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My Ántonia (Great Plains trilogy #3)

3.7 of 5 stars 3.70 · rating details · 58,421 ratings · 3,726 reviews

The story of Antonia Shimerda is told by one of her friends from childhood, Jim Burden, an orphaned boy from Virginia. Though he leaves the prairie, Jim never forgets the Bohemian girl who so profoundly influenced his life. An immigrant child of immigrant parents, Antonia's girlhood is spent working to help her parents wrest a living from the untamed land. Though in later...more

Paperback, 232 pages

Published February 20th 2000 by New Millennium Library (first published January 1st 1900)

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Feb 25, 2012 karen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i read this book the same day i found out that sparkling ice had introduced two new flavors, pineapple coconut and lemonade.

what does this have to do with anything, you ask??

well, sparkling ice is sort of a religion with me, and this book was wonderful, so it was kind of a great day, is all. i don't have a lot of those.

why have i never read willa cather before? i'm not sure. i think i just always associated her with old ladies, and i figured i would read her on my deathbed or something. maybe it...more

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Mar 10, 2011 Sparrow rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Hemingway fans, good people

Recommended to Sparrow by: nobody, and why?!

Shelves: classic-or-cannonical, favorites, reviewed, wise, up-hill-both-ways-in-the-snow, girls-rule, audio

Maybe what I love about Willa Cather is all the kinds of love and belonging she writes. Her unhappy marriages and her comfortable ones; her volatile love and her unconsummated longing; and her lone, happy people, are all so different, but so how I see the world. I think the way she writes them is wise. Unreliable narrators are delightful to read because, in the sense that the author has shown me their unreliability, she has also shown me their uniqueness and humanity. I think Jim Burden, the nar...more Maybe what I love about Willa Cather is all the kinds of love and belonging she writes. Her unhappy marriages and her comfortable ones; her volatile love and her unconsummated longing; and her lone, happy people, are all so different, but so how I see the world. I think the way she writes them is wise. Unreliable narrators are delightful to read because, in the sense that the author has shown me their unreliability, she has also shown me their uniqueness and humanity. I think Jim Burden, the narrator of My Antonia is a beautiful example of this and that most of the passion and mystery in this story comes from Jim’s failings as a human, within the story, and even as a character, from a critical perspective. I will explain.

Cather presents the story My Antonia as a story within a story. The narrative introducing the book comes from a friend of Jim’s, who tells us that Jim has always had a romantic disposition, but that, as of the writing of the book, Jim is in a presumably loveless marriage with an awful woman who is “temperamentally incapable of enthusiasm.” Jim’s mind is consumed with memories of a Bohemian girl Jim and the author of the introduction both knew, and she represents to them both the country and the people of their childhoods. Throughout the book, Antonia Shimerda and her warmth belong to the land and the people who love her, and when someone calls her “my Antonia” it means something about that belonging.

It is impossible to truly identify with Antonia because Cather writes her in this unreliable way, and so, even though she is a painfully real character, she is told with lovely mistakes – the mistakes we make in talking about people we love who we don’t understand, who are not like us. Anyway, I don’t remember making this connection the last time I read this book, but for most of my life, people have referred to me as “my Meredith.” I think maybe it is the alliteration that brings it on, but it has always baffled me. For a long time, I found it horrifying. The phrase had some kind of unsettling expectation to it. Now, though, I feel differently. I feel like it is lovely to belong to the people I care about, and the last time someone said it, it was just comfortable and true. I’m not saying that this makes me similar to Antonia Shimerda, but it made me think about how warm and human it is to belong to people like Antonia did.

So, I’m telling you about how this book is written by a woman, but from the perspective of a boy and then a man. Writing across genders is suspicious to me, and so that unreliability piles on to the already suspect character of Jim. And, I don’t think Cather tells him fairly or realistically as a male character, or that this story is told as a man would tell it. It is told in the way a woman would tell about a man’s love, and I like that. It has the insight of a woman into the motivations of another woman, but it has the gentleness of how a woman sees the emotions of men.

Cather always writes domestic stories, but there is also something epic about the tragedies, betrayals, and glory her characters encounter. I don’t think there is one in O Pioneers, but in most of her books she includes some story within the story (in this case also within the larger story) of a far-off land, and those stories are my favorite part of the adventure of reading Willa Cather. The story of the Russian wolves in My Antonia is my favorite.

