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1st out of 19 books
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1 voter
The Meadow
by
James Galvin
An American Library Association Notable Book
In discrete disclosures joined with the intricacy of a spider's web, James Galvin depicts the hundred-year history of a meadow in the arid mountains of the Colorado/Wyoming border. Galvin describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, and the few people who do not possess but are themselves possessed by this terrain. In so doi...more
In discrete disclosures joined with the intricacy of a spider's web, James Galvin depicts the hundred-year history of a meadow in the arid mountains of the Colorado/Wyoming border. Galvin describes the seasons, the weather, the wildlife, and the few people who do not possess but are themselves possessed by this terrain. In so doi...more
Paperback, 240 pages
Published
April 15th 1993
by Holt Paperbacks
(first published 1992)
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"Often I am permitted to return to a meadow..."
This is a quiet, thoughtful read for those of us who have a strong heart connection with the high sagebrush country of the inter-mountain West. It follows about a century's-worth of people's doin's in a mountain meadow at 8,500 feet in southern Wyoming. The life requires great hardiness and ingenuity to withstand the isolation and trials of snow, wind, fire, hunger, disease, and financial uncertainty.
The book is beautifully and heartfully written,...more
This is a quiet, thoughtful read for those of us who have a strong heart connection with the high sagebrush country of the inter-mountain West. It follows about a century's-worth of people's doin's in a mountain meadow at 8,500 feet in southern Wyoming. The life requires great hardiness and ingenuity to withstand the isolation and trials of snow, wind, fire, hunger, disease, and financial uncertainty.
The book is beautifully and heartfully written,...more
Sep 28, 2010
Micheal
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommended to Micheal by:
Anyone who loves the west and beautiful writing
Read this book the first time back in 2000, and though I liked it, didn't really see it for what it is. Reminded of it by a friend, subsequent re-reading brought me back to a place I'd somehow forgotten. The West I once knew. Like a landscape looked on fleetingly once upon a time, the return visit revealed vistas that went unnoticed before. I can smell the warm pine and fresh cut hay. Flaming sunsets over fir silhouetted ridge lines in winter are painted vividly as are winding dirt roads meander...more
This deeply moving book for all I know is a classic. I read it eighteen years ago when it came out, have only now re-read it, and as with all classics, I rather hope I've learned more from it in re-reading than I did the first time around. The Meadow is about several things, but first it's the story of Lyle Van Waning and the community he helped form on the high ridge of the Continental Divide, the region called Boulder Ridge and Sheep Creek Meadow in the border area between Wyoming and Colorado...more
Mmmm, wow. The same wonderful friend who gave me "Autobiography of Red" tipped me off to poet James Galvin's novel-length effort. Although effort is probably the wrong word, as it implies to me that perhaps the effort wasn't successful, where instead, "The Meadow" is partially fictional, fully poetic, and totally wonderful. I read it with Edward Abbey in mind--Galvin chronicles the lives of several generations of farmers on a singular meadow on the Wyoming-Colorado border, and he also earns hims...more
A poem. A song. An ode. To be read slowly. Savor the language. Savor how the short chapters - some just a sentence long - feel like an aperture that slowly opens, takes in the view whole, then closes. Then repositions itself and repeats.
Consider the relationships between environment and man, man and animal, man and man, animal and environment. Consider tools and how men employ them as an intermediary in their relationship with the environment. Consider the passage of time. Consider how time was...more
Consider the relationships between environment and man, man and animal, man and man, animal and environment. Consider tools and how men employ them as an intermediary in their relationship with the environment. Consider the passage of time. Consider how time was...more
I loved _The Meadow_ the first time I read it, but that was for a class during a packed semester, so it was naturally a rushed reading. This time the title came up - literally a name pulled out of a jar - in a book club. I enjoyed the second reading even more, having the luxury of enough time to enjoy it in leisurely snatches.
