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    My Antonia
    My Antonia
    My Antonia
    Ebook317 pages5 hours

    My Antonia

    By Willa Cather

    4/5

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    An Ode to a Vanished Way of Life on the Nebraska Plains

    “I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or my mother or my sister--anything a woman can be to a man. The idea of you is part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a part of me.” ― Willa Cather, My Antonia

    In Willa Cather's My Antonia, thoughts of home and homesickness play a central role in this icon tale of the great plains of Nebraska. In this book, Jim Burden reflects on his childhood on the Nebraska prairie and the unforgettable girl, My Antonia.
    This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This eBook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherXist Publishing
    Release dateJul 2, 2015
    ISBN9781681951959
    Author

    Willa Cather

    A prolific, confessedly compulsive poet and playright, Maureen Duffy published her first novel, ‘That’s How It Was’, in 1962. Since then she has written many novels including ‘Love Child, Gor Saga, Londoners’ and most recently, ‘Illuminations’, (1991) and ‘Ocean’s Razor ‘ (1993).

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    Reviews for My Antonia

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      It is a daunting task to find anything fresh to say about a book that is justifiably regarded as a classic, so I will keep this one fairly short. Willa Cather moved with her family from New England to rural Nebraska as a child, at a time when new farmland there was still being pioneered, so this tale of the state's development and specifically the experiences of the first generation immigrant farming families from Eastern Europe and Scandinavia that settled it, is inevitably coloured by her own experiences. She distances herself cleverly by making her narrator Jim Burden a man of her own age who for quite a large part of the book retains some distance from its heroine Ántonia, but who was also her childhood friend and neighbour.The story is beautifully paced and contains nothing superfluous. Cather's Nebraska is vividly realised and her attitudes to her characters and particularly those who fall foul of conventional moral judgments seem very modern for a book first published in 1918. For the most part she avoids sentimentality too, except perhaps a little in the final chapter, which seems forgiveable. It was also interesting to read a story that is so positive about immigration at a time when there is so much paranoia about it in popular political culture.
    • 4/5
      I managed to get through high school without reading Willa Cather. Someone recommended My Ántonia when I was looking for undramatic material suitable for reading before bedtime, and onto the wish list it went.Undramatic is an interesting label to apply to this book, which witnesses a suicide, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, several amputations and a murder-suicide. The tone is what makes the story drowsy and golden-hued — romantic doesn't even begin to cover it. It was indeed pleasant to read before falling asleep.This novel is a good counterpoint to House of Mirth because the two novels have some shared structure — you can sense Ántonia's "downfall" approaching her as soon as she moves to town, and the narrator is occasionally exasperatingly useless (both of which remind me of House of Mirth). Cather doesn't write straight-up tragedies, however — her characters have a remarkable amount of self-determination. What could have been a fatal flaw (e.g. Lena's warmheartedness to married men) becomes a colorful personality detail. I love that the entire farming community gossips about Ole Benson following Lena around and years later Lena casually dismisses their gossip with a description of her generosity of spirit ('There was never any harm in Ole,' she said once. 'People needn't have troubled themselves. He just liked to come over and sit on the draw-side and forget about his bad luck.' [p. 226]).
    • 4/5
      Classic about Nebraska in the 1800s.
    • 5/5
      "As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. And there was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."


      This book is about the pioneer experience in Nebraska, particularly that of Eastern European immigrants, and is also the coming of age story of Jim Burden (narrator), and Ántonia. While the book is told from Jim's point of view, I felt more connected to Ántonia. Jim and Ántonia are friends from the moment they meet, and as the seasons and the landscape of Nebraska prairie change, so do Jim and Ántonia. They eventually take very different paths, but their friendship remains. Jim is a romantic, and very nostalgic about the past. Ántonia is the symbol of the past for him. I was wrapped up in his feelings of nostalgia, and longing for the past. As I was reading, I felt them too. I particularly loved his descriptions of the Nebraska prairie. 


      CAWPILE Rating:

      C- 9

      A- 10

      W- 10

      P- 6

      I- 9

      L- 10

      E- 10

      Avg= 9.1= ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

      #backtotheclassics (Classic from the Americas- includes the Caribbean)
      #mmdchallenge (a book published before you were born)
    • 4/5
      Reached back for a classic i had never read. A beautifully written book, with powerful descriptions of places, people and memories. An old-fashioned good read!
    • 5/5
      (This was read as part of my 2011 reading project, 100 Years, 100 Books, which commemorated RPL's 100th anniversary.)

