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The Song of the Lark (Great Plains trilogy #2)

by Willa Cather, Doris Grumbach (Foreword)

3.88 of 5 stars 3.88 · rating details · 2,958 ratings · 325 reviews

Perhaps Willa Cather's most autobiographical work, The Song of the Lark charts the story of a young woman's awakening as an artist against the backdrop of the western landscape. Thea Kronborg, an aspiring singer, struggles to escape from the confines her small Colorado town to the world of possibility in the Metropolitan Opera House. In classic Cather style, The Song of th...more

Paperback, 464 pages

Published May 10th 1983 by Mariner Books (first published 1915)

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Aug 27, 2012 Mimi rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult

This book . . . well, it's the third Cather novel I have read, and I think I like it the least. That said, you can see I still gave it three stars, because just because I like it the least, does not mean that it is not a good novel and well written.

The book follows the life of Thea Kronborg, a Swedish-American who grows up in a small town in Colorado and ends up studying voice in Germany and becoming a famous opera star.

My main complaint is that the beginning of the book was much better than th...more This book . . . well, it's the third Cather novel I have read, and I think I like it the least. That said, you can see I still gave it three stars, because just because I like it the least, does not mean that it is not a good novel and well written.

The book follows the life of Thea Kronborg, a Swedish-American who grows up in a small town in Colorado and ends up studying voice in Germany and becoming a famous opera star.

My main complaint is that the beginning of the book was much better than the end of the book. The beginning and middle are almost entirely written in the perspective of Thea, and it's fascinating. The latter portion of the book is mostly written in the perspective of others (Fred Ottenberg, Dr. Archie, Tillie), and all they do is really talk about how Thea has grown and how amazing she is. That isn't as interesting, or at least wasn't to me.

I also felt that the discovery of Fred's disagreeable and later insane wife felt like a pure machination. How common could that really be? It just feel like Cather had to have some reason why Thea and Fred couldn't be together at that point of time. I don't know why Thea couldn't have grown as an artist if she were happy and married. It just seemed like Cather wanted to say that women, to grow artistically, had to be single.

I also didn't like the disparaging commentary about Methodists and Christians, or religious people, in general. Thea had no use for it in her life, and it seemed that the only influence it had on her was to make her feel guilty about things.

Thea has this great awakening while in the southwest, and she was fueled by the connection she felt to the "Ancient People," the native Americans that had lived there before. It really seemed kind of . . . superficial? Unnatural? I know that Cather herself had an experience like that, but that doesn't make it more natural in my eyes.

This book is reportedly the most autobiographical of anything she wrote. I read that the first edition was much to personal, and Cather later went back and edited a lot of it out, so as to not share too much of her private feelings with the world. (And I can respect that.) It definitely made it interesting to read thinking that Thea was really Cather.

I enjoyed the insight into what life was like back then (sometime in the 1800s, I don't remember exactly which decades). I hadn't realized that so many issues we deal with today were already prevalent then.

It was clear why the book is a classic, and you would not be wasting your time if you read it. It is an interesting read on the rise of an artist and the difficulties in desiring to be popular with the public and the educated critics as well. In the end, it seemed to me that the underlying message was that artists must be selfish and live only for themselves and for their goals of becoming the best they can be. That seems lonely to me.(less)

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Aug 07, 2007 Anne rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: singers, especially

I made the mistake of starting this book just as I was entering a week of intense rehearsal and music-learning. So maybe I didn't focus on it as much as I might have if I had had nothing else to do.

I enjoyed this book, but I had hoped there would be more about actual singing (I'm a vocal performance major and aspiring opera singer myself). Cather does have some amazing insights into the production of the voice, but the book is less about singing than about one particular singer, Thea Kronborg,...more

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Dec 30, 2008 Mackay rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction

This was the first Cather I read, and I adored it. Maybe the adult me wouldn't, but the child me did. Maybe it didn't hurt that my mother listened to the Met on the radio every Saturday (though not Wagner, not then...distinctly out of favor)- but I believed every word of this book of a Nebraska girl who grows up to be a famous Wagnerian soprano.

