This novel took me by surprise. I read itright after the rather poor novel Alexander's Bridge and didn't expect much out of this one. However, Cather remains focused on her characters and develops them steadily and with a deft ablity to sketch and leave the full details to develop in the reader's mind.

She's a pretty impressive writer here and this story of aging, marital love, and fulfillment was an eye opener to me about how one's life can slip away even as you are holding on to it and *trying* to live your honest and best self.

While not especially "moving," the story did attach tendrils of feeling to that place that connects my heart to my head.

We come to know the protagonist of this short novel,Myra Henshawe.through the eyes of a younger woman who at first admires her unconditionally and grows to view her and the motivations behind her behavior more realistically as she encounters her again as an older physically suffering woman.

The bitterness which she feels toward her husband ,covered over with friends and laughter, when they were young and successful is more openly expressed as they age and find themselves in economic straits.

The characterizations achieved in this very short novel are extremely memorable. An excellent one evening read.

Too often, popular knowledge of important writers is limited to one or two books which may be neither representative of the author's work as a whole nor the author's best. This is true of Willa Cather. Her early books, such as My Antonia and O Pioneers are widely read and widely praised as is, to a lesser extent a work from her final years, Death Comes to the Archbishop. There is a range of writing from Cather's middle years which may show her at her best, without the sentimintality of the earlier writings. These middle period books are, alas, not well known.

One of these books, My Mortal Enemy, is a short tightly-written tale which can be read in a single sitting or two. But its short length holds great complexity and pathos. The book is difficult to approach because it includes a largely unsympathetic heroine, Myra Henshawe.

Ms. Henshawe left small-town Illinois behind her as a young woman to marry the man she thought she loved. In so doing, she turned her back on a large inheritance. She lives the high life in New York City as the wife of a businessman. She knows writers, artists, but is incorrigibly jealous and has a sharp tounge and a biting wit.

The elderly couple find themselves in hard times and settle in San Francisco. Myra Henshawe, sharp tounged and critical as in her youth, says harsh, irrevokable things about her life and her marriage and modernistic art and culture. She returns for value to the ritualistic elements of the Catholicism of her youth, the religion of her uncle who disinherited her when she eloped.

The story is told by a third party narrator, as is My Antonia, who functions in varied ways throughout the story.

The story is about the well of bitterness, of lost sad lives, the limitations of romantic love and the tarnished heroine's view of religion as a possible source of redemption.

This book was very interesting had a good theme and plot.

It kept the reader on edge throughout the entire book. I would

recommend it to everyone.

Like all the volumes in the Library of America series, this book is beautiful and made to last. Some readers may be bothered by the thin paper, but it allows so much to be packed into a handy book. As the title states, this is a collection from Cather's early work (her first "first novel," _Alexander's Bridge_, is missing). _The Troll Garden_ is a collection of Cather's early short stories, most in the manner of H. James and have a fin-de-siecle tone. "The Sculptor's Funeral," which depicts a town's inability to recognize achievement in any form but monetary, is perhaps the best. That and two other stories were revised by Cather for _Youth and the Bright Medusa_ (1920 an available in LoA 57 _Stories, Poems, and Other Writings_). Reading the versions side-by-side, one can achieve insight into Cather's growing abilities as a writer. However, the most rewarding read in this volume is _My Antonia_. Cather's first masterpiece depicts the lives of Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda from their arrival in Black Hawk, Nebraska to twenty years after Jim leaves Black Hawk for a life in the East. Antonia remains in Nebraska, becomes a maid in town, and marries (twice). The theme of the book, from Jim's perspective, is aptly captured in the epigraph: "optima dies . . . prima fugit" (from Virgil's _Aeneid_). Again like all volumes in the LoA, a chronology of the authors life, a "Note on the Texts" and a few notes, containing information on allusions and translations of foreign words and phrases appear at the end of the volume.

One of my all-time favorite books. Attractively packaged on acid-free paper. Very classic looking. And the fiction is excellent! Her stories about the Plains, the Southwest, Chicago, and Quebec are perfect works of art. I especially liked "Tom Outland's Story" contained within "The Professor's House."

