12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not "the Collected Works", just some of them, but does include "My Antonia" ..., February 15, 2010
This review is from: The Collected Works of Willa Cather (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Edition)
"The Song of the Lark" and "O Pioneers", the three members of the Prarie Trilogy. It also includes her first novel "Alexander's Bridge", her Pulitzer Prize "One of Ours", and two collections of short stories ("Youth and the Bright Medusa" and "The Troll Garden"). It does not include several other of her works, especially "Death Comes for the Archbishop".
Despite the misleading title, Halcyon has done its usual excellent job in presenting these novels with careful proofreading and an excellent interactive table of contents that was a joy to use. I read "my Antonia" to my wife, and we both enjoyed this plainly written and lyrical story of the lives of several settlers on the Nebraska prairies. Cather's own childhood certainly gave her the ability to portray their experiences in a realistic style.
"My Antonia" is very quotable. Some of our favorite passages included:
There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made.
"I never know you was so brave, Jim," she went on comfortingly. "You is just like big mans; you wait for him lift his head and then you go for him. Ain't you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake home and show everybody. Nobody ain't seen in this kawn-tree so big snake like you kill."
Why aren't you always nice like this, Tony?"
"How nice?"
"Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to be like Ambrosch?"
She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. "If I live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us."
She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had that something which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breath for a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning in common things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her hand on a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel the goodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strong things of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless in serving generous emotions.
It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a rich mine of life, like the founders of early races.
I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now.
She remembered home as a place where there were always too many children, a cross man and work piling up around a sick woman.
Men are all right for friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky old fathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell is novelyou what's sensible and what's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer to be foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody.
Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, and men's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken and pinched, frozen down to the bare stalk.
Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.
****
This novel celebrates strong characters, particularly strong women. Antonia is certainly one of the strongest, and in an interesting way she and Jim exchange their genders. Antonia works extraordiarily hard, with great endurance and in harsh conditions. Jim lives a sheltered life, lives for books and study, and cries during operas.
Both reader and listener enjoyed this book immensely.
Robert C. Ross 2010
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Superb, August 9, 2011
This review is from: The Collected Works of Willa Cather (Unexpurgated Edition) (Halcyon Classics) (Kindle Edition)
This review is not actually about this particular volume (which is not her collected works, in fact), but is about Cather as a writer. You probably know about Willa Cather, but if you don't, know this: she is one of the finest writers this country has ever produced. I taught American literature on the college level for a number of years, and she is right there with Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Steinbeck. Her prose is modern for her time, and it has such a wonderful balance of simplicity and adornment. One of my favorites is included here (My Antonia), but her classic, "Death Comes for the Archbishop" is not. Look for it, but go ahead and enjoy this volume first. You can't beat the price.
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