I am a very impressionable young thing, and so when someone explains to me why they love something, it often sticks and colors my interpretation of that thing in the future. I am staunchly against the prairies, and the pioneers are usually dullsville. In real life, when I am away from mountains for too long I freak out, and I have an aversion to reading about how to live in a dug out. But Cather’s wonderful descriptions of Nebraska change the whole idea for me. I know it’s just descriptions, but they are so vivid and beautiful. I love the mountains, and I maintain that they are more beautiful than the prairies, but I could never describe the essence of the places I love like Cather does her places. And her places are ick, so that makes her even more wonderful as a writer.

Anyway, I love this book. I listened to it on audio this time, and the audio is really lovely. It is difficult to say whether this is my favorite Cather or O Pioneers is or The Professor’s House is. They are all wonderful. This one has a quality I like of being driven by character, not plot, but that is not always a draw. The people here are wonderful, timeless, and real. The things they say are things people should say, and they belong to each other the way people should. It is often brutal, in the way art should be brutal, with real feeling; but, it is not cruel. It tells how we should see each other and how we should be, but also how we do see each other and how we are. It is a sort of magical world that is also real life, but I think that is how we talk about people we love – suspiciously comfortable; unreliable, but belonging.
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Nov 27, 2011 John rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: who care about American literature

Recommended to John by: read it to teach it

Shelves: american-novels-that-matter, avatars-gods-energy-sources

My latest encounter with a masterwork -- a novel I just completed in order to teach, and one that seduced me wonderfully and quite unexpectedly. Cather's Nebraska story goes over ground that's never much mattered to me, Midwestern farm country. Yet she made made the experience ache and thrill marvelously, via her poetic command of landscape and season, her exactitude when it comes to tools and foods and skin texture, and above all her penetrating sympathy for every figure, from the venal to the...more

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Oct 01, 2012 Ben Winch rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: anglo, american

I'm not sure I can tell you what's so great about My Antonia, except that you can't read it without loving its subject, or at least I couldn't. And that it's transparent - miraculously so - as without flash or ego as anything I've read in a long time. But ironically, this rare attribute may help conceal Cather's artistry. In her earlier O Pioneers!, from the first line her virtuosity was evident, but perhaps if I hadn't been so impressed by it there I wouldn't so instinctively have grasped it he...more I'm not sure I can tell you what's so great about My Antonia, except that you can't read it without loving its subject, or at least I couldn't. And that it's transparent - miraculously so - as without flash or ego as anything I've read in a long time. But ironically, this rare attribute may help conceal Cather's artistry. In her earlier O Pioneers!, from the first line her virtuosity was evident, but perhaps if I hadn't been so impressed by it there I wouldn't so instinctively have grasped it here. Certainly the absurd and implausible introduction (positing My Antonia as the hastily-scribbled autobiographical work of a lawyer who has, so far as we know, never written before) would not have helped, and it's unfortunate that my edition (Broadview, 2003) kept the longer early version of this introduction intact, only printing Cather's preferred, much-shortened redraft as an appendix, because these pages are her only serious misstep. But from page one of the actual text Cather's flow carries us effortlessly - not a word wasted, not a flat passage, nothing wooden or hollow or false. And when virtuosity rises calmly like a ripple from the depths and subsides we hardly notice it has passed. Here she describes a young, blind, black boy's first encounter with the piano, with which he would earn his living later in life:

Through the dark he found his way to the Thing, to its mouth. He touched it softly, and it answered softly, kindly. He shivered and stood still. Then he began to feel it all over, ran his finger tips along the slippery sides, embraced the carved legs, tried to get some conception of its shape and size, of the space it occupied in the primeval night. It was cold and hard, and like nothing else in his black universe. He went back to its mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his way down into the mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to know that it must be done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet. He approached this highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct, and coupled himself to it, as if he knew it was to piece him out and make a whole creature of him.

Taken alone, this could just as easily be the 'fabulist' Felisberto Hernandez as the 'realist' Willa Cather, yet somehow it does not seem out of place in this, in many ways, traditional-seeming book. I would say it's because Cather's writing always serves the needs of the story, but the truth is I'm not sure what are the needs of a story like this one, the flow of which is far less the rapid rush down the mountain than the wide, meandering yet powerful drift across the plain. Cather describes it:

There was material in that book for a lurid melodrama. But I decided in writing it I would dwell very lightly upon those things that a novelist would ordinarily emphasize and make up my story of the little, everyday happenings and occurrences that form the greatest parts of everyone's life and happiness.