This short story combines a extremely classical point of view about a mental unstable boy named Paul. It is a problomatic story. The book appears boring but becomes interesting once you read it.

Willa Cather has had an enduring appeal as a novelist, but "Paul's Case and Other Stories" shows that she was also skilled in the short story genre. The pieces in this book (I refer to the Dover Thrift Edition), all originally published between 1892 and 1920, are as follows: "Lou, the Prophet," "Eric Hermannson's Soul," "The Enchanted Bluff," "Paul's Case," and "A Wagner Matinee."

These stories take us to Nebraska farm country as well as to Pittsburgh, Boston, and New York City. Cather writes of Danish and Norwegian immigrants, religion, "high" culture, regret, loss, and regional legend.

The title story is a particularly fascinating character study of a boy who doesn't fit into society--you might think of him as sort of a literary ancestor of J.D. Salinger's Holden Caulfield. Throughout the collection Cather demonstrates a telling eye for visual detail and a keen sense of human tragedy.

I read Paul's Case in my sophomore language class this year and ended up writing a paper on it. I love this story and can relate to Paul. Paul is jaded by society, although he posseses the insight to see beauty others can not. He is misunderstood in his affection for the arts, and therefore stereotyped as having a problem. This is a very worthwhile story for any person who wants a thought-provoking look at society.

It was a long book for such a short book.

Don't get me wrong, this is a classic book well deserved for that title.

It is a very complicated and intricate story with mystery, love and evil.

You have a woman, Hester Pryne, who is beyond her time. Strong, beautiful, stubborn, honest and a mother without a father.

There is the father, the priest Dimmsdale, a man tormented by his secret. He is weak and is broken down by the secret he feels he cannot tell and tormented each day by it.

The long gone husband, Roger Chillingworth, sinister and revengeful. All he can think about is tormenting the two lovers, to break them down slowly.

There parallels and many themes that are very subtle and unnoticeable. Beautifully written with delicate underlying dialogue that tells it's own story.

This isn't a book for everybody. In order to really understand this book, you need to understand theme, archetypes, motifs, and the relevance of light and shadow. As my American Literature teacher says, bring you own experiences into the story; you will understand it a lot better.

I loved this book. I resent being told I have to read anything. But I still found pleasure out of it. In this book Hester commits adultery and is forced to wear an "A" declaring her sin. You will see early on the hypocrisy of the town. Why not make someone where an "L" for liar or an "T" for theif? Hester is a complicated character. She is not trashy like I first expected. Not at all. This book has a lot of symbolism that I found beautiful. There are plenty of twists in this book. Don't watch the Demi Moore movie of The SL. It is completley different from the book. I recommend this book to everyone.

This is an historical novel set in the Sante Fe area of New Mexico in the mid to late 1800s. It describes the experiences of two French priests (Father Latour - the bishop, and Father Vallaint - his vicar) sent there to establish a diocese. Most of their congregation are Mexicans who have previously been served by the Spanish catholic church, and Native American tribes - some of whom have embraced this new religion but many who have not. The plot line consists mainly of a series of vignettes describing the life of the two priests as they go about their work.

Willa Cather writes in a simple, but graceful style much like the personalities of her two priests. It is worth reading this novel just for her descriptions of the austere beauty of the American southwest. Many great authors have an uncanny ability to write beautiful prose with what appears to be very straightforward language, and Willa Cather certainly fits that category. Some have complained that her characters lacked depth in this novel, and though at times they seem to take a back seat to the setting, I found both men to be rich, real, and well-fleshed out characters. A recommended read.

If I could only have four volumes to read for the rest of my life they would be: Death Comes for the Archbishop, Joyce's Ulysses, a Shakespeare folio, and the Bible.

Death Comes for the Archbishop is a novel of striking beauty, profound debth, and deceiving simplicity. The language employed is the most clear and beautiful I have ever read in prose--it's closer to poetry. The philosophy Ms. Cather espouses is simple enough for the peasant to understand, and too complex for the wisest scholar.

