<![CDATA[My Antonia]]>

false <![CDATA[My Antonia]]> http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166804501m/17150.jpg 17150 142 It seems almost sacrilege to infringe upon a book as soulful and rich as Willa Cather's My Ántonia by offering comment. First published in 1918, and set in Nebraska in the late 19th century, this tale of the spirited daughter of a Bohemian immigrant family planning to farm on the untamed land ("not a country at all but the material out of which countries are made") comes to us through the romantic eyes of Jim Burden. He is, at the time of their meeting, newly orphaned and arriving at his grandparents' neighboring farm on the same night her family strikes out to make good in their new country. Jim chooses the opening words of his recollections deliberately: "I first heard of Ántonia on what seemed to be an interminable journey across the great midland plain of North America," and it seems almost certain that readers of Cather's masterpiece will just as easily pinpoint the first time they heard of Ántonia and her world. It seems equally certain that they, too, will remember that moment as one of great light in an otherwise unremarkable trip through the world. Ántonia, who, even as a grown woman somewhat downtrodden by circumstance and hard work, "had not lost the fire of life," lies at the center of almost every human condition that Cather's novel effortlessly untangles. She represents immigrant struggles with a foreign land and tongue, the restraints on women of the time (with which Cather was very much concerned), the more general desires for love, family, and companionship, and the great capacity for forbearance that marked the earliest settlers on the frontier. As if all this humanity weren't enough, Cather paints her descriptions of the vastness of nature--the high, red grass, the road that "ran about like a wild thing," the endless wind on the plains--with strokes so vivid as to make us feel in our bones that we've just come in from a walk on that very terrain ourselves. As the story progresses, Jim goes off to the University in Lincoln to study Latin (later moving on to Harvard and eventually staying put on the East Coast in another neat encompassing of a stage in America's development) and learns Virgil's phrase "Optima dies ... prima fugit" that Cather uses as the novel's epigraph. "The best days are the first to flee"--this could be said equally of childhood and the earliest hours of this country in which the open land, much like My Ántonia, was nothing short of a rhapsody in prairie sky blue. --Melanie Rehak 575450 book 1918 My Antonia total:16090|5:4115|4:5915|3:4131|2:1370|1:559| 16090 59927 19934 1568 5 8 false false Fri Sep 01 00:00:00 -0700 2006 Fri May 25 11:53:47 -0700 2007 Fri May 25 11:54:00 -0700 2007 more...]]> 1 8 false false Sat Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 1983 Mon Dec 29 08:04:41 -0800 2008 Mon Dec 29 21:28:36 -0800 2008
The experience was so awful th...more...]]> 5 3 false true Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 18 16:33:09 -0800 2008 Mon Feb 18 16:33:14 -0800 2008
Cather has a true talent for descriptive writing, and she makes the Nebraska plains of the late nineteenth century come alive. The best part of reading this novel for me was the fact that it overtook me without my realizing it. I didn't begin the novel th...more...]]> 5 7 false false Thu Apr 09 11:18:31 -0700 2009 Sun May 25 12:03:05 -0700 2008 Thu Apr 09 11:18:31 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 3 false false Sat Nov 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue Mar 04 19:23:25 -0800 2008 Sat Nov 15 10:06:41 -0800 2008 more...]]> 2 2 false false Mon Dec 22 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Sun Nov 16 07:12:19 -0800 2008 Tue Dec 23 08:05:25 -0800 2008
i enjoyed reading about country life and then life in town. while i didn't necessarily feel the sam...more...]]> 5 3 false false Tue Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri Oct 12 10:52:59 -0700 2007 Thu Jan 24 13:21:04 -0800 2008
My favorite aspect of the novel was in its vivid descriptions of ...more...]]> 3 2 false false Mon Jun 18 06:43:03 -0700 2007 Wed Jun 20 08:48:25 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 2 false false Tue Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Fri Jan 02 10:00:45 -0800 2009 Fri Jan 02 10:04:12 -0800 2009 Little House feel, with some other "immigrant" books thrown in. I read "Oh, Henry" a million years ago -- can't remember a thing of it -- but had no idea how much I'd like this one!

A fun coincidence on this book -- I ...more...]]> 5 3 false false Mon Feb 09 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Dec 01 10:55:19 -0800 2008 Mon Mar 09 07:36:35 -0700 2009 more...]]> 3 1 false false Thu May 01 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Tue May 13 05:14:48 -0700 2008 Tue May 13 05:26:35 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sun Aug 10 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sat Mar 29 22:26:25 -0700 2008 Tue Aug 12 18:19:33 -0700 2008
I am so amazed by this book. It was so worth all the searchin...more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 25 06:18:27 -0700 2007 Tue Aug 28 11:57:33 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 1 false false Fri Mar 21 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Wed Jun 13 11:35:05 -0700 2007 Sat Mar 22 07:56:59 -0700 2008
Optima dies...prima fugit.
-Virgil

"The best days are the first to flee"....so begins My Ántonia, the powerful story of frontier life in Nebraska.

Recently orphaned,...more...]]> 2 1 false false Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2007 Sat Aug 04 09:37:59 -0700 2007 Sat Aug 25 18:02:36 -0700 2007 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Oct 17 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 17 16:50:05 -0700 2008 Fri Oct 17 16:58:23 -0700 2008 once more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Nov 01 00:00:00 -0800 2006 Sat Jan 12 16:27:33 -0800 2008 Sat Jan 12 16:29:16 -0800 2008 Author: Willa Cather
Genre: Classic, set in late 19th century Nebraska
Pages: 266
Rating (out of 5 stars): *****
Reviewed by: Jenn and Ben
Description: My Antonia tells the story of a Bohemian immigrant family in the late 19th century. It catalogues th...more...]]> 0 1 false true Sun Aug 01 00:00:00 -0700 2004 Tue Jul 29 07:55:38 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 29 07:55:38 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Sat Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Tue Sep 18 20:28:47 -0700 2007 Tue Sep 18 20:32:58 -0700 2007 more...]]> 5 2 false false Mon Jul 14 20:07:40 -0700 2008 Tue Jul 15 03:19:49 -0700 2008 more...]]> http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=17150