      My friend Paula, a Nebraska native, has been after me to read this book for years and now I understand. I’d been spending nearly all of my reading time with early 20th century mysteries and, quite frankly, they’d become tedious. After forcing myself through The Red House by A.A. Milne, I really felt like I needed a change of pace. I had downloaded a whole bunch of free books to my Kindle for this reading project, and My Antonia just happened to be at the top of the list, so I casually opened it one night a week ago to see what it was all about.

      I found a beautiful, heartbreaking, luminous story that captivated me from the first page. Cather tells the story of Antonia Shimerda, a headstrong, handsome Bohemian girl whose family is transplanted to Black Hawk, Nebraska in the 19th century. Antonia’s story is told through the eyes of Jim Burden, an orphan who also arrives to live with his grandparents in Black Hawk on the same train as Antonia and her family. The two become fast friends whose lives twine around each other over the course of a lifetime.

      The interesting thing about this story that is so different from what I’ve been reading is that there really isn’t a storyline. This is a memoir, a re-telling of a bucolic if hard childhood on the prairie, coming of age in a small mid-western town, and adulthood not yet devoid of childhood innocence and affection between lifelong friends.

      I was reminded of two stories as I read this one – Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder and the 2010 Newbery winner Moon Over Manifest by Clare Vanderpool. The sod houses of Wilder’s early books are here, as is the red prairie grass, snakes, farms, and family devotion. The similarity to Manifest, Kansas is more in the characters drawn by Cather and Vanderpool than in the story. However, all three books share the same comforting, lovely tributes to the importance of family and friends.

      Cather’s characters, from Antonia and her regal but defeated father, to the foreign farm girls who go to town as “hired girls,” to Antonia’s husband and colorful tribe of children, to the narrator – Jim Burden himself – are finely drawn and developed with care and compassion. She captures the tender friendship between Antonia and Jim, which becomes the thread that twines through the entire story and ultimately makes it successful.

      A beautiful book that will stay with me for a long, long time.
    • 5/5
      Long ago, a grad school writing teacher recommended we read Willa Cather. It's taken me way too long to follow his advice.

      This is an exquisite novel about life on the frontier and the immigrant experience in America. But mainly about love, loss, innocence, the pain of growing up, and "how much people can mean to each other."

      The characters are passionate, beautifully drawn, yet consistently surprising. Cather's technique is indirect, or as she called it "unfurnished." What's left out is often more important than what's stated. The reader is left to interpret the meaning and importance of ambiguous actions and feelings.

      It used to said that the late 19th Century was the Golden Age of the Novel. But I think it was the first two decades of the 20th Century when the form reached its zenith. That's when Joyce, Lawrence, and Conrad were writing books with unprecedented technical brilliance and psychological depth. In her quiet, understated way, Willa Cather was doing the same.
    • 4/5
      My Antonia by Willa Cather was well recommended to me a number of times. The last book of Cather’s Prairie Trilogy, I read the first 2 books in order to make sense of the last. So it’s taken me a number of years to finally read this book about growing up on the farms and in a small Nebraska town during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The writing is simple and beautiful. the author’s love of the wide open spaces people by hardy Europeans shines in her every word. She has a wonderful ability to tell the stories of her characters in a comical yet compassionate way. We are in for more enjoyable adventures once Jim and his grandparents left the farm and moved to the city of Black Hawk. We quickly pass through his education and learn third hand what becomes of Antonia and others. It winds up rather quickly with a bit of sentimentality.
    • 5/5
      Wow. My first Willa Cather and I can't believe It's taken me so long. This was astonishing. Beautifully written with every open sky and blade of wind-blown grass innocently transcribed. The story feels familiar as Jim Burden is a prototypical Nick Carraway, condemned to observe, unable to effect change. I'm not the first to make the comparison and it appears that Fitzgerald judged his own work to be an inferior homage in some ways. Antonia is a tragic heroine, overflowing with life. are we supposed to be disappointed in her lack of success relative to Lena and Tiny, or, as I did, are we supposed to feel thrilled that she is married to a man who loves her and with whom she is bringing up 10 fabulous children? It doesn't matter much, I guess, but I am as captivated by Antonia as Jim.