She has succeeded. When I finished O Pioneers! I felt I would have gladly done without the melodrama just to inhabit the perfectly-realised setting of Cather's Nebraska, to watch the seasons pass and the characters grow, and this is exactly what I experienced in My Antonia. Though I always look forward to reading, there are few books that can calm me as this one did. My trust in Cather, after the nasty shock of the introduction had worn off, was near-complete: nothing cruel would happen to her characters, nothing cloying or fake, nothing for the sake of drama or plot. Often I am wowed by innovation or mindbending concepts or all-consuming atmosphere, but this was a simpler pleasure. I wouldn't call it thought-provoking - in fact I don't think its function is to provoke at all. But I do feel it has seeped into me and will remain there, like a part of my own memory, so direct and sensuous and glowing with life was my experience of it.(less)

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May 25, 2007 The Book Maven rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: literaryfiction

When I first arrived in Indiana in August 2004, I didn't know what I was expecting. My ancestors had first arrived in that Midwestern state in 1820, when it was still comparatively wild and unsettled. They were the true pioneers, but nonetheless, as I got out of my little Corolla to stretch my legs, I felt like I was a trailblazer, too.

We had stopped at a little gas station and truck stop just beyond the Indiana state line. I took a moment to call the relatives, let them know I was two hours aw...more When I first arrived in Indiana in August 2004, I didn't know what I was expecting. My ancestors had first arrived in that Midwestern state in 1820, when it was still comparatively wild and unsettled. They were the true pioneers, but nonetheless, as I got out of my little Corolla to stretch my legs, I felt like I was a trailblazer, too.

We had stopped at a little gas station and truck stop just beyond the Indiana state line. I took a moment to call the relatives, let them know I was two hours away...and then I took a good look around. On all sides, we were surrounded by late summer grass, burnt yellow by a typical lack of rain, undulating in an afternoon wind. I thought it was beautiful. Later that evening, I would sit on a porch and watch fireflies and the lightning from a late-night storm light up the night sky, and know the meaning of the words, "My cup runneth over."

Such was my first exposure to Indiana. I never stopped thinking it was beautiful, and even now, after I have lived in California for almost a year, I feel lonely and heartsick when I contemplate my Midwest, now left in the past, in so many ways.

I read My Antonia soon after moving here, when I was in denial of how homesick I was, and the words of Willa Cather destroyed all denial:

"The old pastureland was now being broken up into wheatfields and cornfields, the red grass was disappearing, and the whole face of the country was changing. There were wood houses where the old sod dwellings used to be, and little orchards, and big red barns; all this meant happy children, contented women, and men who saw their lives coming to a fortunate issue. The windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility."

Yes, Cather's words are of the great plains of Nebraska, and my memories are of the lands of the Midwest, but both are Middle America, both are the same in my mind, in my heart, in my love of the land there.

My Antonia is a story of people, and love, and land, and love of the land, and it is a story of the pioneer stock who came to North America and formed the backbone of those whom I still call "farmer stock." It's a romance, but not in the sentimental, lovey-dovey sense; it's a romance in a sensual, timeless manner, evoking eternal beauty through lyrical narrative.(less)

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Dec 29, 2008 Terence rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

Perhaps an example of the danger of reading something before being intellectually or critically able to handle it. I wasn't "forced" to read this in high school but it was on a list of books an English teacher asked us to choose from and report on.

The experience was so awful that I've never cracked another Cather novel since.

Added 12/29/08: Apparently I was not the only young man "traumatized" by an early experience with Cather. In a completely serendipitous convergence I came across this paragr...more

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Jun 25, 2012 Seth rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Marcus calls the protaganist "neutered". While Jim may not have been assertive, the men who were in the story were fatally flawed for that reason. Their assertiveness was self-destructive. The assertiveness seemed to come from their demons. For example, Mr. Cutter was assertive. His spite tortured his marriage and reached beyond his life. He insisted to control the destiny of not just himself but his miserable wife ending both with violence. In contrast, A man whose life and death just "happened...more Marcus calls the protaganist "neutered". While Jim may not have been assertive, the men who were in the story were fatally flawed for that reason. Their assertiveness was self-destructive. The assertiveness seemed to come from their demons. For example, Mr. Cutter was assertive. His spite tortured his marriage and reached beyond his life. He insisted to control the destiny of not just himself but his miserable wife ending both with violence. In contrast, A man whose life and death just "happened" to him, suffered a different weakness. Antonia's father was desperately homesick. His despairing nature made the staged suicide believable.