This book just baffles me: it's not a novel, per se, nor is it a biography--it's more like an etching of time and place; of ideas and people who travel through the arid, beautiful dreamscape of New Mexico.

Ms. Cather wrote part of this novel in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She got the idea of the novel from seeing a statue of Archbishop Lamy in front of St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe, and meditating upon what his life must have been like from her balcony at La Fonda hotel that overlooked the Cathedral.

Ms. Cather spent months in New Mexico and the Southwest, and truly loved this land, which is reflected in her book; she was a woman of faith, which is also reflected in this book, and although not a book about religion, religion nevertheless permeates it. More, this is a book about the beauty of a life lived well, with hard work and faith, and the land which touches all who touch it.

Willa Cather's novels divide into three periods. Her early novels including O Pioneers and My Antonia focus on strong individuals, primarily women, who succeed, if only at great cost, in mastering the American midwest. Her middle period novels such as Luch Gayheart and A Lost Lady also take place on the Nebraska plains. They also feature women as main characters. They emphasize more than do the earlier books a sense of loss and disillusion and the need for the salvation of religion.

Cather's late style is exemplified in Death Comes for the Archbishop, written in 1927. The protagonists in this book are primarily men. This book is a historical novel and takes place in the American Southwest, with Santa Fe as the center beginning in the 1850's and continuing through the end of the 19th Century. The heros of the book are two Catholic priests, Father Jean Latour and Father Joseph Vailant who have been friends from their youth in the seminary in France. They are sent to New Mexico to bring Catholicism to the developing American territory. The novel is based on the letters of priests and missionaries in the area at the time together with Cather's own experiences and the work of her imagination.

The novel is full of descriptions of the landscape of the American southwest, its distances, bleakness, deserts, frost, wind, cold, and Pueblos. There are descriptions of the people in the area at time, particularly Mexicans and Indians. Kit Carson also has an important role in the book. We see a great deal of the two protagonists as they struggle externally to bring the teachings of the Church to life and internally with their own hearts and spiritual development.

The novel is static and episodic in character. It doesn't have much in the way of a continuous plot. Its theme is the development of America and the role of religion and the religious life in its development. In a letter to the Catholic magazine Commonweal written after the book's publication Cather emphasised her desire to write about of the importance of religion in America, particularly the development of the American Southwest. She believed that there was a tendency to focus too much on economic pressure as the moving factor in American expansion and focused on one of the religious traditions which shaped our country, and was a particular force in the Southwest.

Cather herself was not a Catholic but her book shows a great deal of sympathy and I think understanding of this particular faith. I think Cather properly focused on religion and its role in the United States and that today, as in her day, we tend, to our detriment, to shy away from considering religion in this manner.

The story of the inner lives of the priests, of their friendship, and of their contrasts to each other is poignantly and well told. This is a book that deserves its place as an American classic.

In "O Pioneers!", her classic novel first published in 1913, Willa Cather wrote, "The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman." By revealing to us the hearts of those pioneer immigrants in this book, Cather offers a moving meditation on United States culture and history.

"O Pioneers!" tells the story of a community in Nebraska farm country. Her main character, Alexandra Bergson, is a Swedish immigrant. Cather creates a marvelous portrait of the community and its rich mix of European ethnic groups: Norwegian, Swedish, French, etc. It is especially fascinating to see the multicultural, multiethnic world they created in the United States. Cather also depicts the cultural and linguistic "shift" that takes place along generational lines.

Cather's story deals with issues of economics, gender roles, and sexuality. In addition to the formidable Alexandra, she creates a cast of compelling characters. And her luminous prose style evokes all of the sensations of Alexandra's world: the smell of ripe wheat, the chirping of insects in the long grass, the golden play of light in an apple orchard.

But this is Alexandra's book. She is a great American heroine who reminds me of such beloved characters as Zora Neale Hurston's Janie (from "Their Eyes Were Watching God") or Alice Walker's Celie (from "The Color Purple"). Like those great characters, Alexandra will break your heart, deeply touch your soul, and ultimately leave you feeling richer for having known her.