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Mar 04, 2008 Abigail rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book is an excellent explanation of what Art is and why it means so much to artists. It also portrays the hardships involved in reaching your full potential. I'm not sure how much of it I agree with, but there was excellent symbolism that illustrated a point without sounding forced or contrived. Cather's descriptions make Thea's world and experiences seem real. This book leaves vivid impressions. It didn't have a happy, gentle plot, but was uplifting in that it describes something worth liv...more

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Mar 31, 2009 Melanie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Why did I select this book? I'd never read Cather, and I knew that the plot included opera. Well, now I have, and it does.

The plot - the trajectory of a young girl's life from small-town Colorado to international acclaim as a Wagnerian diva - is almost incidental. The huge Colorado landscape will, one knows, transmute itself into the vistas of Valhalla. The landscape itself will be as much a character as any human being, and will be given a voice more eloquent and true than any human.

In fact, ev...more Why did I select this book? I'd never read Cather, and I knew that the plot included opera. Well, now I have, and it does.

The plot - the trajectory of a young girl's life from small-town Colorado to international acclaim as a Wagnerian diva - is almost incidental. The huge Colorado landscape will, one knows, transmute itself into the vistas of Valhalla. The landscape itself will be as much a character as any human being, and will be given a voice more eloquent and true than any human.

In fact, every character's inner life centers on the radiant promise and fulfillment of Thea Kronenborg's artistry. Even the dying thoughts of a hideously-injured trainman are reverences to Thea. Thea contains multitudes, and they all are consumed by Thea.

They all worship with the same voice, designed to express grand principles, both aesthetic and philosophic. Unless I kept track of the the "he said" antecedents, I had no idea who was thinking, talking, or observing.

Perhaps I truly began to lose heart when Theas' musical mentors steered her toward Wagner. I loathe Wagner and nearly everything his music has influenced. Certainly, I always lose interest when a novel seems to be nothing but a duck blind for the author's philosophy. I would have stopped reading well before the end, since I did not care a whit about any character except Thea's mother, but I soldiered on in the name of - oh, who cares....

I'm not sorry that I read this book, but I am glad that it's over.

Notable passages (quotation herein does not constitute approbation by Teabird):

"Though their challenge is universal and eternal, the stars get no answer but that - the brief light flashed back to them from the eyes of the young who unaccountable aspire."
"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is."
"He was observant, truthful, and kindly - perhaps the chief requisite in a agood story-teller."
"[A rabbit:] seemed to be lapping up the moonlight like cream."
"[Thea's sister had:] the kind of fishy curiosity which justifies itself by an expression of horror."(less)

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Aug 13, 2012 Christopher Sutch rated it 3 of 5 stars

In her second and longest novel Cather overreaches a bit; her ambition, which is admirable, is too big for her talent at this stage of her career. The first part of the novel is the best, with its depictions of the memorable characters and influences/restrictions protagonist Thea Kronborg lives with during her childhood in a small desert town in Colorado in the late nineteenth century. But as the novel wears on, depicting Thea's growing talent as a brilliant vocalist and artist, the narrative th...more

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Oct 22, 2011 Dianne rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011

I'm having trouble deciding what I want to say about this book. When I don't like books I want to forget about them and move on as quickly as possible. I fell in love with Willa Cather's writing when I read My Antonia last year but this one didn't charm me in the same way. The writing is good, but it's missing.....I don't know, something. Maybe it's just a lack of likable characters.

The main character is Thea Kronberg, a girl growing up in Moonstone, Colorado. She takes music lessons, looks afte...more

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Aug 28, 2011 ShaLisa rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a hard book to review. I felt like there were two parts - the first half and the second half and that each part suggested different ideas and themes. The first half, which I liked so much more, was about a curious and intelligent girl growing up honest and interested. She had flare and she seemed to care a great deal about people, the real person and not their circumstance. She was talented, yes, very much so, but she worked hard practicing four hours a day and she cared about her influe...more This is a hard book to review. I felt like there were two parts - the first half and the second half and that each part suggested different ideas and themes. The first half, which I liked so much more, was about a curious and intelligent girl growing up honest and interested. She had flare and she seemed to care a great deal about people, the real person and not their circumstance. She was talented, yes, very much so, but she worked hard practicing four hours a day and she cared about her influence and impact on the small part of the world she knew. Ray's story touched me and I wonder at Thea's happiness had she remained in Moonstone with those people who were genuine and cared about her. The author suggest Thea could not be happy had she not developed her talents as she eventually did but it was the memories of her youth that kept her sane. I suppose you don't appreciate what you have until you've lived something else. Thea had to become great in order to love and appreciate what made her so.