Jim was a fitting romantic interest for Antonia for that reason. Jim the neutered male character was not assertive, making him safe like her father. However, Antonia needed pursuit and a man passively being shaped by life was not able to provide that. Thus, the story and characters provide us insight with the consequences of emasculating men.

Whatever shortcomings Cather's men suffer, are more than compensated for by Cather's women. The women here are worthy of polygamy. They're deliciously sensual women. When the narrator speaking in first person writes of "My Antonia" I finished saying the same. "My Antonia", she was really mine. A possession neither the protagonist or I actually accomplish. Because Antonia was really her own. Her tragic abandonment by Larry Donovan didn't make her unhappy. Nor her later marriage, poverty, nothing. She glowed her independent self-assurance. A glow nurturing her loved ones. Here's a feminine power. A power, unlike modern feminism, that comes from nurturing people rather than competing against them.

But let's not forget Lena. Lena's sensuality and independence was a contrast ultimately less enticing but nonetheless worthy of polygamous considerations. Her inner possession allows for a very different feminine possibility. There the powerful woman is happy working and never marrying. She's willing to entertain romance but never needing a man to make herself whole.

The wildness of Cather's country women shames the civilized weaker girls in town. While the class structure made it difficult for the most available bachelors to choose Lena and Antonia, the choice for the society girls was a sign of male weakness and contrasted the power of girls unwilling to conform. Even though the social commentary is enough to make the novel a nourishing read, its Cather's simplicity and honesty that raise the novel to its five star rating. Its deeply rewarding. Its a soothing story. It doesn't rip you apart like Stegner. It doesn't shame your inner-darkness like Dostoyevsky. It doesn't enlighten through destruction but rather shows us a feminine way. It speaks to us the way we want our women to speak to us: Delicate, simple, enriching truths. (less)

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Feb 18, 2008 Loren rated it 5 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Nov 15, 2008 Melodi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I was expecting this book to be a hard classic to read. But I quite enjoyed it. I think it offers one a lot to consider and discuss....immigration, schooling, farm life, change of life, friendships, the list goes on. I enjoyed the painting that I felt Willa Cather painted as I was reading. It was peaceful to read and almost made me wish I had lived back in the day when life was somewhat simpler.

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Aug 18, 2012 Stenwjohnson rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"The miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life."

--Willa Cather, My Antonia

I first read my parents’ copy of Willa Cather’s 1918 novel “My Antonia” when I was 11. At the time, my mom described it as “Laura Ingalls Wilder for grown-ups.” Over 30 years later, I’ve read it again and fully understand what she meant. On the first reading, I had felt a vague bittersweetness, but not with the benefit of maturity and...more "The miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life."

--Willa Cather, My Antonia

I first read my parents’ copy of Willa Cather’s 1918 novel “My Antonia” when I was 11. At the time, my mom described it as “Laura Ingalls Wilder for grown-ups.” Over 30 years later, I’ve read it again and fully understand what she meant. On the first reading, I had felt a vague bittersweetness, but not with the benefit of maturity and experience. Reading it in middle age, I felt I was revisiting a unique masterpiece.

Cather uses the ingenious, if familiar device of the “unreliable” narrator: Traveling with Jim Burden, a friend from the narrator’s Nebraska childhood, both agree to write their recollections of a childhood friend, the Czech immigrant Antonia. Since this figure of the past has less interest to the immediate narrator, only Burden completes the task. The original speaker, the professional New York writer and presumed “Cather” retreats into the background as we read Burden’s unedited manuscript, a non-professional and unmediated account of life on the Nebraska prairie of the late 1800s. Literary pretense vanishes, in favor of a simply told and profoundly resonant story.

