Tag: Willa Cather
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Not Under 40
Review: I really enjoyed this, and I wasn’t confident that I would when starting out. This was one of the last books published by Willa Cather and it was later in her life, in 1936. So many times I find that the early stuff and the late stuff from any author is not as good… Read more
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Chasing Bright Medusas
Review: Being a Willa Cather enthusiast and a member of the National Willa Cather Center every new biography is pretty much required reading. So I pre-ordered this volume and eagerly awaited it. Well, I got it and I read it, and I’m very disappointed. First of all this slim volume is, a slim volume. 154… Read more
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Youth and the Bright Medusa
Review: Superb Cather at her very best. Opera stories. Just the way I like it! I was surprised by the veiled, and not so veiled, references to sexy times. Interesting that in one story she killed off the protagonist on the Titanic, and I don’t mean a schlocky tale of Titanic romance. Just a description… Read more
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Sapphira and the Slave Girl
Review: The final Willa Cather novel. This was written and published around 1939-1940, but set in 1856. Pre-Civil War America in the south. I’m not sure who was meant to be the hero of this one. Every character seemed to be very human, very flawed. I was expecting a sort of anti-slavery treatise, but I… Read more
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Lucy Gayheart
Review: One of the best Willa Cather novels I have read. I wasn’t sure how good it would be, seeing as it was one of her last works, from 1935. Meaning that very often an author’s latter output is not as good as the books from their peak period. See Sherlock Holmes Later Adventures to… Read more
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Shadows on the Rock
Review: Like all Willa Cather novels the prose is exquisite. Unlike most Willa Cather novels this was not set in the Great Plains. It was a novel of 17th century Quebec. Go Canada! Had to dust off my French skills as there were quite a few bits and pieces en français with no translation. Usually… Read more
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Death Comes for the Archbishop
Review: I held off on reading this for a long time. I’m nearly done the complete works now and decided not to put it off any longer. This is because: But I was wrong in putting this one off for so long. There is a reason that this is one of Cather’s most recognized and… Read more
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A Lost Lady
Review: Post operative I really needed this. I was reading a collection of Ray Bradbury’s short fiction and bailed on it. Not that I don’t love Bradbury but I needed a novel to identify with the characters, to feel and see the scenery from a different time and place. To take me out of myself… Read more
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One of Ours
Review: Obviously I’m biased, being a Willa Cather devotee. But I believe that objectively this is a really good novel. Also it’s set in and around the Great War so again I’m almost bound to like it. This is the story of Claude Wheeler, from small town American whose life and the lives of all… Read more
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My Ántonia
Review: One of the last “best known” books by Cather. So now I can say I have read all of her most recognized books. Beautifully written, like all her novels. Now where is the however pivot? However. <– there it is! Nothing happens throughout the novel. I mean, people live and grow old and have… Read more