Lucy Gayheart (Vintage Classics) [Paperback]

Willa Cather (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 26, 1995

"Some people's lives are affected by what happens to their person or their property, but for others fate is what happens to their feelings and their thoughts—that and nothing more." In this haunting 1935 novel, the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of My Ántonia and Death Comes for the Archbishop performs a series of crystalline variations on the themes that preoccupy her greatest fiction: the impermanence of innocence, the opposition between prairie and city, provincial American values and world culture, and the grandeur, elation, and heartache that await a gifted young woman who leaves her small Nebraska town to pursue a life in art.At the age of eighteen, Lucy Gayheart heads for Chicago to study music. She is beautiful and impressionable and ardent, and these qualities attract the attention of Clement Sebastian, an aging but charismatic singer who exercises all the tragic, sinister fascination of a man who has renounced life only to turn back to seize it one last time. Out of their doomed love affair—and Lucy's fatal estrangement from her origins—Willa Cather creates a novel that is as achingly lovely as a Schubert sonata.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The unity of Miss Cather's design, the clarity and distinction of this book, should put it beside her first great success, My Ántonia." —The Times Literary Supplement (London)

From the Inside Flap

Lucy Gayheart ist achtzehn, einen temperamentvolle junge Frau voller Charme und Vitalitaet und eine gute Pianistin. Als das Leben in dem Provinzstaedtchen Haverford sie zu ersticken droht, flieht sie nach Chicago, um dort Musik zu studieren. Doch sie ist nicht zur Kuenstlerin geboren, denn fuer eine grosse Karriere fehlt es ihr an Wille und Disziplin. Diese bittere Erkenntnis trifft Lucy wie ein Blitz, als sie den Opernsaenger Sebastian zum ersten Mal singen hoert. Es ist eine Begegnung, die ihr weiteres Leben schicksalhaft veraendern soll.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Vintage (September 26, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679728880
• ISBN-13: 978-0679728887
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #401,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful, July 28, 2000

By 

Natalie (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lucy Gayheart (Vintage Classics) (Paperback)

Lucy Gayheart is one of the greatest books in my memory, certainly the best among the five Willa Cather books I have read. Though difficult to describe to one who is unfamiliar with the style, the story is lovely, wistfully romantic... and Cather's sparkling prose is simply unequaled. I especially loved the novel's reflection of the creative spirit - Lucy is a young artist full of ardent longing, passion, and ultimately pain.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Music and Dashed Dreams, December 27, 2001

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lucy Gayheart (Vintage Classics) (Paperback)

Willa Cather's short poignant novel was written in 1935. The story takes place in the early twentienth century and contrasts the American plains, the small town of Haverford, Nebraska, with Chicago, large urban American with its promise and perils. The heroine of the book, Lucy Gayheart, has great pianistic talent. She leaves Haverford at the age of 18 to study piano, and to give music lessons, in Chicago.

In Chicago she meets a great but disillusioned and world-weary singer, Clement Sebastian, and has the opportunity to work with him as an accompanyist. There are wonderful descriptions of Schubert song-cycles: the Winterreise and the Miller's Lovely Daughter. She ultimately is seemingly faced with the choice between Sebastian and her hometown sweetheart.

Faced with tragedy from both men in Chicago, Lucy returns home. She gears herself to begin life anew but tragedy again intervenes.

There is a great deal of description in the book of the snow andthe cold, in both Chicago and Haverford. The book also has for me a feel for the tragic sense of life, with a hint of the power of art and religious faith to overcome it. The opposition between city life and provincial town life is similar to Sinclair Lewis's Main Street but with more depth and craft in the writing. The love for music, the human voice and the piano eloquently comes through the book.

This is a beautifully wrought book which deserves to be better known.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A minor classic deserving of attention, February 12, 2003

By 

Mary T. Miller "dunnettreader" (St. Louis, MO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lucy Gayheart (Vintage Classics) (Paperback)

A hundred years after the novel is set, the contrast between Chicago and Nebraska still rings true. Having lived in both places, I admire Cather's abiltiy to show the readers the strengths and weak points of each setting. Lucy is so in tune with her surroundings that the settings act almost as characters.
My book discussion group is reading "Lucy Gayheart" because we've all read the "major" Cather works. We chose this one because none of us knew anything about it. It will never be considered one of her great works, but it certainly can stand against the works of many other writers. Cather delicately touches on the subjects of change as a part of leaving home and growing up, the yearning for what is ethereal and lovely, and the difficulty & loneliness of creating a life as an artist.