Sarah Orne Jewett : Novels and Stories : Deephaven / A Country Doctor / The Country of the Pointed Firs / Dunnet Landing Stories / Selected Stories & Sketches (Library of America) [Hardcover]

Sarah Orne Jewett (Author), Michael Davitt Bell (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Library of America | Publication Date: February 1, 1994

All of Jewett's best fiction, including her three novels, "Deephaven," "A Country Doctor," and "The Country of the Pointed Firs," and 28 funny, satirical, and poignant sketches and stories. Set against long Maine winters, hardscrabble farms, and the sea, Jewett's stories of gruff, capable farmers and seafolk--and of the rewards and trials of family and communal ties--have a very modern resonance. This comprehensive collection reveals the full stature of the unjustly neglected writer Willa Cather ranked with Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This hearty volume combines the longer pieces Deephaven , A Country Doctor , The Country of the Pointed Firs , and Dunnet Landing Stories with a selection of shorter stories and sketches and commentary by Professor Michael Davitt Bell. This fine addition to the series is tailor-made for American literature and women's collections.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

An incandescence of humanity ... [and] descriptions so sharply etched you want to put them in your pocket like magic pebbles. -- Chicago Tribune

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Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Hardcover: 950 pages
• Publisher: Library of America (February 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940450747
• ISBN-13: 978-0940450745
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #227,493 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heavenly Prose of the late 1800's, January 18, 2009

By 

Kirk Dangler "Original Beatles Fan" (NYC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Sarah Orne Jewett : Novels and Stories : Deephaven / A Country Doctor / The Country of the Pointed Firs / Dunnet Landing Stories / Selected Stories & Sketches (Library of America) (Hardcover)

Sarah Orne Jewett is exquisite in her poetic prose. This collection of short novels has kept me intrigued. It's been like a visit back to the life of young exploration to the late 1800's. I've enjoyed her writing very much.

24 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars comforting place to visit, December 18, 2000

By 

Orrin C. Judd "brothersjudddotcom" (Hanover, NH USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Sarah Orne Jewett : Novels and Stories : Deephaven / A Country Doctor / The Country of the Pointed Firs / Dunnet Landing Stories / Selected Stories & Sketches (Library of America) (Hardcover)

The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896)(Sarah Orne Jewett 1849-1909)

Okay, the time has finally come for me to make a horrible personal admission. I've had a secret for years now, one that strikes right to the core of my manhood : of an evening, I enjoy a nice cup of tea. Actually, it's an enormous mug and I steep the tea until it looks like coffee, but I still acknowledge how sketchy it all appears. Nor do I imagine my case will be helped if I state that I most often enjoy said beverage on Sunday nights during Booknotes on CSPAN, though as a general matter I do occasionally partake when I sit down to read, after we get the kids to bed. There--I've said it--that monkey's off my back. Why here? Why now? Because, this book may be the sine qua non of tea-sipping books.

Perhaps the central theme that we've been developing over the course of these reviews is the existence of a fundamental tension in human affairs, between the basically feminine desire for security and the basically masculine desire for freedom. We've examined many examples of the latter--everything from Huckleberry Finn to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest--but good examples of the former have been rarer, presumably because I just read fewer women authors. (Though we have found some good examples, try particularly the review of The House of Gentle Men) Now we come to Sarah Orne Jewett's lovely short novel, The Country of Pointed Firs, and the very essence of the book is the value of friendship (particularly female friendship), community, and continuity in providing an atmosphere of security and a bulwark against the encroachments of a changing world.

The semiautobiographical novel tells of a young woman writer spending a summer in the fictional town of Dunnett Landing on the coast of Maine. There she is adopted into a loose knit group of women who weave a web of stories about the town, the surrounding islands and the folks who live, or lived, there. This narrative tradition and the time spent in each others company take on the quality of ritual, and in light of their dismissal of the local pastor, a nearly religious ritual. In addition, Jewett's comparisons of the women to figures out of Greek drama and classical myth gives them a timeless quality. Most of all, there is her portrayal of the women as a phenomenon of Nature, arising organically from, and blending into, the rugged landscape.

The effect of all of this is that as the women speak they seem to be tapping into an eternal tradition. Their voices and stories summoning echoes from the past, not just of Dunnett Landing, but of similar communities across time and space. The term that has apparently been adopted to describe this kind of novel is "fiction of community," and that's a perfect description. There's something wonderfully comforting about the togetherness, shared sense of experience and the act of communal memory that Jewett's stories summon.

The flip side of this however is that the novel, not surprisingly since it is so clearly a response to classic masculine fiction, suffers from some inevitable weaknesses when judged by those standards. It is almost totally formless and plotless, being little more than a collection of reminiscences. It celebrates stasis rather than progress and at some level reflects a genuine and unhealthy fear of human development in general, and of industrialization specifically. Though relentlessly good natured, there is a marked indifference or even hostility to traditional religion. Politics and economics are completely, and unrealistically, absent from the scene.

Just as the "action" of the novel occurs at the very edge of the nation, figuratively outside the bounds of late 19th Century America, so the community it describes is a utopian one that is an alternative to our actual Western culture. Ultimately, that utopia, like most, seems like it might be a nice place to visit but like it would prove stultifying to the human spirit, the longing to discover and to achieve, the desire of the young to create their own place in the world rather than to simply assume a bequeathed place in their parent's. There's always something comforting about maternal unconditional love, but we prefer it in smaller doses; too much becomes cloying and suffocating.

The Country of the Pointed Firs is a comforting place to visit--try it with a big mug of tea by your side--but it's not a place you'd want to live.

GRADE: B

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great for a rainy summer afternoon, January 16, 2010

By 

skysoxwiz (pikes peak) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Sarah Orne Jewett: Novels & Stories : Deephaven a Country Doctor; The Country of the Pointed Firs; Stories & Sketches (Library of America College Editions) (Paperback)

I fell on Country of the Pointed Firs by Jewett wholly by accident while perusing the library shelves. Being a stodgy, older white guy I could have easily passed this one up.
While I consider myself fairly well-read I had never heard of Sarah Orne Jewett.
She was a very percetive and observant journalist. Sociologists and historians should be pleased that her careful recordings of everyday life remain. Feminists should be especially pleased that the life, aspirations and dreams of everday women survive from an era dominated by male writers.
I bought this wonderful Library of America edition to keep at my cabin, right next to Thoureau's Walden and Kingsolver' Prodigal Summer.