My Ántonia

Willa Cather

Jan 1918 · ReadHowYouWant.com

About this ebook

After the death of her immigrant father, Antonia works as a servant for neighbors in the farmlands of Nebraska. She leaves for an unfortunate affair with an Irish railway conductor, but returns home, eventually marries and raises a large family in true pioneer style.

Ratings and reviews

Pleasant Novel about a Man's relationship to a bunch of women (particularly to one). Reveals a lot about Willa Cather's preoccupation with female characters, but though I was largely perturbed by the slow pace and dearth of action, the narrator was a charming fellow and Antonia was a goddess. If you didn't fall in love with Antonia from the very first page and stay in love until the last, the author failed in her duty. The book seemed all the more real because it was so unexceptional. A well-planned rhetorical trick. Also notable in how the narrator would skip backwards and ahead to tell little life stories of some of the characters. It was, ultimately, a novel about the ways in which people matter to each other, and the odd paradoxes of friendship, best summarized by the quotation on page 363: "Aint it wonderful, Jim, how much people can mean to each other?" Descriptions of the Nebraska landscape--descriptions of the people... influence on other "western" writers. Rose-colored lenses later manipulated to produce the very same disturbing complacency effect that you see in novels like In Cold Blood? Perhaps. Very likely. The mythos surrounding the great plains immigrant has that effect. It's not so much a success story as a the report of a heart-rate monitor connected to the pulse of 19th century America. ...

I can't really explain how this book works its magic. The prose is the most beautiful I've read and I relate to the elements Willa Cather deals with. It's a special feeling to read a book and just about swear that you've met the characters before! I've never read a book that gave me such emotional involvement and satisfaction; it made me care for the characters—it reminds me of some experiences which are dear to my heart. I recommend My Ántonia to any reader.

Beautiful.