![]() ![]() ![]() And in the end, it delivered a grand thematic and emotional wallop. The novel made me wonder about its relationship to Cather’s own life. My Antonia’s episodic structure – the novel is a collage of stories – has a pleasantly proto-modernist flavor (without the tricky syntax). And there was so much motion in it the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running. ![]() The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colour of wine-stains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. Here is a sample from the narrator’s first impression of the prairie:Īs I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. Her descriptions of the natural world are masterful, although she does a pretty good job of making her characters and situations feel real and convincing, too. Much of my delight came from Cather’s quietly exquisite prose. So I was delighted by how good I found My Antonia. Anything that struck readers in 1918 as innovative or shocking had long since become quaint, I believed, leaving little to command the attention of modern men and women. Willa Cather’s My Antonia is one of those novels I saw as having faded into a genteel but deserved obscurity. ![]()
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