My Antonia
My Antonia, 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 Antonia 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 Antonia. 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 Antonia, something between a crush and a filial bond, and the reader views Antonia's life, including its attendant struggles and triumphs, through that lens.
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Community Reviews
Probably one of my most favorite books of all time. I love the language in it - simple and beautiful. I bought this book for my grandmother before she died. She loved it too!
Man, I love this book. I tried reading it once before, 10 or 15 years ago, and let the "frame" stand in the way. (To be fair, it's pretty lame—as most frames are.) So glad I gave it another shot, though, and got past that this time.
Cather's writing here is on a par with O Pioneers!. She fleshes out her characters and their relationships fully, from the inside. Realist writing is often restrained by Chekhov's insistence on "removing everything that has no relevance to the story." Cather's realism is never so minimal, and is all the more real for it. She fully incorporates anything that will help build her characters. The connections may be coarsely drawn, in the way that human relations can be. But these loose, ragged details are not, as Chekhov might call them, unkept promises. In the end there is a very human essence to her people and her places, that only appears from a slight angle. She could never have shown it directly. I come away from her best work with a feeling, more than an idea. Which is exactly how I came away from this one.
Cather's writing here is on a par with O Pioneers!. She fleshes out her characters and their relationships fully, from the inside. Realist writing is often restrained by Chekhov's insistence on "removing everything that has no relevance to the story." Cather's realism is never so minimal, and is all the more real for it. She fully incorporates anything that will help build her characters. The connections may be coarsely drawn, in the way that human relations can be. But these loose, ragged details are not, as Chekhov might call them, unkept promises. In the end there is a very human essence to her people and her places, that only appears from a slight angle. She could never have shown it directly. I come away from her best work with a feeling, more than an idea. Which is exactly how I came away from this one.
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