      I look forward to reading more of Ms Cather.
    • 5/5
      In his middle age, a man recalls his Nebraska childhood and youth and the friend who left her imprint on his life even after decades of separation. Orphaned Jim Burden, moving from Virginia to Nebraska to live with his grandparents, arrives in Nebraska on the same train as a Bohemian immigrant family. The oldest girl in the family, Ántonia, becomes Jim's closest companion as together they explore the vast prairies, so beautiful in summer and so inhospitable in winter. After several years, Jim's family moves to town, where throughout his teenage years Jim is drawn to the daughters of immigrant farmers who become live-in servants for the town families. Jim recognizes that the early hardships they've weathered and their hard work laid a foundation for their future prosperity.Set anywhere other than the Nebraska prairies, My Ántonia would have been a different book. With Midwestern roots on both sides of my family, I'm drawn to Cather's descriptions of the land. Jim tells us that he loved Ántonia, but what I sense most from his recollections is a kind of wistful envy. Jim had become what most would consider a very successful person – a wealthy East Coast lawyer – yet he seemed discontented with his life. Ántonia lived a much more circumscribed life, yet she had a zest for life that Jim lacked. Both literally and symbolically, I think Ántonia's life was more fruitful than Jim's, and I think her story is a fitting conclusion to Cather's Prairie trilogy.
    • 5/5
      I was so very much in love with this book when I read it in high school.
    • 4/5
      I loved it. Despite the fact that there isn't much of a plot. Despite the fact that the characters are kind of flat (Jim) or types rather than people (Antonia).So why did I love it? The writing was beautiful. The main character is the setting; the real love story is the love of the land. This book evoked strong emotions in me and empathy for the lives of the characters. It rang real and true.
    • 5/5
      A prairie classic that is great for book discussion groups.
    • 4/5
      For Cather, My Antonia was very much based on real life experience. She had a friend as a young girl, who was an immigrant hired girl, and she visited her when they were both adults and her friend was married with a large family, similar to Jim's visit to Antonia. Although, Cather was successful at that time, she felt the loss deeply of a relationship that had recently ended with Isabelle McClung, the love of her life, who became engaged to a concert violinist. She returned to her home town, Red Cloud Nebraska for 3 months to mourn the loss. It seems that Antonia and Jim's relationship mirrors Cather's feelings of failure in her personal life, but success in her professional life. Jim recognizes Antonia's contentment with her place in her life, and ultimately feels that sense of fulfillment, by the end of the book, after visiting with her.Many parts of the book are based on truth, such as the story of the wolves and many of the people who played a part in My Antonia, were people Cather knew, the Harlings were really the Miners, neighbors of the Cathers. There was that feeling, to me, that Cather was trying to impart something that struck a chord deep within her, and I think that is because she was basing so much of the story on experiencs that she had and people she knew. The story of the Cutter suicide which seems so innocuous at that point in the story was based on a loan shark Cather knew of who was cruel to his wife, throughout their marriage and finally shot her and killed himself. Just as in life it would have seemed so random and strange, it was when plunked into the story during Jim's visit. Cather's skill lay in bringing the story to light at just the right time, for the fascination of Antonia's children and the entertainment of Jim, who later checks on the facts of the story with another lawyer. I loved the last line, by Jim "Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past."
    • 4/5
      This was a bit of a cheat because I already read this book. However, it was when I was 10. I figured I missed all of the subtle complexities of My Antonia but I didn't. I still feel the same way that I felt before.

      The narrator is a lawyer named Jim Burden who decides to write a book about his old friend Antonia Shimerda, who is originally from Bohemia, and his life in Nebraska. There are bumps in their friendship as their lives take very different paths.

      Jim is unlike all of the children his age and of his time. He is very thoughtful, reflective, and smart. He continues with his academics by going to college and establishing himself in New York City. Antonia, though very smart, gets swindled by man who promises to marry her but then deserts her and leaves her pregnant.

      Antonia, after moving to Oregon, moves back to Nebraska. A couple of years later, she meets Cuzak, another implant from Bohemia. They later married and have a whole bunch of children. Jim and Antonia meet about 20 years later. The friendship is still just as strong.

