The Best of Willa Cather

By Willa Cather

A collection containing Alexander's Bridge, O Pioneers!, Song of the Lark, My Antonia, and One of Ours.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Start Classics
• Release date: Dec 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781627933681

Willa Cather

WILLA CATHER (1873–1947), the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of more than fifteen books, was one of the most distinguished American writers of the early twentieth century.

Reviews for The Best of Willa Cather

[bookishjojo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first book in Willa Cather's prairie trilogy, O Pioneers! is a beautiful book which evokes the senses. The style of Cather's writing and the story she unfolds are so wholly lovely, without superfluous extravagance. The novel tells the story of a family of Swedish immigrants farming in Hanover, Nebraska. While dying, an immigrant father bequeaths his land to the care of his daughter, rather than to his sons. In Alexandra, he sees her love of both the land and her family runs deep and she possesses the intelligence, heart and spirit necessary to survive the harsh reality of the plains. The Bergson family faces the same difficult struggles as other homesteaders and Alexandra takes up the challenge of making the farm a viable enterprise while other immigrant families are leaving their land in search of easier, perhaps less futile lives.

So begins an amazing love story. This book addresses love in its many intricate, shifting, and enduring forms: the love of the land, the love of a dream, love within families, love of the past, love of tradition, love of new opportunities, love between friends, the love between men and women, and the love of living. This book gets deep under your fingernails, like the very earth that it celebrates. And though, many of the events recounted are sad, it is the kind of sadness that leaves one feeling hopeful.

"O Pioneers! (1913) was Willa Cather's first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the American frontier -- and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather's heroine is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the wind-blasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra's devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.

At once a sophisticated pastoral and a prototype for later feminist novels, O Pioneers! is a work in which triumph is inextricably enmeshed with tragedy, a story of people who do not claim a land so much as they submit to it and, in the process, become greater than they were."

In a 1921 interview for Bookman, Willa Cather said, "I decided not to 'write' at all, - simply to give myself up to the pleasure of recapturing in memory people and places I'd forgotten."

[dickmanikowski · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Somehow, I managed to make it through 64 years of life and an MA in American Literature without ever having read any of Willa Cather's novels. So I picked up O PIONEERS and found it to be very good. Cather shows the same passion for the American landscape that John Steinbeck does, but in a less flowery manner.

[shesinplainview · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved this story of such a strong woman and the beautiful descriptions of prairie life. Although, the end was heartbreaking.

[heaward_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I loved Alexandra and the way she could see the true beauty of the land even as she struggled to harness it. Sad, beautiful, luminous.

[buckjohnson_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

*This review includes plot spoilers.*I was reluctant to read Cather because her works seemed regional and dated, but after reading "O Pioneers!" I concur with other reviewers that the regionalism is actually its best feature. The prairie becomes a major character, probably even the book's most nuanced one. Cather skilfully establishes the prairie frontier's power from the opening sentence. ("One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska plain, was trying not to be blown away.") In light of its regional flavor, I enjoyed the book more than I'd expected.However, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was reading a children's novel, partly because of the plucky, precociously wise protagonist whose every decision turns out to be the right one despite the naysaying of her older brothers, and partly because it begins with young Alexandra trying to get young Emil's kitten down from a telephone pole. I cringed when the book's first line of dialogue was "My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her will fweeze!" (No typos, folks: that's "fweeze" with a W.) Real protagonists, like real people, have flaws and experience setbacks; Alexandra Bergson doesn't, with the exception of her brother's death, and even then she carries on after reaching the peculiar conclusion that she and Emil are both more to blame for Emil's death than the guy who shot him, a stance that seems incredible and nonhuman for the sister of a murder victim, regardless of the circumstances.Moreover, the descriptions of courtship, family life, and unrequited love are so innocent that, by today's standards, they seem bowdlerized for children. Of course, Cather can't be retroactively faulted for changing mores and modern-day literary bluntness, but questions of fault aside, it does diminish the book's appeal to this modern reader.I was preparing to give Cather tremendous credit for avoiding the easy, obvious ending of having Alexandra wind up with Carl, an ending that seemed to have been subverted until Carl's return from Alaska a mere five pages from the end. It also seemed unintentionally funny when, on the final page, Alexandra casually told Carl, "I will tell you about that afterward, after we are married." What?! He's been back in Nebraska for less than a day after a long absence, and they'd never discussed marriage before or even really been a romantic couple, yet suddenly marriage is presumed, as a tidy way to end the story; I laughed out loud because of its abruptness and, admittedly, imagining Carl's face amid the echoes of a thousand sitcom plots about men's fear of commitment.The prose is straightforward and spare, which would typically be yet another indicator of a children's book, but to me this seemed appropriate given the harshness of pioneer life and the utilitarian matter-of-factness of the pioneer characters. The stylistic element I found jarring, and a bit patronizing given its restriction to particular nationalities, was her heavy-handed representation of dialect for some characters, while the majority of characters speak fluent, standard English--all the more remarkably given that nearly all the characters, with the exception of Emil, are uneducated.Despite the above criticism, I mostly enjoyed it and am glad I read it, given its insight into pioneer life and Cather's prominence in early 20th-century American literature. I'd strongly recommend it for children, who prefer simple characters and unflawed protagonists, and for whom predictable happy endings are reassuring rather than trite. It would be hit-or-miss to recommend this book for adults.