The second part of the book held Thea in a much different light and one much less becoming. She was hard, self-contained, proud and conciented, admittedly so, and she viewed her friends as followers, almost. Although she loved Dr. Archie (and wasn't he a great and noble character?)she didn't treat him equaly but almost as if he owed her something for her having so much talent. Fred was like her in many ways and their love entanglements seemed to deserve each other. She kept her passion and flare but she could not appreciate other people who were not great artists and apparently there were none others like her. She was never satisfied. She never knew if she was in love. She never developed lasting friendships outside of Moonstone and Fred. Her passion rested on her voice alone. The back of the book says of this young heroine, "I want only the impossibly things. The others don't interest me." And that is exactly how she lived and because of it she became great but not happy.

This book suggests that great artists are born not made. Or rather born, and then made. Can one become great on hard work and inginuity alone? Also, Cather continually referred to the non artists or poor artists as "stupid people" and this being her most autobiographical novel make me wonder what kind of person Cather was. Was she so proud and dislikable as Thea became? I wonder at her life story and her own sacrifices.

I loved the character of Thea's mother and I cannot imagine any amount of fame or fortune being great enough to keep one away from her dying mother. So sad. I appreciated the closing pages as Thea describes the scene of a poor German couple watching and appreciating a grand opera together all the while being so much in love and seeming so happy. The epilogue told that Thea, one day, did indeed have a husband. Are we to assume it was Fred? I daren't say but it does suggest that Thea changed her mind on what she wanted out of life. Fred said he wanted a son. He said he regretted spending all those years on Thea. Both these characters who demonstrated fame and glory in two very different ways, took the long road to finding what it was that they really wanted. Ironically, Dr. Archie's story is opposite. He became free on the death of his wife and the rise of his fortune.

Willa Cather's writing is beautiful. I love her venacular. I love the idea that art can cause one to feel the exhilaration of getting free from personalities, of being released from one's own past. I appreciate the title and where it emerged from - the painting - allowing Thea to relish in the abilities on another kind of artist. The book suggests you cannot be a great artist without great sacrifices and I, for one, am grateful for such great artists.(less)

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Jul 08, 2011 David Guy rated it 3 of 5 stars

This was Cather's second novel, much longer than the first; I loved the first two-thirds of it, but after that was disappointed. It's a portrait of an artist, a most unusual artist, who grew up in a small town with a preacher father and was never exposed to art except for the singing in the church. But she had an artistic temperament and real ability, and one thing after another led her to eventually become a famous opera singer. The stories of Thea when she was young, and during the time when s...more

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Feb 25, 2011 Lisa N rated it 3 of 5 stars

Cather is one of my very favorite authors, but this book was tedious to read at times.

The thing that impressed me the most from this reading was the depiction of different relationships. I admired Thea and Doctor Archie’s life-long friendship. She says to him, “There are a great many ways of caring for people. It’s not, after all, a simple state, like measles or tonsillitis.”

There is the contrast of Doctor Archie’s marriage with that of Thea’s parents. “If wiving went badly with a man—and it d...more

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Jul 24, 2012 Lauren rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, american-classic

The Song of the Lark starts off by painting a beautifully detailed portrait of the heroine Thea's childhood in the Colorado town of Moonstone. This portion of the book is autobiographical, drawn from Willa Cather's own childhood in Red Cloud, Nebraska. Cather's characters are described in loving detail along with the unique landscape of the Colorado desert.

When Thea is a young woman, she moves to Chicago to study music with the pianist Harsanyi, and there meets a young businessman, Fred Ottenbur...more

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Jul 24, 2012 Elizabeth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

From Colorado to Chicago to Arizona to Germany to New York, this is a leisurely book that contemplates the nature of the artist. I was interested but it was also a bit of a trudge to get through—explanatory in a way that now feels put on but probably felt authentic at the time. The construction is a classic one but peopled with relatively unconventional characters. And Cather, unlike her heroine, is very observant of people and types and her characters are consistently flawed, blind, arrogant an...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Sharon rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: past-12-months, 5-star