      I never believed Antonia made such an impact that she warrant a book written about her. She is a strong enough character. She never gave up even after her father's suicide or after being deserted. Antonia has a certain amount of endurance that was needed to survive those times or to survive life. However, I like the accuracy of the pioneer life and immigrants making their way in a new world. As an end note, I would never like Mrs. Shimerda.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of several immigrant families in the plains of Nebraska in the late 19th century, as seen through the eyes of Jim Burden, an orphan who goes to live with his grandparents. A plot never really developed at all, but Willa Cather's breathtaking descriptions of the prairie and the people who live on it are worth reading over and over again.
    • 3/5
      I was forced to read this book for class, and trust me "forced" is the right word. There is no way I would have read this book had I not been held responsible for knowing what it was about. The writing is inarguably beautiful at times, but there was no distinct plot, very limited characterization, and overall, I think the story could have been told in a better way. I do not have any plans to reread this anytime soon.
    • 5/5
      I read this book for a bookclub at work (we're creating our own "Finer Things Club", like from The Office). I was a bit apprehensive, but that was totally undeserved. This was a wonderful story about life on the Plains of Nebraska. If you loved the Little House on the Prairie series, then I think you'd love this book as well.The story is told through Jim, who befriends Antonia when they are young. The both have hard lives and take completely different paths as they grow, but that never changes the love and the admiration that they have for each other and all of their memories together. This is truly a touching, heart warming story and I would definitely recommend it.
    • 3/5
      So, I read this for the American Author Challenge, and it was lovely. I've read very few "pioneer" novels that don't have the words "Little House" in the title, and I have to say, I now do indeed see the appeal in the genre. In this book, a grown man, Jim Burden, tells the story of his life in Nebraska in the late 19th century, primarily bits of his life that deal with a young Bohemian neighbor of his, Ántonia, a girl he loves his entire life. Jim isn't the most three-dimensional of narrators, but I suspect that is the point. The book's love story is truly between Ántonia and the land that she grows to love; Jim is just the vehicle through which Cather tells her story. He is more setting than character, if that makes sense. And what a character Ántonia is, indeed! Though if I'm perfectly honest, I understood/respected/connected to Lina Lingard's character more; I wish there had been more of her! Cather's writing is a startling reminder of just how similar some early 20th century (American) writing is today's. A very good deal of the book could have easily been written today; the language was never even remotely hard to decipher. American English in the last 100 years has not changed nearly as much as I always seem to assume it has.One thing that I took issue with, though, was something I read on Cather's Wikipedia page, that "she regarded most women writers with disdain, judging them overly sentimental and mawkish." At several points during the story she describes the "hired girls," the characters whe Jim clearly respects the most as "mannish" and as other masculine-sounding things. Femininity is never a remotely positive thing. Pairing this with Cather's evident feelings about other women's works, well, I guess I'll just say that I have mixed feelings about her that possibly shouldn't interfere with my feelings toward her works, but do. It's so unfortunate that a woman regarded as one of America's best authors didn't have much respect for her fellow women writers, back when it was probably needed most of all.But still, lovely book.
    • 1/5
      For me...another example of an American Classic that is a big snoozer.
    • 4/5
      I didn't expect to like Willa Cather's works, as I don't really enjoy the "old west" type of genre. But she was stronly recommended to me, so I picked up My Antonia. I ended up really enjoying the book- Cather is very good at telling one of those epic, generational stories. And reading about a younger middle America wasn't so bad either- in fact, I actually enjoyed it.
    • 4/5
      This book brought me back to my love of the frontier that I enjoyed so as a girl. I recall reading every Laura Ingalls Wider book inadoration of the characters and the quiet determination one must ahve to live a life ont he land. I still look up to people who work all day and find joy in the small moments of life. I'd forgotten what a life of ease I truly enjoy. This book doesn't radiate hardship but it shares hardshiup with a dignified narration that opens your eyes to a life few of us will ever know. I can see parallels between the immigrants working the land at the turn of the 20th century and the migrant immigrants today that enter the USA. I recommend this book highly and suggest you read in bite size pieces to digest slowly the rich characters and story Willa Cather has woven together.
    • 4/5