[garypatella · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Best summed up by the word "Eh." This books starts flat and ends flat, with nothing special happening in between. I'm shocked that so many people gave this high ratings. Personally, I think this one should be avoided. Nothing was gained from reading it.

[sallyapollon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sally Apollon Review 5/30/12 ofO Pioneers! By Willa Catha7 out of 10Setting: I very much enjoyed the descriptions of the time & place of the Pioneers in this book. It is a period I know little of and I do take great interest in the ground-breaking time, both literally and figuratively speaking. These people had to learn to get along in a strange environment with a different climate, resources and surprisingly multicultural neighbors; I have a huge amount of respect for the settlers of this time and the struggles they faced.Language: This was very descriptive and evocative, sympathetic to the land and the animals & birds. I found it to be breathtaking on occasion and really the greatest strength of the book. The story was well-wrought, by turns triumphant and tragic, reflecting the harshness and renewal of nature.Characterization: Alexandra is a tour de force; her character provides constancy and stability for all the other characters. She is sensitive, yet has more strength than any of the others. It is as if she is in harmony with the land and draws her strength from it.The distinction between her two older brothers & Emil is sharp and their lack of relationship is a product of their differences. Emil: educated, dapper, articulate, well-travelled & intelligent—he is the Brave New World, compared to his brothers who are ignorant, uneducated and bigoted, even though they work like carthorses. They are the Protestant Work Ethic and a relic of the Old World, at once, come to life. Marie—since her first appearance as a child did not quite appear to fit in this world. She transitions from a precocious child to sensual woman with a passionate disposition, ready to enfold anyone she encounters in her aura. She and Emil do seem to belong together, there is evidently a magnetism that pulls them closer—meanwhile her surly husband, Frank pushes her away. I did find the description of the gradual breakdown of their marriage to be very poignant and realistic. So sad to see love grow cold and turn to resentment and even worse. Ammadee, Emil’s French childhood friend was such a delight; I barely saw that coming—when the tragedy occurred, (appendicitis! How utterly preventable, in this day and age!) it seemed all the more apt that he was this “Golden Boy” who had a beautiful life. Ironically, his prank in the church to kill the lights brought Emil and Marie together and his death drove them closer still.Frank—why was he so utterly tragic, so completely pathetic and how could Alexandra have such pity on him to go visit him at the end? I was not sympathetic to him up to a point—his own morose nature helped to bring the adulterous situation about and he had a choice about the way he behaved and treated his wife. Having said that, I do think he sincerely lost his mind when he saw them and hardly knew what he was doing, jail was really too good for him, he will be trapped in his own mind for the rest of his life. Regardless, I don’t think Alexandra helped him, or herself by visiting—even if it does speak volumes about her character that she would do so. I suppose she just had to do that to let him know that SHE didn’t blame him.Carl Lindstrom: it was interesting to me that he didn’t return for Alexandra sooner or try harder to make her his own—but then we wouldn’t have had a story. These days, the grand old age of forty seems so young, but at that time to consider marriage then was considered by most to make oneself “ridiculous”. He also had the drive to “make something of himself” before truly offering himself to a woman such as Alexandra. I was happy when they were finally together.One thing I found interesting was that the relationships were very succinctly described; the conversations few, the pivotal moments well circumscribed. It was a short but very neat and tidy novel, well-styled and with an acute sense of realism, right down to the quick & drawn out deaths of Emil and Marie, respectively—perfectly, compellingly descriptive.As an overall sense, I enjoyed this book more than I thought I would and even more on retrospect, probably would even consider reading another by this author, but not in too much of a hurry.Finally, as a footnote, I had to go & look up Bohemia to see exactly what it referred to, as I had only previously encountered it’s usage as a word to describe a “free-spirited or artistic” character and in this book it evidently refers to a race—even a country of origin. It does, indeed, it refers to the area that roughly corresponds to the Czech Republic today. I did find it interesting that in this novel we encounter Swedish, Norwegian, Germans, French and of course the Czech; but I don’t recall any English—maybe that’s because they went North to New England..?