This book is so rich I don't know where to begin. From the wonderful landscapes she so intimately describes -- places I had never heard of, Panther Canyon which in real life is Walnut Canyon in Arizona, the sand hills of eastern Colorado -- to the small town railroad culture of late 1800's Colorado, to the dear players in Thea Kronberg's life, to her inner life so deeply fulfilled by these influences -- this is a story of the development of an artist from childhood. It also feels like a series o...more

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Nov 17, 2007 Heidi rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-i-ve-read-more-than-once

Willa Cather is wonderful at evoking the feeling of the Plains. I can feel the heat of the summer in my face and the cold of the winter on my back when I read her writings. This particular book beautifully captures the struggles of an artist growing up in a society that doesn't understand her talents. I recommend it to all young artists. You won't feel alone anymore.

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Jun 18, 2007 Patricia rated it 5 of 5 stars

My favorite Cather book. Even though a lot of people complain about the last chapter (and granted, it's not the strongest part of the novel), the whole thing is such a believable, inspiring, attentively detailed account of how a girl from the middle of nowhere follows her passion for music throughout years of difficult circumstances and eventually becomes an opera star.

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Jan 03, 2013 Caitlin rated it 4 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. My love affair with Willa Cather continues: "O Pioneers!", "My Antonia", "Death Comes for the Archbishop" and now "The Song of the Lark". I loved all of these books and look forward to reading even more Cather.

"The Song of the Lark" seems to be the most complex novel of the so called "Nebraska novels",(although "Lark" does not take place in Nebraska, it is still a "settlement" novel.) although I have gotten the impression it is not considered as brilliant as "My Antonia" or "O Pioneers!".

Thea...more My love affair with Willa Cather continues: "O Pioneers!", "My Antonia", "Death Comes for the Archbishop" and now "The Song of the Lark". I loved all of these books and look forward to reading even more Cather.

"The Song of the Lark" seems to be the most complex novel of the so called "Nebraska novels",(although "Lark" does not take place in Nebraska, it is still a "settlement" novel.) although I have gotten the impression it is not considered as brilliant as "My Antonia" or "O Pioneers!".

Thea Kronberg is a deep and complicated character. The book starts when she is almost 11 and she already has a following in her tiny Colorado town of Moonstone. Dr. Archie is taken with her and wishes she could be his daughter and wants to give her a life that would utilize her talents, which should take her far beyond the provincial Moonstone. Ray Kennedy values her and wants her for a wife when she grows up. This was a little weird but Thea is a unique girl with a personality that goes deep and shines through her determination to "live," so it is not surprising that Ray would be taken with her. And then there is the German music teacher, Wunsch, who probably was the first to see where her light could take her. He put a name to her potential and wanted her to study in Germany to be in the opera. Thea's passion is music, seems simple enough. But to me, I felt uncomfortable with this. While Thea is interested in music I felt like in a way it was given to her and that she wasn't allowed to develop any other interests. She had to drop out of school in order to teach music. When Ray tragically dies, she is given an inheritance, but only if she goes to Chicago to study music. She meets Fred Ottonburg who falls in love with both Thea and her immense talent almost commits polygamy in order to get her into a spot to study in Germany.

All these characters who love Thea, seem to love her for her talents, her secret "power" and at times I felt like Thea the personality receded into the background. I am not accusing these characters of insincerity, I just felt at times that Thea was very unhappy in her accomplishments. She was morally and physically exhausted and had a very lonely career. All her friends were living their lives while she was going from rehearsals to shows in the slow climb to triumphant opera characters. I just felt that as Thea became more and more successful, the less and less we knew her. We feel close to Thea in Moonstone, Chicago and especially in Arizona, but she almost disappears once she heads to Germany and becomes a success.