Galvin writes with such admirable attention to detail that I decided to read an excerpt from the book to my creative writing class as an excellent model of indirect charac...more
Galvin writes with such admirable attention to detail that I decided to read an excerpt from the book to my creative writing class as an excellent model of indirect charac...more
Technically this book is a sort of memoir/historical non-fiction, but it reads like fiction. The style of writing blew me away with its simple but strong prose that vibrates with calm intensity. Galvin's writing is almost like Hemingway, short episodes, almost unrelated at times, that jump back and forth through time. Galvin tells the story of this Wyoming meadow through his own eyes and the recounted (and author-embellished) stories of several stolid and vivid Western men. After reading this, I...more
This novel is a quiet, understated stunner; I nearly want to compare it to an Ondaatje novel in its poetic sensibility and beguiling concision. It speaks most powerfully through images and distilled, economic character revelations, and its cumulate effects will work their way deep inside of you. Like some of my other favorite novels (To the Lighthouse, By the Lake, etc.), this novel forces you to slow down to enter its world properly: if you do, though, you'll be greatly rewarded. I'd struggle t...more
Reading a book like this is such a treat, a real pleasure. I loved this book, the writing is absolutely exquisite. I felt so drawn to all the characters, especially Lyle. I just couldn't get enough of him. One of the most interesting men in any book I've ever read. Galvin's description of the landscape and the changing weather evoked such beautiful images. I've given this four stars rather than five because I had trouble with the changing of time frames. It stopped the flow for me when I had to...more
I enjoyed the book, particularly because it describes life in an area near where I live, where we've ridden our horses. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the locality and scenery and wildlife. The people's lives were nothing special, just the way they were. It was difficult to follow at times, jumping from one family to the next or from one time period to another, back and forth. I listened to the audiobook, which made it impossible to flip pages back to get a grip on things I felt I miss...more
Started this slender book by well know poet, Galvan on Sunday when we were snowed in.It is a wonderfully lyrical and imagery laden book that focuses on two of 45 generations who loved on or near a special spot in Colorado. The descriptions of winter, ice, snow and coping with all three are fascinating. Both App and Lyle are to be envied for their toughness, independence, and resourcefulness. Next time you are snowed in, read this book! Your life will be immediately better--especially if you have...more
I am having a hard time writing this review, because this book is so spare, so intricate, so spellbinding that I struggle to find the words to give even a minimal conception of the scope and breadth and depth of it. Other have done a better job than I ever could.
From Publishers Weekly:
These ragged sketches of ranch life along the Wyoming-Colorado border depict the author's neighbors--hardscrabble folk--in wry, stoic stories of skill, survival and loss that flash back and forth across 100 years o...more
From Publishers Weekly:
These ragged sketches of ranch life along the Wyoming-Colorado border depict the author's neighbors--hardscrabble folk--in wry, stoic stories of skill, survival and loss that flash back and forth across 100 years o...more
"Often I am permitted to return to a meadow...." The Robert Duncan poem that serves as an epigraph for this book is perfect. The sense of grateful permission, respect, attention, ominous undertones ("of ring a round of roses told"), return, presence (in a Buddhist/hardcore-rancher way!), the open style--guided by perception not plot or chronology--and so much more. One of the best books written on the West. Truly captures the land and the way it seeps into people; the way it mirrors, swallows, a...more
A compelling view of the American West. I’ve been blessed to spend half a year on a cattle ranch in the southern Rockies, so I can attest to the verisimilitude. Yet the book, for me, is too modernist by half. It was so colt-jumpy that I didn’t realize who the main character was until he died. This eulogy to The Meadow is in fact to something far greater we’ve lost.
Aug 12, 2012
Stacy
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommended to Stacy by:
Mentioned in Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight
Shelves:
memorable
An almost indescribably beautiful book. To have this book written about your own life would tell you, "this is where I am in the world." To be able to write it about your own roots, as the author has done, is a tremendous feat of observation and insight. If book ratings were measured by the reader's tears, I'd have to give this one even more stars.