      There is something about Willa Cather books that bring me a sense of peace - and make me aware of a connection with the people and land around me that I usually take for granted. My Antonia is another quiet book that speaks powerfully. It is a pioneer story that tells the story of Antonia, a young Bohemian girl whose family has moved from Europe to a rural area in the Midwest, and others who were in one way or another connected to Antonia during the course of her life. The changing nature of that aspect of the American experience is captured in the stories told of youth, adolescence, and maturity. Antonia's impact on the narrator is significant, as is his impact on her. One of my favorite passages, one that describes the powerful nature of their connection, is similar to another facvorite Cather passage in Death Comes for the Archbishop. After two decades apart, Jim Burden, the narrator, returns to see Antonia and her large family. "Before I could sit down in the chair she offered me, the miracle happened; one of those quieter moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life. Antonia came in and stood before me..." As we learn what has become of the characters we have met, many of whom have had circuitous routes to their current station in life (or death), Jim looks back realizing he and Antonia may have missed out on many things. He also realizes that the early days they shared were precious then - and precious still. The intervening years saw each following very different paths, but, in the end, those paths crossed and were joyous because of those memories, not sadly tainted with regret.
    • 5/5
      Excellent social commentary - I loved this book. I thought the television movie was a good representation of the book.
    • 2/5
      i read this in high school for a class. i wasn't that impressed
    • 5/5
      This was a lush and vivid story. I never really thought of Nebraska as being beautiful until reading this. I was enthralled when reading about Jim and Ántonia's arrival in Nebraska, and I loved reading how they ended up as adults, but some of the sections in the middle slowed down for me. Even so, those sections were better than most other books.The one question I had was this: who wrote the introduction? The whole story is supposedly a narrative written my Jim Burden, but who was it who met him on the train that summer and encouraged him to write it in the first place? Who was it that took his story and published it? Was it one of the characters we met in the story? Was it one of the children in Black Hawk?
    • 2/5
      I was expecting more from this one. Considering it's a "classic" and all...*Sigh* Oh well.It's a little about some so-so characters and a lot about life on the Nebraska plains in the early 20th century. The writing was descriptive and captivating at times but the story just didn't get me. Maybe that's why I put it down 2 times and read other books in between. And this is not a long book, people.So, I think the thing I liked most about the book was the title and the author's name. If I had another baby I might name her Willa (but I don't think I will...). So all the pleasure to be had from this book can come from a glance at the cover. :(
    • 4/5
      Widely regarded to be one of Cather's best works, this is a truly beautiful, lyrical novel. It is almost perfect (then again Cather can do almost no wrong in my book). Should be on everyone's Must read before i die list
    • 5/5
      There could be no better arguement for writing what you know than Willa Cather's My Antoinia. A casual traveler, or researcher could never evoke such powerful imagery of place, people and time. Cathers passion for and love of the wild and hard country that she was transported to at an early age stands off of the pages with bracingly strong imagery. Her representation of the strong and determined imigrants who fought, through much hardship, to subdue the prairie, is beyond realistic. These were the people she knew and admired. And yet she paints them with all of their faults fully in view. One of the powers of her works is that you cannot find yourself saying, "How could someone do something like that?" Because you know. She is able to show human nature so well, but with a kindness and understanding which exonerates in many cases, or at least shows pity. This book is the most autobiographic of Cather's works. She had many of the same experiences as her male narator, Jim. She too came from Virginia to Nebraska as a child to live with her grandparents, she too went to school in Lincoln, and ended up far from her prairie home. It is hard for me to separate Jim and Willa, and I don't think that it is really possible to. Jim is the key through which she was able to return to her past without actually writing a memoir. Even the main character and focus of the book, Antonia, was based on a friend from Willa's life. To have such a strong, spirited, definate person in a work of literature, I think that they almost have to be based off of a person, or people. It is hard to believe that someone could live as fully on the pages of a book who had not lived in real life. Antonia is a delightfully vibrant child, life deals harshly with her again and again, starting with the death of her father when she is a child. Though changed, and hardened on the outside to do what it takes, her heart is never hardened, and her spirit never quelled. There are those in the story who lament the loss of what she could have been, that her potential was short changed because of the events of her life. The last paragraph in the book even says, "this had been the road of destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortune which predetermined for us all that we can ever be." Which the author must believe to be true. And yet the picture that is painted of Antonia at the end of the book - her many children, her farm, her worn and battered frame - show us that Antonia has just the life she has desired, and even if life took her down a different path than those she could have had, in the end she is what she is meant to be. "She is a rich mine of life, like the founders of the early races."(p.194)
    • 1/5
      I would not consider this a great piece of literature. Cather is doubtlessly a skilled writer, and some of her prose is nothing short of poetic. However, the story itself is bland, the characters are largely uninteresting, and the pace drags along with lots of "is something going to happen soon?". So my verdict is to skip this one.

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    My Antonia - Willa Cather

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