The narrator praises Thea's superb talents and the novel is a bildungsroman, a development of a young artist tale. But I feel like more than any other bildungsroman story I have read, this one really asks, "What is the cost of personal and artistic success?" I felt like most of the epilogue was unnecessary, until we get a little notice that she does finally get married to Fred and for once has some love and happiness. While that was nice, it felt inconsistent with the rest of the novel and I am left wondering if I like how it is all wrapped up when the end of the regular chapters doesn't lead you to think she'll ever settle down. (less)

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Jul 30, 2012 Leslie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A great book to read on a camping vacation. It's an amazingly complex, richly-charactered, and never predictable story that was quite delightful to read. Plus, Thea! What a name, what a girl. Very much about the pioneer spirit as it intersects with the struggle to become an artist. The vagueness of language about artistry and what it means to be an artist felt a little bit repetitive and wasn't particularly moving to me toward the end, but I have a feeling that would have only made the book more...more

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Jul 29, 2011 Tatasoutsidevoice rated it 4 of 5 stars

I don't have very many books on my "to buy/own" list; this one definitely makes the cut.
Descriptive, painful, poignant, moving, insightful - Cather is an extremely talented writer and I look forward to reading more of her work.
Two quotes that really hit home with me:
"He knew that he was still hunting for something. He knew that this was an unbecoming and ungrateful state of mind, and he reproached himself for it. But he could not help wondering why it was that life, even when it gave so much, af...more

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Jun 28, 2011 Diane rated it 1 of 5 stars

I did not enjoy this book although I kept slogging through to the end, some 600-plus long pages. It is the story of an early nineteenth century girl from the Amerian mid-west who becomes a famous opera singer. I understand that this novel is considered a significant work of literature but I think Cather could have used a good editor among other things. Description heavy and repetitious. Cather uses such strange turns of phrase that I kept wondering if English was her first language. Has the lang...more

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Jan 15, 2008 Summer rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people with big dreams living in small towns, or any constricting environment

This is a gorgeous book, one of my all-time favorites. I've read it twice and taken from it numerous inspiring quotes that guide my life. "But if you decide what it is you want most, you can get it. Not everybody can, but you can. Only, if you want a big dream, you've got to have nerve enough to cut out all that's easy, everything that's to be had cheap."

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Mar 13, 2013 Larry Piper rated it 3 of 5 stars

I've now read six Cather books, and I probably liked this the least. It seemed to meander too much and had too many unnecessary details. I gather Cather edited down the book for later publication, but that edition would still be under copyright, and I'm kindle-bound.

The book started out quite well, making me feel like it might rank up there with O Pioneers! or My Antonia as most awesome books by Cather. The early parts deal with the life of an independent girl in a small town in southeast Colora...more

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Mar 12, 2013 JonSnow rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Magical. Stunning. A profound literary masterpiece!! I went to a live stream (at the movie theater) of Wagner's Parsifal, Opera, largely in part because of this book and Dr. Heckerl's recommendation (the professor who taught the class I read this for)... in fact, he was in attendance also. 6 hours of enchanting music!!

BUT I DIGRESS... Like Wagner's Opera, this book itself is enchanting. It is in its ability to convey the glory of artistic beauty through mere words that strikes me. Any artist can...more

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Dec 27, 2011 Jarrett rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011, stories-of-the-plains

Willa Cather's "The Song of the Lark" is an often brilliant, reflective, fierce story that gets deep inside the heart and mind of a rare artist who has deep wells of passion and spirit and frightening, confusing vulnerability. But, it's also a big disappointment. For 300 pages it is absolutely compelling with a stunning, singular heroine at its center, one for whom I deeply cared. The childhood development of this fierce artist, her move to Chicago (where there are some of the best, most vivid C...more Willa Cather's "The Song of the Lark" is an often brilliant, reflective, fierce story that gets deep inside the heart and mind of a rare artist who has deep wells of passion and spirit and frightening, confusing vulnerability. But, it's also a big disappointment. For 300 pages it is absolutely compelling with a stunning, singular heroine at its center, one for whom I deeply cared. The childhood development of this fierce artist, her move to Chicago (where there are some of the best, most vivid Chicago scenes of any early 20th century novel), and the transcendent section in which she lives in ancient cliff-dweller homes outside Tempe, AZ - these are all beautifully written, with some of the best writing I've ever read. I've never read a more deeply rendered exploration into the soul of an artist.