“Antonia” is an unmistakable idyll, a recollection of a rural childhood bathed in the amber glow of memory. But the prose that “Burden” writes is satisfyingly unassuming, even terse. There are passages of haunting simplicity and beauty. Straightforward moments have ineffable resonance: In its earliest chapters, “My Antonia” contains instants of joy and wonder that, in their sincerity and fleeting, can only evoke an unexpressed undercurrent of loss; moments of pleasure and agrarian rapture are destined to fade.

“My Antonia” is also about a kind of relationship that is common to everyday experience but rare in literature: Men and women in close friendships that promise to grow into greater intimacy but chafe at the bounds of propriety or personal inhibitions. Jim’s relationships with both Lena Lingard and Antonia are complex, nuanced, and unmistakably authentic, with underlying passions fed by a painful inertia.

“My Antonia” is lightning in a bottle. I’ve never read another satisfying Cather novel. The title of the earlier “O Pioneers” says it all: a stilted, high-literary invocation of a distant and artificially elevated agrarian ideal. “My Antonia” is painfully authentic. It is one of the few novels that have brought tears to my eyes, but I can hardly define why: That is art.

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Dec 23, 2008 Christine rated it 2 of 5 stars

i've been rating a lot of books with "it was ok" lately - that phrase seems to cover a wide range for me. for this book i considered giving it a third star ("liked it").

i enjoyed reading about country life and then life in town. while i didn't necessarily feel the same love for Antonia that the narrator felt she was certainly key to the story & an enjoyable character. i certainly enjoyed the interesting mix of characters on the sideline of the story - in fact i think they are what kept me re...more

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Jan 24, 2008 Steven rated it 5 of 5 stars

Quite simply, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. This book was a real breath of fresh air given the plain no-nonsense style of Ms. Cather, especially when contrasted with that of Henry James, whom I had just finished reading.

My favorite aspect of the novel was in its vivid descriptions of the setting. My knowledge of the State of Nebraska was basically limited to thinking of it as a place where corn is grown, where the option offense was close to unstopable, where Warren Buffet calls home, and wher...more

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Jun 20, 2007 Ashley rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been doing a lot of re-reading lately, and this is yet another case of it. I first read this book in either high school or college. I remember it as an amazing book, and yet as I read it this time, I couldn't really see what I'd thought was amazing about it. It's not a bad book by any means - maybe I'd just somehow built it up in my mind to be something that it couldn't be. Anyway, the story is of a man reflecting upon his childhood in the Nebraska prairie and telling about the people he kn...more

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Jan 02, 2009 Antof9 rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2005-read, americana, charming, immigrants

I really liked this book! It had a little of the 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 took it with me over "Christmas break", and my 13 year old niece was reading it too. I love that she's turning into a reader like her aunt!

There is something beautiful about the simplicity of the time in this book. Here's a passage I...more I really liked this book! It had a little of the 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 took it with me over "Christmas break", and my 13 year old niece was reading it too. I love that she's turning into a reader like her aunt!

There is something beautiful about the simplicity of the time in this book. Here's a passage I particularly liked, describing a typical Christmas: ". . . when I got down to the kitchen, the men were just coming in from their morning chores -- the horses and pigs always had their breakfast before we did. Grandfather came down, wearing a white shirt and his Sunday coat. Morning prayers were longer than usual. He read the chapters from Saint Matthew about the birth of Christ, and as we listened, it all seemed like something that had happened lately, and near at hand. In his prayer he thanked the Lord for the first Christmas, and for all that it had meant to the world ever since. He gave thanks for our food and comfort, and prayed for the poor and destitute in great cities, where the struggle for life was harder than it wa here with us. Grandfather's prayers were often very interesting. He had the gift of simple and moving expression. Because he talked so little, his words had a peculiar force; they were not worn dull from constant use."

I just love this description! What powerful things it says about the grandfather's character, what was important to him, etc.

Here's another beautiful description about Lena, and girls in general: "When I turned back to my room the place seemed much pleasanter than before. Lena had left something warm and friendly in the lamplight. How I loved to hear her laugh again! It was so soft and unexcited and appreciative -- gave a favourable interpretation to everything. It came over me, as it had never done before, the relation between girls like those and the poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them in the world, there would be no poetry. I understood that clearly, for the first time. This revelation seemed to me inestimably precious. I clung to it as if it might suddenly vanish."

Charming, no?

