The Living: Novel, A [Kindle Edition]

Annie Dillard (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Listening to Lawrence Luckinbill read Annie Dillard's historical novel The Living takes a little getting used to. The very first sentence reveals a pronounced and distracting lisp, but don't let that dissuade you from continuing. Luckinbill's voice also exhibits a simple honesty, a gruffness that is perfectly suited to the steely pioneer spirit of Dillard's story. Surprisingly quickly, the vocal idiosyncrasy fades away, leaving only the emotional resonance of Luckenbill's obviously heartfelt connection to this powerful tale.

Dillard's finely crafted prose and Luckinbill's sincere voice carry you back to the early days of American expansion, into the truly Wild West and the stone-hard life these settlers would be forced to endure. "She had cried out to God all day and maybe all night, too, that he would lend her strength to bear affliction and go on. She was not aware that underneath she prayed another prayer as if to a power above God, or at least to his better nature, that he was finished with the worst of it." Of course, God isn't finished, and neither are these brave souls. Dillard opens their world slowly, stretching the horizon generation by generation, tethering the fate of one small family to that of the struggling town that they are helping to build and, ultimately, to the inexorable rise of the emerging nation. (Running time: six hours, four cassettes) --George Laney

From Library Journal

Pulitzer Prize-winner Dillard ( Pilgrim at Tinker Creek , HarperCollins, 1988) turns her hand to fiction with this historical novel of the American Northwest in the late 19th century. Focusing on the settlement at Whatcom on Bellingham Bay (near Puget Sound), Dillard offers a compelling portrait of frontier life. The novel has a large and richly varied cast of characters, from the engaging frontiersman Clare Fishburn and Eastern socialite-turned-pioneer Minta Honer to the disturbed and violent Beal Obenchain and kleptomaniac Pearl Sharp. The Living is unflinching in its delineations of pioneer life at its worst and best--racism and brutality on the one hand and optimism and charity in adversity on the other. Dillard's view of "the living" in its many senses is a fine novel that is an essential purchase for all fiction collections.
- Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine/Texas Medical Ctr. Lib.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 698 KB
• Publisher: HarperCollins e-books (October 13, 2009)
• Sold by: HarperCollins Publishers
• Language: English
• ASIN: B000W94EGK
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #102,542 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

Annie Dillard is the author of ten books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winner Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, as well as An American Childhood, The Living, and Mornings Like This. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. Born in 1945 in Pittsburgh, Dillard attended Hollins College in Virginia. After living for five years in the Pacific Northwest, she returned to the East Coast, where she lives with her family.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely rewarding, July 20, 2001

By 

J Peter Nixon (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Living: A Novel (Paperback)

This novel is about settling the Pacific Northwest in the same way that Moby Dick is about whaling. The richly drawn narrative provides a framework for Dillard's exploration of the mysteries of life, suffering and death. There is a philosophical and theological depth to this work that is rare in contemporary fiction.

This is not to say that Dillard sacrifices literary quality to make philosophical points. To the contrary, some of the sentences are simply breathtaking. One of my favorites occurs early in the novel, when Dillard is describing the forbidding topography of the Pacific Northwest from the perspective of one of the settlers:

"God might have created such a plunging shore as this before He thought of making people, and then when he thought of making people, he mercifully softened up the land in the palms of his hands wherever he expected them to live, which did not include here."

This novel can be difficult at times, but it is worth the effort and rewards the close reader.

19 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should Have Been Called "The Dying"!, March 23, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Living: A Novel (Paperback)

This is a dreadful, exhausting book. But I've read it three times! Annie Dillard is an unflinching, straightforward writer who has a firm grasp on the strengths and frailties of human nature. She accurately captures the feel of NW Washington "high woods" and the people who settled the area. By the time you finish this novel you will not just feel like you know the characters, you'll feel like you're related to each one of them and have greived their passing. I highly recommend it to anyone who is from this area of the United States - you will recognize the landscape, the attitudes, and certainly the weather. A character states, after a looong spell of rain and overcast skies, "We live in a lidded pot."

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric Transport To Our Past, April 14, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Living: A Novel (Paperback)

Annie Dillard is one of the best writers today. Her prose is poetic and her poetry is perfection. The Living, a marvelous book about the trials and tribulations of pioneers, is gripping, descriptive, and wonderfully told. To read it, was to be transported. You felt the moss on the trees, you smelled the rich pines, you tasted the salt air. It's an achievement, in every sense of the word.