[cfk_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Cather is a wonderful writer, painting a hard-edged world in beautiful strokes. I didn't enjoy this one as much as others by her because I don't handle depressing stories especially well.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

O Pioneers! is a love story with a twist. While Alexandra Bergson has great affection for her household and neighbors, the love of her life is the Nebraska prairie farmland settled by her Swedish immigrant family. Alexandra's spirit is as expansive as the land, while her two oldest brothers are small-minded and unimaginative. Alexandra finds kindred spirits in her youngest brother, Emil, her neighbor, Carl Linstrum, and her neighbor, Bohemian Marie Shabata. Cather's writing has a timelessness that conveys the enthusiasm of youth, and both the hope and risk of homesteading. I listened to this one on audio, and I thought it enhanced my experience of the book. The reader's precise, unrushed delivery perfectly matched Alexandra's personality. Highly recommended.

[cushlareads · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The only Willa Cather I'd read before this one was Alexander's Bridge and that had been oooookay. This had a good plot, a great main character and some of the most beautiful writing about the American midwest that must exist. If it's sitting on your bookshelf, move it up your TBR mountain!!!John Bergson and his wife emigrated from Sweden to Nebraska, where they became farmers. Right at the start of the book, after 5 years on the farm, John dies and leaves his daughter Alexandra in charge of all decisions concerning the farm and effectively the family - her 2 older brothers, Oscar and Lou, and Emil, who is much younger. Alexandra is smart, brave, calm, takes calculated risks, and looks after the family well. The book follows the Bergsons, their family dramas and their Bohemian and French immigrant neighbours over the next 20 years. This is definitely a book I want my daughter to read when she's old enough.*spoilers* I thought about dinging this half a star because I found Alexandra's reaction to what happened unbelievable. What, what her friend and brother were doing was WORSE than what Frank did? Um, hellooo. But I think it probably fitted in with attitudes to infidelity and morality at the time Cather was writing, and it felt plausible, so I left it at 5 stars .

[susiesharp_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Last year I read My Antonia and absolutely loved it and vowed to read more Willa Cather, her writing is so straight forward and real she is such a true talent. There is nothing flashy in this book it is just the story of a family, how they get through the day, and the hardships they go through. I liked that the head of the family was the daughter and not the sons that the father was forward thinking enough that he left the farm to his daughter and left her in charge. Then when the brothers decide they don’t like this arraignment oh they made me mad! Poor Marie and Emil, and the aftermath for Alexandra and the life not lived. One thing about Willa Cather not everyone gets a happy ending and I like that because it is true to life not everyone gets a happy ending!I will end here there are plenty of reviews for this book so I will just say if you like a simple story of life told beautifully try Willa Cather.4 Stars

[cdeuker · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Some of the most beautiful nature writing I've ever come across. She can make you feel the land. Story is also interesting, but the ending is a bit offensive to modern sensibilities. How exactly does Marie "deserve" to be killed by her loutish husband. Why would Alexandra feel sympathy for the man who killed . . . killed! . . . her brother. Has me scratching my head.