As the book started, I wasn't sure who the "Bohemians" were. I thought for a time they might be Poles, as many of the references and names reminded me of things I've discussed with my Polish sister-in-law. It's very interesting to me to think about an immigrant's life through a book like this, as my father came to the U.S. from Holland at age 21 (1955), and the things I know about his life are different, and yet the same, as those described in this book.

I'm so glad I ran across this book -- and to think that I originally picked it up because the fabric of the cover was so interesting!(less)

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Sep 02, 2011 Maureen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Maureen by: Patty

Shelves: 2011

okay, i'm done!

there's not really a plot.

i really liked the book -- i wasn't sure if crying by page fifteen was going to bear out, but i found i really like cather's writing, period. she accomplishes a lot in straight forward memoir as narrative, and i like the sense of nostalgia that permeates the book. i have read that cather was friends with sarah orne jewett, author of the country of the pointed firs (fantastic book - thanks ben? patty?) and the two share a lot in style and approach with v...more okay, i'm done!

there's not really a plot.

i really liked the book -- i wasn't sure if crying by page fifteen was going to bear out, but i found i really like cather's writing, period. she accomplishes a lot in straight forward memoir as narrative, and i like the sense of nostalgia that permeates the book. i have read that cather was friends with sarah orne jewett, author of the country of the pointed firs (fantastic book - thanks ben? patty?) and the two share a lot in style and approach with vignette/chapters that all stand on their own. but while i adored the pointed firs, and think for me, it is a superior book, for all its stillness it didn't have an antonia. and i'm going to compare antonia to daisy buchanan in gatsby, or faulkner's caddy, or helen of troy. she's that girl that dreams are made of. antonia is an infusion, she's like the river that jim so loved, threading herself into his life so that even when he is away from her they're merged in my mind, they've imprinted upon each other so much that i can't really think of him without her, and i think that some epic characterization -- cather is a vivid and powerful writer, really adept at description, capable of writing a novel that seems a perfect memory perfectly recounted. it feels very much as if this all really happened in just the way cather describes it, and that she was a boy named jim, but also a girl named antonia, and the reader is also there, in the days before radio, tv, movies sitting as enthralled as the other children listening to her tell the stories.

highlights: when tony recalls the story of the tramp and the thresher. also, the whole weirdness with krajiek and the axe! the story of the russian bride! i really loved the little gothic moments, the secrets of neighbours, and the barely suppressed violence of life the underbelly of society just springing up in the place johnny carson grew up -- his show was the first i ever heard of nebraska, when i was knee-high to a grasshopper writing him letters on my kermit the frog stationery. :)

(cheatery because this is an edited excerpt i posted on our group read at fiction files redux: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/6...)(less)

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May 09, 2012 Nenia Campbell rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: x-1910s, beautiful-words-lets-swim-in-them, hero-is-pretty-decent, literature-i-like, trainwreck-i-have-watched-and-loved, holy-character-development-batman

this story, which could easily be called little house on the prairie for adults, broke my heart.

my mother was cleaning out some of the old books in our garage, and when i examined the contents of the one she had set aside for me, there were three willa cather books nestled in the middle. initially, i was hesitant - i have bad experiences with westerns masquerading as classical literature - but she told me, in the same tones she had used years before for broccoli, geometry homework, and asking bo...more

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Feb 02, 2009 Shellie (Layers of Thought) rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-historical-fiction, favorites, element-glbt

One of my favorite books. Willa Cather is amazing. Her writing flows. Her characters are real, and complex. The book also gives you an idea of what life was like 100 years ago - as well as how the great plains were before we made them into farms.

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Mar 09, 2009 Josephine rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

"Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."

My friend Blueberry lent me this book over...more "Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep."

My friend Blueberry lent me this book over Christmas and for a long time, it sat on my coffee table, waiting to be read. Friends would walk into the living room and express genuine shock that it has taken me until age 33 to read My Antonia. "How is that possible?" What can I say? It simply hadn't entered my universe before.

I picked it up on a dull, snowy day. The kind of day perfectly described in the book, in fact: "Winter lies too long in country towns; hangs on until it is stale and shabby, old and sullen." The story is told in the voice of Jim Burden, an orphaned boy who is brought to Nebraska to live with his grandparents in the late 19th century. Antonia and her family are immigrants from Bohemia who have come to farm the land adjacent to the Burdens. Far from the American opportunity and promise they set out to find, their living situation is untenable, and they encounter struggles in the new world that they never would have imagined.

