terms that sound both original and inevitable. And by the time I reached the last chapters, the adult Antonia was speaking in my Slovak grandmother's voice. I said somewhere else that this book feels like Little House on the Prairie for adults. That's a bit glib, perhaps, but true still. And I hate to leave this world of hers, hard as it sometimes is to live in it. "Brilliant" is another word for it. All five stars. January 2014 My copy of [My Antonia] is a warped paperback “Enriched Classic” picked up at the neighborhood used bookstore. In some of the later chapters words are underlined, sometimes with what I assume are annotations in Korean characters; the book was once read by a Korean immigrant reading a novel about an immigrant from what was then called Bohemia (Czech Republic?). A scan of Goodreads reviews indicated that a number of people were introduced to the book in high school & hated Willa Cather’s books ever since. I wonder what the original owner thought about the novel? (It ended up in a used bookstore, after all) As most Americans are, I’m a descendant of immigrants & the book touched my heart. Reading it over Christmas at age 74, I was sorry I waited so long to read it – Cather was probably considered to be too alien for youthful readers in my progressive Honolulu school. Been trying to catch up on authors I never got around to, Cather being one; got to this only after [O Pioneers] & [Death Comes for the Archbishop]; not surprised that this one was good too. At first it seems a collection of vivid character & scene sketches, but some homespun Proust in there, too – though the unexpected changes of fortune reminded me of Larry McMurtry. Reading about the characters – they seemed so real, there were times I was disappointed that the narrator didn’t always tell what happened to them: Antonia’s little sister, Jim’s grandmother & grandfather. They’re like the hired hands that go off to the West never to be heard from again, after the grandparents sell the farm & move to town. The stories of the hired girls don’t disappoint, though. And it seems lifelike that we only get the life histories of people closest to our hearts only in fragments of filtered stories. "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) no reviews | add a review
Is contained inEarly Novels and Stories: The Troll Garden / O Pioneers! / The Song of the Lark / My Antonia / One of Ours by Willa Cather Willa Cather - The Library of America Set Complete in 3 Volumes (1. Early Novels & Stories; 2. Stories, Poems and Other Writings; and 3. Later Novels) by Willa Cather (indirect) Willa Cather: Four Great Novels—O Pioneers!, One of Ours, The Song of the Lark, My Ántonia by Willa Cather Set of 3 Book of the Month Club (Death Comes for the Archbishop, My Ántonia, O Pioneers!) by Willa Cather 60 WESTERNS: Cowboy Adventures, Yukon & Oregon Trail Tales, Famous Outlaws, Gold Rush Adventures: Riders of the Purple Sage, The Night Horseman, The Last ... of the West, A Texas Cow-Boy, The Prairie… by e-artnow Willa Cather Collection (My Ántonia, The Song of the Lark, O Pioneers!, and One of Ours) by Willa Cather My Ántonia: 100th Anniversary Edition with introduction, context, biography and analysis by Willa Cather Has the adaptationIs abridged inInspiredHas as a reference guide/companionHas as a studyHas as a commentary on the textHas as a student's study guideAwardsNotable Lists
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HTML: My Ántonia, first published 1918, is one of Willa Cather's greatest works. It is the last novel in the Prairie trilogy, preceded by O Pioneers! and The Song of the Lark. My Ántonia tells the stories of several immigrant families who move out to rural Nebraska to start new lives in America, with a particular focus on a Bohemian family, the Shimerdas, whose eldest daughter is named Ántonia. The book's narrator, Jim Burden, arrives in the fictional town of Black Hawk, Nebraska, on the same train as the Shimerdas, as he goes to live with his grandparents after his parents have died. Jim develops strong feelings for Ántonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Ántonia's life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, through that No library descriptions found.
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Penguin AustraliaAn edition of this book was published by Penguin Australia. Tantor Media2 editions of this book were published by Tantor Media. Editions: 1400100747, 1400108454 Recorded BooksAn edition of this book was published by Recorded Books. |