[aricana_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was Willa Cather´s first great novel, and to many it remains her unchallenged masterpiece. No other work of fiction so faithfully conveys both the sharp physical realities and the mythic sweep of the transformation of the american frontier and the transformation of the people who settled it. Cather´s heroin is Alexandra Bergson, who arrives on the windblasted prairie of Hanover, Nebraska, as a girl and grows up to make it a prosperous farm. But this archetypal success story is darkened by loss, and Alexandra´s devotion to the land may come at the cost of love itself.

[brenzi_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Willa Cather’s poetic novel, O Pioneers! tells two love stories that take place on the Nebraska tableland in the late 1800’s. Feisty, intelligent, independent, bigger-than-life Alexandra Bergson embodies the true frontier woman who could do it all. When her father dies, he leaves the farm for her to run rather than her two older brothers. John Bergson knows that his daughter’s management skills will make the farm successful. When she buys up the properties of other families, who give up on the plains and return to steady jobs in the city, she assures both the future of her family’s interests and the wrath of her brothers. But something is missing in Alexandra’s life that the land cannot fulfill. Her love interest is childhood friend, Carl Linstrum, who has chosen to leave the Nebraska homeland of his Swedish ancestors to look for something that’s missing in his life, only to find that he won’t fulfill his dreams in the city either:“Here you are an individual, you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is pay our rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, the parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder.” (Page 123)Alexandra’s younger brother Emil holds all her dreams. She sees to it that he gets a college education and has great hopes for his future. But his wandering spirit belies his illicit love that leads to the startling climax.Cather leaves no doubt that this is a novel about the great pioneer spirit that built our country and the lure and love of the land that was so inherent in those early settlers. But she also makes it clear that the land is bigger than any individual and, try as they might, they will never control it. Most of the characters in the story are unhappy with their marriages and their lives in general. In the hands of a less skillful writer, this would have come across as heavy-handed but Cather is a genius who helps us to see that these pioneering spirits were just human, just like you and me, and the relentlessly grim conditions of their lives left little else for them.Short, sweet, poetic and powerful and highly recommended

[fuzzy_patters · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

O! Pioneers is a story about farmers in Nebraska who try and tame the land during the dry farming days of the late 1800s. Cather's characters are so sympathetic and real that you feel for them, and this includes the land as well, which should probably be considered a character in this novel. After all, this novel is as much a story about Alexandra, a Swedish woman who inherits farmland form her father, and her relationship with her land as it is about anything. On the surface, a story about a farmer and her land sounds completely banal, which is the brilliance of this novel. Cather manages to instead create a very human story that paints a picture of ourselves through the pioneers struggles to carve a life out of such barrenness.

[wvlibrarydude · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A wonderful example of historical literature in regards to the pioneer life on the plains at the end of the 19th century into the 20th century. The plot, characters, and language are so full and engaging that I was swept up in the story and characters. The ending is fitting in many ways with all of the threads coming together in a beautiful but sad quilt.I am so glad that I finally picked up Cather's books. I liked this better than My Antonia (which was very good also).