Willa Cather's prose is incredibly rich. She sets the Midwestern countryside ablaze with sunshine and lights up each individual blade of grass. Your mind can't help but hold a nostalgic, detailed picture of Antonia, her ragged dress, the dusty pioneer town, the dances, the starlight, the heat.

My Antonia is a portrait of pioneer life, and especially of the demands and struggles that confronted women of that time period. It is a reflection on nostalgia, friendship, endurance, and love. It's the kind of book you want to read again as soon as you've finished it. It's the kind you want to pass on to your friends and exclaim "What do you mean you haven't read this yet?" And even as you say it, you're just a little bit jealous. Because you know that when they open it, they'll get to meet Antonia for the first time, they'll get to run through the prairie grass, and be surprised and warmed by that deep, rich sunshine.

This review was first posted at Please Come Flying.(less)

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May 13, 2008 Visha Burkart rated it 3 of 5 stars

John Sullivan said he loved Willa Cather and recommended that I read some of her work since I'd apparently missed every American literature class that had it on the required reading list. He also said she was good for those writers who have female protags operating in male-dominated areas (both geographically and vocationally).
I agree that Antonia is an interesting character and several of the short-stories that make up the books "chapters" - this is clearly a cut and pasted book, but not to it...more John Sullivan said he loved Willa Cather and recommended that I read some of her work since I'd apparently missed every American literature class that had it on the required reading list. He also said she was good for those writers who have female protags operating in male-dominated areas (both geographically and vocationally).
I agree that Antonia is an interesting character and several of the short-stories that make up the books "chapters" - this is clearly a cut and pasted book, but not to its detriment - are quite interesting. I like how the narrative will say "and this is [blank's] story:" and just plunks it down for the reader. There is alot that is contained in this book - the narrative feels like a lot of little boxes between the book-covers. Once again, the overall structure is interesting because it's begun with the "author" meeting a friend, they talk about Antonia - a mutual friend - and later the friend drops off a manuscript he's written about Antonia. And the author professes that all that follows is his work. The idea of false-found-material is intriguing, but I wondered why it couldn't be a frame narrative, with Jim meeting the author again, by the end?
There also seem to be a lot of ellipses - a lot of missing information or details that are strangely placed. For example, why go into the details of Jim's horrible wife in the introduction? It seems so random and has no bearing on what happens within the narrative itself? Also, Jim doesn't seem like the most honest of narrators. There are times that I felt he was withholding.
What was fantastic were the lightly-concealed sexual metaphors and all of the "racy" material - rape, out of wedlock babies, lusty fast-girls, etc. Great, great stuff - those details made the novel seem ahead of its time, or at least interesting in the contemporary sense. One of the games that the girls play is called "pussy wants a corner." Was that a veiled sexual reference or am I just being crass? I mean, Willa wrote it, I'm just asking about it. Hmmm.

Glad I had a chance to read some Willa. She definitely had some strong women and interesting characters, although the main character, Jim, wasn't the most compelling protag I've ever read.

Sullivan highly recommended The Professor's House, although he said it was a different vein than My Antonia and O'Pioneers! (less)

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Aug 12, 2008 Dawn Michelle rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: ANYONE! What a great story!

Recommended to Dawn Michelle by: Charity and Paula

{Have you ever been in the middle of a really GREAT book and then just get SO busy that you just don't have time to finish it. That is what happened here. Took me MUCH longer than expected because of guests and now work. Sigh.}

I am so amazed by this book. It was so worth all the searching that I did to find it. I had heard of Willa Cather, but had never read anything by her. Now I cannot wait to read some more of her stuff. What an amazing writer she is.

This IS the story of Antonia. But its al...more

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Aug 28, 2007 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: babel fans, dykes

This was my first time reading Willa Cather and I was pleasantly surprised. The writing is simple and the story is told through short, two-to-five page vingettes of life in the west.... it actually reminded me of Isaac Babel's Red Calvary short stories - short, simple, focused snapshots and scenes that are loosely related because they share an observant if not a boring and mostly inactive narrator. I mean, sure, the Red Calvary Stories are about wartime Russia and this is about Nebraska immigran...more

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Mar 22, 2008 Charity rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: people young at heart

Shelves: radcliffe, faves

What a remarkable book! It is even more remarkable that I waited so long to read it.