Finally, as an interesting companion text to "O Pioneers!" try "Anna Christie," the 1922 play by U.S. writer Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill's life and career were contemporary with Cather's, and "Anna Christie," like "O Pioneers!", deals with a Swedish immigrant woman in the United States.

Before I review the novel, I want to point out that most of the reviews that have given it one star seem to be coming from, perhaps, immature audiences..."it was totally uncoool!" Now, this book is not the best thing you'll ever read, but it IS very worthy of reading. Don't be discouraged by the title, as I once was. Basically, the story talks about Alexandra, a Swedish woman who has to take care of the family once her father dies at the beginning of the book. I didn't really admire her character or was interested too much in it, but that's okay because a lot of the plot involves her brother Emil and her neighbor Marie and their clandestine type of love...it's a heartwarming novel and a very entertaining read. I read the book in one night. The setting was very well depicted and had a sense of magic, evethough there's nothing of a supernatural nature in the book. The characters were very lively and realistic. I wasn't really too satisfied with the ending, but I enjoyed it greatly nonetheless. It is an excellent work ; I recommend it.

Cather published her second novel, O Pioneers, in 1913 at the age of 40. Together with My Antonia it is the novel for which she is best known. Years after writing the book, Cather wrote of it " Since I wrote this book for myself, I ignored all the situations and accents that were then thought to be necessary."

The book takes place on the plains of Nebraska in the late 19th Century as the Prairie is settled be Swedish, Bohemian, and French immigrants trying to eke out a living from what appears to be a harsh, inhospitable land. The heroine of the book is Alexandra Bergson who inherits her father's farm as a young woman, raises his three sons and stays with the farm through the harsh times to become a successful landowner and farmer.

The books speaks of being wedded to the land and to place. In this sense it is an instance of the American dream of a home. It also speaks of a strong woman, not in cliched, late 20th Century terms but with a sense of ambiguity, difficulty and loss.

This is a story as well of thwarted love, of the difficult nature of sexualtiy, and of human passion. There is also the beginning of what in Cather's works will become an increased sense of religion, Catholicism in particular, as a haven and a solace for the sorrow she finds at the heart of human endeavor. Above all it is a picuure of stark life in the midwest.

There is almost as much blood-letting in this short book as in an Elizabethan tragedy. Cather's picture of American life on the plains, even in her earliest books, is not an easy or simple one. Some readers may quarrel with the seemingly happy ending of the book. I don't think any will deny that Alexandra's happiness is dearly bought or that it is bittersweet.

I tendend to shy away from this book in favor of Cather's later novels. I feared that it would be conventional and trite. The stereotyping was mine,however. This is a thoughtful, well written story of immigrant life on the plains and of the sorrow pain, and strength of the American experience.

Willa Cather's My Ántonia was a different sort of read for me. My reading genre usually consists of Stephen King and some other randomly selected texts from my mother's bookcase of mysteries and classics. I can somewhat say I enjoyed the book, but at certain times the lack of plot made me rather bored with it. Willa Cather does an amazing job of romanticizing the land. Her constant use of imagery and metaphors depicts to the reader the exact scene in which Jim Burden, our Narrator and main character, and Ántonia must have lived. The story centers around the life of Jim Burden, a boy forced to move to Nebraska after his parents' death and Ántonia Shimerda a poor Bohemian immigrant girl. Their lives are displayed to the reader in scatted time periods including early childhood, teenage years, and late adulthood. Though the story line did not hold my attention span, the character Ántonia did. The representation of such a strong woman during this time period is a much-admired feat of Cather's. The amount of time spent developing the characters allows the reader to become very entranced in their lives and their ever-changing personalites. Ántonia's strength surprised and delighted me all at once. At each turn of the page a new trait is discovered or acquired. Overall the story would make a great resource for a paper, but the lack of plot makes the book only for the reader with an appreciation for detail and not necessarily a need for action.