[jmchshannon · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Willa Cather has a way with the English language. Stark, simplistic and yet utterly poetic in its descriptions. Just like the Nebraska farmland, on the surface O Pioneers appears sparse and flat. However, just like Alexandra, the reader so determines that there is an unspoken depth and beauty to the story that requires care and thought. O Pioneers is not just about living on a Nebraska farm. Rather, it is about pushing the envelope, about living life the way you want to live it without worrying about social decorum, about love. Life may be harsh, and there is plenty to remind the reader of that fact with death, loneliness, and unhappiness around every corner. Still, in Alexandra, Ms. Cather created a heroine that not only challenged women's rights, but she also broke ground on the idea of the necessity of finding love to be happy. While flawed, with her inability to relate to human emotions, she champions the idea of equality - in life and in love. By successfully growing her father's farm, she proves that women are just as capable of managing the land as a man. By not getting married, she epitomizes the idea that a woman does not have to be a wife to be happy. Through other examples, Ms. Cather shows that only equality matters in a marriage or else the marriage will be an unhappy one. It is is a lesson that carries over into other aspects of life.O Pioneers is not a long novel, and the simple nature of the words means that most people can breeze through the novel in a relatively short period of time. It presents a fascinating picture of life in the great plains at the turn of the century, and one can get a clear image of the hardships endured to scrabble a life from the soil. However, a reader should take his or her time reading to pick up on the subtle lessons Ms. Cather presents through Alexandra, Carl, Frank, Emil and Marie because they are more important than any description of farm living. If you love classics and have not yet added Willa Cather to your repertoire, I highly recommend checking out O Pioneers for these lessons and historical picture.

[overthemoon_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Alexandra Bergson, a strong, brave, intelligent woman with a love of the land, born for management, kind to others, not kind enough to herself. It takes a tragedy for her own feelings to come through. I very much liked this novel which brings together people from different origins at the end of the 19th century and shows how the American nation was forged. This westvaco edition is simply beautiful.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The title of this book comes from Walt Whitman's poem in Leaves of Grass called "Pioneers! O Pioneers!", and it indeed reads well as a time capsule of life on the prairie in late 19th century Nebraska, but it also reads well as a love story and tragedy, and it reads well as feminist literature. In addition to all the "big themes" the book conveys, there are lots of nice little touches: the Bohemians drinking raw alchol tinctured with oil of cinnamon to fortify one against the cold, the "jumping match" between Emil and Amedee reaching five feet five, and girls wearing bits of straw in the lobes of their newly pierced ears "in those germless days", Cather tells a beautiful story in a direct voice, and the book is interesting from beginning to end. Quotes:On the wilderness; I found this an interesting inversion relative to today, where we seek to escape human landmarks, and the concept of a 'new country' is lost to history:"Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening. ... The record of the plow was insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, and not a record of human strivings."On nature:"He best expressed his preference for his wild homestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him there. If one stood in the doorway of his cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, the curly grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song of the lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against that vast silence, one understood what Ivar mean."On recurrence:"'Isn't it queer: there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing the same five notes over for thousands of years.'"On love:"Even as a boy he used to feel, when he saw her coming with her free step, her upright head and calm shoulders, that she looked as if she had walked straight ouf of the morning itself."On the pain of unfulfilled love:"It seemed strange that now he should have to hide the thing that Amedee was so proud of, that the feeling which gave one of them such happiness should bring the other such despair. It was like that when Alexandra tested her seed-corn in the spring, he mused. From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why."On life that will renew; this one reminded me of "The Rose":"... she used to stand by the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that the wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the root of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again!"On "old age":"But of course, he is older than Frank, even. I'm sure I don't want to live to be more than thirty, do you?"Another:"...she did seem to him somewhat ridiculous. There was trouble enough in the world, he reflected, as he threw himself upon his bed, without people who were forty years old imagining they wanted to get married."On happiness:"'I have a feeling that if you go away, you will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to lose than to find.'"On marriage:"'He ought to have a different kind of wife, for one thing. Do you know, Alexandra, I could pick out exactly the right sort of woman for Frank - now. The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it's exactly the sort you are not. Then what are you going to do about it?' she asked candidly."On a first kiss, and forbidden at that:"Little shrieks and currents of soft laughter ran up and down the dark hall. Marie started up - directly into Emil's arms. In the same instant she felt his lips. The veil that had hung uncertainly between them for so long was dissolved. Before she knew what she was doing, she had committed herself to that kiss that was at once a boy's and a man's, as timid as it was tender; so like Emil and so unlike any one else in the world. Not until it was over did she realize what it meant. And Emil, who had so often imagined the shock of this first kiss, was surprised at its gentleness and naturalness. It was like a sigh which they had breathed together; almost sorrowful, as if each were afraid of wakening something in the other."On the love of life:"Yes, there would be a dirty way out of life, if one chose to take it. But she did not want to die. She wanted to live and dream - a hundred years, forever! As long as this sweetness welled up in her heart, as long as her breast could hold this treasure of pain! She felt as the pond must feel when it held the moon like that; when it encircled and swelled with that image of gold."On death (and rebirth):"Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!"