James Galvin and Marilynne Robinson are the only writers who make me wish I were a writer.
James Galvin and Marilynne Robinson are the only writers who make me wish I were a writer.
The Meadow is a deeply personal meditation—a consideration—on land and the elements (the weather, the people) that consist therein. It’s a text that reflects and embodies place, lassoing its chaos (well, as much as possible) and rendering it in lyrical fragments somewhat akin to prose poems. The Meadow is a beautiful and honest book that is not about telling or explaining but being. It is text as environment.
This book provided a fascinating look at what it was like to live on a ranch at the border between Wyoming and Colorado by telling the stories of several generations who lived there. While I sometimes had trouble sorting out what was happening when, I still really liked this book. I just decided to not worry about the chronology so much.
Unconventional in style with short entries, not even chapters, written nonlinearly and points of view from different players in the story of the Meadow. From horse and buggy and homesteading times to poachers on ATVs, all of the stories revolve around the Meadow and those people who chose to lead their lives there in the cold, remote Northwestern landscape of the Colorado/Wyoming area.
Good read--timeless. Recommended to me by a friend at work years ago. Somewhere between an environmental novel and a western americana novel. I liked that I as the reader was treated as an insider. perhaps even like a local version of "100 years of solitude"
A short collection set in rural Colorado. Rich, lyrical language, inter-connected stories of families and loners centered around the meadow. Neck deep snow and the isolation and sensibility of poet Hayden Carruth. Insulated socks and wood stove required.
A really beautiful work of art. One review called it a "prose book" which is both an accurate and a totally unhelpful summation. I recommend reading it in very quiet place, with absolutely nothing else on your mind. Let yourself be transported.
I just didn't get it. A book chosen by our book club and was panned by all members. It was chosen mainly because it is set in the area which we live (Northern Co/Southern Wy). I'm not sure how to even classify this book: fiction? non-fiction? or a combo of both. I've heard that people who know the author recognize many of the characters in the novel as people they know. There really isn't a story to the book and I was confused by the characters and their roles/purpose. HOWEVER I have mentioned t...more
Possibly the best read so far about place/nature that I've come across, good stuff. A sense of intimacy about being human and about the landscape, the world we live in and the world we create for ourselves.
If you love the land and admire people who devote their lives to the land, those who sacrifice to protect it, then you will understand and cherish every beautiful word that Galvin has written.
Loved this book....the prose, the pace of writing, the characters, the sense of place: absolutely fabulous. You simply fall in love with the meadow and with Lyle.
A favorite line, which happens to be early in the book: "Lyle's thinning hair is the color of last year's grass next spring, fresh from under the long snow"
A great book about the west.
A favorite line, which happens to be early in the book: "Lyle's thinning hair is the color of last year's grass next spring, fresh from under the long snow"
A great book about the west.
Its good--I like the idea of taking a place (in this case a piece of land) and using it to drive a story. I am slowly reading it, because when I get to the end, the experience will be over.
Story set in North Park, Colorado, an area where close friends vacation each year. Book was a gift. A lovely, sparse prose, about men and their life within harsh elements and emotions.
Liked the writing, but the time frames kept changing and sometimes when characters were mentioned, I'd need to stop and think about who they were and the realtionship with the narrator.
All the good reviews seem to be from Americans who have experience of the old west, completely alien to me. I didn't really enjoy the book much but felt bad giving it two stars. I got pretty bored in parts.
A true masterpiece. I've given this book away more times then I can count. Deceptively simple, even sparse, prose that brings an unknown little meadow to life.
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“The Meadow... Only one of them succeeded in making a life here... He weathered. Before a backdrop of natural beauty, he lived a life from which everything was taken but a place. He lived so close to the real world it almost let him in.”
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Dec 05, 2009 04:28pm