My Antonia is a very well-written love story. Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents in Nebraska when he's ten. On the farm next to his family's is a Bohemian family. He befriends the Bohemian girl, Antonia. This book tells the tales of their adventures together through Jim's eyes. His enjoyable childhood with his best friend. Then, the weekly dances with Antonia in the town's dance hall. His years of college, and how their friendship grows a part. The last chapter is their reunion. Antonia with her huge family and life on a farm. And Jim, a successful lawyer. The best of friends once more. Jim and Antonia are both very loveable chracters and easy to relate to. A great portrayal of the life of a pioneer in Nebraska. An adventure that's fun to read. This book will make you laugh and cry. But most of all, you'll wish for a friendship as great as Jim and Antonia's.

I read My Antonia in High School (NFHS 10 years ago) and I have been searching for a finer book ever since. To begin with, I love the pacing Cather uses; Antonia is epic in scope. Additionaly, I have never found a better narrator in literature. Jim combines the superficial characteristics of a man, with the sensitivity of a feminine soul. This provides the balance necessary for the theme of unrequited love between Jim and Antonia. To clarify, the romantic theme is not the typical Romeo and Juliet romance. Indeed, the relationship between them is much more powerful and more satisfying. The tone of this novel draws the reader in immediately, expressed in the beautiful prose that Cather is so capable of. I have read good novels by great writers (Dillard, Maclean)that never manage to match the sense of place and time in My Antonia. It should be noted that these authors (including Cather herself) often imitated the style of My Antonia with some success. Bottom line: if you are a John Grisham devotee, you might consider something else. If you are in the mood to search the deep things of the soul with literature of classic stature, give My Antonia a chance.

One of Ours begins as vintage Cather, you can feel the sun on your face and the soil under your feet. The characters are real and people you know. The troubled protagonist, Claude, is sympathetic. Why not? There's something of him in all of us. Unfortunately, the book falls apart when he enlists as a doughboy and ships to France.

Cather once stated that she experienced everything that ever went into her writing by the time she was 15. Clearly that didn't include the Western Front. The second half of the book, based on her research and interviews with WWI vets, is not her experience and it shows. The events and descriptions are shallow and superficial, and felt more like an outline, without flesh and blood. The book was a disappointment.

Though you begin to realize where this story is headed early in the novel, you are not quite prepared for where it takes you. It is heartbreaking, and Willa Cather does not beat you over the head with that. The story begins in Nebraska- this is where Cather exhibits her best writing in the story. Her description of our hero's lament is sincere in its vaguery. His feeling of entrapment spills over to the reader. Ms. Cather loses some of her magic when he goes off to The Great War. While we imagine that his sense of entrapment in Nebraska is lifted, we never really feel the emotional evolution that we expect he is going through. In addition, the first three quarters of the story contain a complicated familial element to which we never return.

In the end, where we knew we were headed, we long a little bit for the entrapment of our hero's Nebraska, but feel a little bit liberated by his new freedom.

This novel represents the heroic struggle of one individual against farming, social ambition, marriage and war.

Although strong and capable, farming is the worst profession imaginable for this red headed hero. Willa Cather shows every respect for the hard honest life of a Nebraskan farmer, but Claude makes a hard honest fiasco of the farming life. This book is the story of a soul. A strong daring soul that needs to wrestle something bigger than itself (even if it loses). Claude begins by trying to manage his father's farm. When he spends a few years at college, he is shown the world of social ambition, but neither of these experiences set his life on the right path. If you are interested in the dynamics of male/female relationships, Claude's marriage provides plenty of food for thought. Willa Cather chose a very interesting backdrop for her hero when she describes the home front of these two very black sheep.

This book may be the most realistic description of middle-west sentiment during the first world war. It describes the emotions of Americans who volunteered to fight for people they had only met via the black and white media of newspapers. The war becomes a sort of crusade, and Claude feels compelled to answer the call. Willa Cather gives a wise description of the issues, and even expresses the sentiments of honest German farmers in Nebraska. Claude's best friend is from the Bohemian old country, and doesn't quite agree with Claude's choices.

This book has received quite a few reserved reviews. I recommend this book without reservations.