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, Jim Burden comes to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk, Nebraska. Here he meets and befriends Ántonia Shimerda, a young Bohemian girl who lives with her family nearby. They grow up together, having wild adventures, in their community full of colo...more

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Aug 25, 2007 Chris rated it 2 of 5 stars

"My Ántonia" tells the story of Jim Burden (the book's narrator), a young boy of 10 who is sent from Virginia to live with his grandparents in the harsh prairie of Nebraska, after he is orphaned. On the same train, an immigrant family from Bohemia also arrives with a 14-year old daughter by the name of Ántonia Shimerdas and the family becomes the closest neighbor to the Burden's. The story is told as a memoir years later by Jim as he recalls his interaction with the Shimerdas' and his relations...more

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Oct 17, 2008 Barner rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: adult readers

I recently read this book in order to join a discussion group. Though it is one I should have read years ago, I am glad I waited: I loved it. The description is wonderful : ( the copper colored grass she refers to is seen in MN in two nearby state parks. The color is magnificient especially when the sun highlights it.) Antonia is full of exuberance for life even after experiencing heartache. She is resilient; all the women are strong characters, and the novel is probably a sad love story as told...more

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Jan 12, 2008 Jenn rated it 5 of 5 stars

Title: My Antonia
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 the joys and struggles of early western farm life, the rich stories of immigrants, and the simplicity of growing up in an empty land. The characters are vivid and real, and they have much to teach the reader.
Thoughts: We both absolutely l...more

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Nov 19, 2011 Karen rated it 4 of 5 stars

I thoroughly enjoyed every minute reading this book! The characters are so well developed that I think I will miss them. I didn't want this story to end. The narrative is so clear, it made me yearn to be back home in a part of our country I have never been. I have a new found respect for the strong women immigrants. who paved the way for generations to come. They redefined the American dream with their courage and perseverance, all the while remaining true to their heritage and values. The frien...more

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Mar 14, 2009 James rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, favorites, lincoln-park-group, read-and-reread

This was simply a beautiful book to read. Willa Cather's tale of a young daughter of Bohemian immigrants on the Nebraska frontier is a delight from beginning to end. Antonia Shimerda's life is narrated by her friend Jim Burden. The story of her growth, travails and eventual success in becoming one with the land is one of the great frontier stories of America. Willa Cather captures the spirit of the land with wonderful descriptions of the landscape and life on the frontier; and its people by capt...more

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Jul 29, 2008 Jessiehenn added it · review of another edition Recommends it for: People who like boring pointless books

Recommended to Jessiehenn by: Required for English class

Shelves: classic, historical-fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Sep 18, 2007 Jennifer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

I decided to read this book after it was named the Summer/Fall 2002 selection for One Book/One Chicago (and I bought it at Barbara's Bookstore in Old Town just before hearing Studs Terkel speak). It was a quick read, and I enjoyed the descriptions of life on the prairie - in a small town (Black Hawk) and the farm outside of town. I imagine the descriptions would be familiar to my ancestors who settled in rural Illinois in the mid-1800s. The characters Cather describes are dynamic, and I enjoyed...more

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Jul 15, 2008 Kathleen rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

What a dear, wonderful story that I just want to clutch to my heart and keep forever. It brings back to me such feelings of love and connectedness to the land as I haven't felt since my years on the farm. The richness of the descriptions of the struggle to make a homestead in desolate Nebraska are truthful and stark and perfect. Some may criticize the lack of plot, but I think the portraits of characters that Cather writes are the real backbone of the story, not to mention it is simply a story a...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Antonia had a big responsibility to help her family by learning a new language. Would you have been so willing to learn a new language and culture in order to help your family adjust like she did?	8	24	May 01, 2013 04:00pm
How do the themes in My Antonia reflect Will Cather's own life. In other words, what are some biographical criticisms of the novel?	3	15	Mar 24, 2013 04:23pm
Is Jim Burden transgendered?	14	81	Jan 14, 2013 12:43pm
fiction files redux: My Antonia by Willa Cather	34	45	Sep 11, 2011 11:54am

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About Willa Cather

Wilella Sibert Cather is an eminent author from the United States. She is perhaps best known for her depictions of U.S. life in novels such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

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Quotes from My Ántonia

“The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers...I kept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anything to happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.” — 84 people liked it

“Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.” — 49 people liked it

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