[bookworm12_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Set in Nebraska at the beginning of the 20th century. The Bergsons, a family of Swedish immigrants, struggle to succeed with their farm. When their father dies, the eldest daughter Alexandra inherits the farm. She cares for her younger brothers and makes the hard decisions, which bring them success. Years later, Alexandra's relationship with her childhood friend, Carl Linstrum, causes tension between her and her brothers. Her youngest brother, Emil, falls in love with the married bohemian, Marie Shabata. The plot seems simple enough, but it was so much more than that. Alexandra is a strong woman who isn't afraid of trying new things, even though her brothers are. She follows her heart and embraces outcasts when others turn their backs. Cather's descriptions of the land just drip with love for it. You can't read this without understanding her passion for it and her respect for the pioneers themselves. I was completely swept away by the simplicity of the tale. I loved the character and the way it was written and will definitely be reading more of her work.

[olivia6castello · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I liked this book because I love a good immigrant story, and because it's about an old-time type of career woman -- the independent female farmer. But, this book suffers from one thing I hate: depictions of the West as an untouched landscape with no human history before the arrival of Europeans. I don't understand how a book that begins in 19th century Nebraska can NOT mention Native Americans. They or their recently evicted ghosts would have been there and would have been part of the local consciousness.

[snash_44 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book is the story of a time (late 1800's) and a place (Nebraska) as much as it is of the characters.The land is vividly portrayed along with those who love it. Agatha, her brothers, and her neighbors seem believable and real. I found the book compelling and touching.

[kace_12 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The thing with Willa Cather is...shes a celebrated Nebraska writer, and she was alright, a bit too dark for my taste, and I much preferred Bess Streeter Aldrich stories, another Nebraska author, though granted a transplanted one. Overall, I guess I preferred the rosier outlook of Aldrich than Cather, a personal choice I know. I just think there's this hype about Cather due in part to her "edgier, darker undertones, and her willingness to go a little risque for the times." I quote myself in case your wondering. I think that people have equated that with brilliance, a brilliance I don't necessarily think was there. She was a good writer, I just don't think she lives up to the Nebraska hype.

[melopher_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This novella was my introduction to Willa Cather, and I found it to be so much more than I thought it would be. The language was simple yet powerful, the descriptions were poetic yet clear, the theme strong and touching. The story itself was not one that I thought to find in a book written 100 years ago, and so surprised me. As far as pace goes, I was not bothered at all by the time jump that seemed to irritate many people.I really loved how beautifully, painfully, precisely Willa Cather showed how the prairie changed from it's pioneer days to it's more modern days. I don't know if I've ever before read a coming-of-age story regarding land instead of a person, but that is just what this seemed to be. The theme was so achingly apparent to me that this has become my favorite of Willa Cather's so far.

[schmerguls · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

1074 O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (read 7 Sep 1970) This is like other Cather novels, and only obliquely is about pioneers. It is laid in Nebraska and tells of Alexandra Bergson, a Swedish-born farmer, her brother Emil, Bohemians, French, etc. It certainly was not what I expected.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I picked this up at a used book sale with no idea who wrote it (me: under rock) or what it was about other than it was considered a "classic". I was expecting a pleasant story for young adults on the level of Little House of the Prairie but was delightfully surprised to find serious adult literature that is easy to read. Stylistically it is American Realism with an emphasis on what it was like as a pioneer in Nebraska - this was the "boring part" at the beginning many people didn't like but I loved for the many small details of daily farm life. Cather said of its realism: "I decided not to 'write' at all, - simply to give myself up to the pleasure of recapturing in memory people and places I'd forgotten". And at first this is what it feels like, a novel as an excuse to reminisce about what it used to be like in the "old days" (say, 20 or 40 years prior). Cather's positive ecological message is also refreshing in a book this old and as important as ever. The books drab humorless tone - practical to a fault - artistically conveys the Norwegian pioneer world, but I hope not all her books are about Norwegians! I'm delighted to have this introduction to Willa Cather and look forward to reading more by her, she even has 3 volumes in the Library of America series.