And then, inexplicably, Thea and her voice disappear for almost 100 pages. Cather follows the lives of two important, but peripheral male characters, two characters I really didn't care too much about and we read their back stories, their marital woes, and other uninspiring details. When we return to Thea years later, she has vaulted to the upper reaches of artistic and financial success in the New York opera world and is suddenly, weirdly an almost Ayn Rand-like character in her cold triumphalism, self-regard and self-possession. The two men flit back and forth around her like a moth to the flame, we get a little of her voice again, but it feels forced or somehow disconnected, where the first 2/3 of the novel were deeply connected to Thea. And then she has a final astonishing success where she finally disappears into a character completely - what she'd been striving for her whole life we're told - and then an epilogue where the simple folk back home read about her singing for the King of England in the New York paper. Almost everything after her return in the novel is hearsay or awkward exposition - we're told "she had some trouble in Mexico," "she's that rare artist, at the center of the Met's season," "She was wonderful when she was singing in Dresden," but we barely scratch back into her consciousness. So strange. Why did Cather pull out after 300 pages? She could have followed Thea to Mexico and Germany and made this an epic novel. And, I guess I'm a little disappointed that she's a full-on success and there's no real tragedy in the tale. Everything about the early pages suggest that there is going to be real pain in the end and that if Thea was a success on one hand, it was because of lacerating sacrifices on the other. There is even a chapter end while she is a child that says something along the lines of, "Little does Thea know, things are going to go so terribly for her when she grows up." Instead, in the end Thea is this all-capable angel - and even married! - bestowing the dim, needy world with a gift. It felt a little uncomfortably like this is what Cather thought of herself. (less)

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Apr 06, 2013 Joanne rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, didn-t-finish

Book group decided to do a Willa Cather week, and Song of the Lark was the only one I hadn't read back when I was plowing through Great Books before college. This one is about Thea, who's from a huge family in the middle of nowhere and has great musical talent. The town doctor (whose interest in her, especially her child's body in the beginning, is definitely creepy) sponsors her training.

Cather's pace is slow.
Slow.
Slow.

I'd forgotten that. She has some nice turn of phrases, as when the mother is...more

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Feb 06, 2011 Dhara Mehta rated it 4 of 5 stars

Cather’s The Song of the Lark is an exquisite novel documenting the journey of a young artist, Thea Kronborg. She is gifted child whose pioneer Swedish parents’ encourage her to take music lessons. Her first music teacher Professor Wunsch discovers her talent. Although her aptitude in the piano is exception, her voice is a mark of genius. Even as a young girl, she impresses many people in a small town, Moonstone, Colorado. Her chief admirers are Ray Kenndy ( a railroad engineer) and Dr Archie, a...more

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Jan 07, 2013 Sheba rated it 5 of 5 stars

I was surprised when I read it that people hadn't told me about Willa Cather.

Why hadn't I heard of her in my excellent liberal arts training in high school? Why weren't people discussing her on public radio? Why were there no small art films, starring Helena Bonham Carter, based on her stories?

Song of the Lark is beautiful.

I tabbed the pages often, so I could remember, go back to, a turn of phrase, a way of seeing things that was true, clear, clean.

Her storytelling is vivid yet laconic, it's...more

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Jun 22, 2007 Andrea Riley rated it 5 of 5 stars

so of course, people think "willa cather? really?" yes! really! if you want a super cool book about a woman who puts her career as an artist before her family...this is it! This is my favorite installment of the prairie trilogy...all I have to say is Soil, soul, and society.

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Sep 14, 2009 Jean rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: classics

Since I have read My Antonia several times and Willa Cather is a Nebraska author, I have always meant to read more of her work. Charity nudged me to tackle this one. Definitely an American novel, the very land infuses Thea with the desire to live her life on her own terms and reach for her dream of perfection in herself and her art. It made me stop and reflect that I have always had a certain pride in my own mediocrity. It's really the only thing I'm very good at:) This novel makes me rethink my...more

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Apr 28, 2007 Spring rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: bookclub

"The clamour about her drowned the voice within herself."

"Nothing is far and nothing is near, if one desires. The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing--desire. And before it, when it is big, all is little."

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Jul 13, 2007 Gwen rated it 5 of 5 stars

So this is my favorite from Cather. I won't enter all her books, but check out The Professor's House and My Mortal Enemy if you get hooked. Surprisingly I didn't like Death Comes for the Archbishop (her prizewinner) as well as these others.

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Quotes from The Song of the Lark

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.” — 1,421 people liked it

“The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.” — 1,362 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48214.The_Song_of_the_Lark?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348328431l/48214.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48214.The_Song_of_the_Lark?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather[/url]

The Song of the Lark (Great Plains trilogy #2)

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