[lukes_171461 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Willa Cather gives us a memorable set of archetypal characters who revolve around Mother Earth, Alexandra Bergson. Much of what happens tastes fairly bitterly of fate, and the characters are pushed into situations which force them to act at cross-purposes with happiness.What lasts is the hard-won triumph of the titular characters, the visionary and inexhaustible Alexandra most of all.

[lunacat_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a delightful tale of life and death on the American frontier. The descriptions of the land were sublime and the people within this story were all well rounded and realistic, with both strengths and weaknesses within each. My main complaint is that there wasn't enough of it. I felt there was a 400 page book hidden in this 122 page novella. The characters seemed to have so much more to tell, and we only got a glimpse of that within this book.But maybe......just maybe, sometimes less is more.In one line: Short tale of life and death and the beauty of a wilderness.

[wilfgehlen · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Days on the Divide / Spring, summer, autumn, winter, . . . / O Alexandra!As the eyes are the windows on the soul, Cather allows us to look into her eyes to see the Nebraska plains as it has touched her soul. It is a land of beautiful sunrise and sunset, clear blue skies above, reflected below in a still duck pond. It is also, at times, a harsh land of freezing cold winter and drought-stricken summer. You can love the land without it giving back enough to sustain you. But if you understand the land, it yields a material wealth almost beyond measure.Alexandra Bergson understood the land. She knew to plant alfalfa to fix the nitrogen in the soil, to plant wheat as well as corn, to build silos against the inconstancy of the land. She sought out ideas which fostered her understanding and worked the land hard to bear out the promise of the idea. She had to: of John Bergson's children, only she had the native ability, so she received his legacy to make the land provide for the family.Her success served to drive a wedge between herself and others, so that she was estranged from her brothers, Lou and Oscar. Moreover, her pioneer struggles left her little time to think of her personal needs and desires. At times when she was not totally exhausted, on a Sunday morning, when such thoughts might creep into her consciousness, she would strike them down with cold ablutions in her bath. This left a blind spot in her through which two of those she loved, brother Emil and his married lover, Marie, fell to their deaths.Alexandra still had the land and all that it meant to her, but had no one to share it with, not even anyone to pass it on to. There was only her childhood friend, Carl, but he was estranged from the land and making a life for himself in far away Alaska. So she dreams of a man in a white cloak who will carry her away. Like Don Fabrizio's woman in brown and Joe Gideon's woman in white, Alexandra's man in white was her guide, her pilot to crossing the bar. Carl returned to her in time to pull her back onto the quay.In an earlier episode, when Carl tried and failed to re-enter her life, he said of Marie and her husband, "there are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before..." It may have been Shaw who delineated these (two) stories as Jack and the Beanstalk (The Quest) and Cinderella (Boy Meets Girl). Alexandra and Carl were each on their separate quests to make their own life, hers more successful but still with a tragic flaw. Together now, it is time for their story, and, as Alexandra says, "it is we who write it, with the best we have."

[hemlokgang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is probably the fourth or fifth Cather novel I have read. I cannot say it is my favorite, probably because the plot was not nearly as engaging as it was in her later works. However, I don't think anyone captures the essence of the American plains like Cather can. Her protagonist in this book is basically an incarnation of mother earth herself. At one point, Alexandra recounts the history of the farm and says the wheat only flourished when the land was ready. For Alexandra, life is much the same. She was not ready for love until she had fully matured. There were several characters who were quite engaging; Alexandra's brother, Emil and Ivar, the man of nature, along with Marie the beautiful butterfly of a woman comprise a very interesting cast of characters. It was a really good read, but just not as marvelous as Cather's future works.