Reviews

My Antonia by Willa Cather

ark99's review against another edition

2.0

had to read this for school and at first I thought I would really like it! I really liked the first chapter and how it was written and it drew you into the story however after that it just gets slightly boring.

adventures_of_a_french_reader's review against another edition

medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

5.0

If you want to escape present time, then pick up this book.

It was a pure pleasure to read. Willa Cather's writing is so beautiful, especially when she describes her surroundings.

It's a tale about immigration, multi-faceted, set in a harsh environment, but it's also a friendship story, a story about neighbors helping each other out. You'll witness the difficulties faced by the immigrants in the late 1800s, but also how resilient they were.

blackbird27's review against another edition

5.0

One thing I've learned about myself in taking on this reading project (reading my way through the acclaimed fiction of the 1910s) is that although I'm always very reluctant to read rural fiction from other nations (nothing sounds dingier or more depressing than a novel of Spanish, French, German, or Russian farm life), stories about pioneers struggling with the soil in the U.S. are always fascinating to me. Maybe it's sheer national chauvinism, or the lingering effect of ingesting Laura Ingalls Wilder at a formative age -- or maybe U.S. writers of this era, who grew up on farms and were educated in cities, were better equipped to make lasting, fully human portraits of their country's rural life than bourgeois European writers looking down their noses at the peasantry.

Anyway, Willa Cather is canonized enough that I've no need to explain why My Ántonia is great. Since I've been reading a lot of European fiction, I can recognize the (guileless?) optimism that characterizes the U.S. attitude towards life in the period, as just about everyone important ends happy and relatively prosperous. But the moment-to-moment sensation of reading the novel, the tracery of phrase and image, is so indelible, so deeply satisfying in itself that the story could be much worse than it is: Cather's prose is sturdy and strong enough to cover a multitude of sins. Only the prose of Virginia Woolf (so far in this project; translations can't count) equals her, and The Voyage Out isn't quite as good as My Ántonia; it peers deeper into minds, but does not organize them in relation to the world as successfully.

It's taken me long enough to get around to reading Willa Cather, which I should have done in high school. But I'm glad to have done it now.

steve_sanders's review against another edition

3.0

A beautifully rendered setting, colorful characters, and a meandering, episodic narrative that occasionally lapses into sentimentality. Why am I not surprised to learn that this is Ken Burns’ favorite book?

jbmorgan86's review against another edition

4.0

I looked ahead on my book club's list of readings when I saw "January - My Ántonia by Willa Cather." I wasn't familiar with the book, so naturally I googled it. When I discovered that it was a frontier love story written in 1918, my first reaction was "Well, maybe I'll just skip this month." However, I joined this club in an attempt to expand my horizons a bit. A month later, I am so glad I read this book.

My Ántonia is loosely based on Willa Cather's childhood (in much the same way as To Kill a Mockingbird is loosely based on Harper Lee's childhood). While living in Virginia, young Jim Burden's parents die. He moves to Nebraska (the frontier) to live with his grandparents. While living with his grandparents, he gets to know the Shimerda family, immigrants from Bohemia. In particular, he gets to know young Ántonia Shimerda. They quickly become friends and spend their childhood together. The remainder of the novel tells their life stories as they divert and then converge later in life. This novel is largely about nostalgia. Ántonia is home for Jim Burden.

While the plot is entertaining enough, it is the imagery of the frontier landscape that warrants a 4-star rating:

I had never before looked up at the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. But this was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did not believe that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there; they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had left even their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knew not whither. I don’t think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, what would be would be.

I felt that the grass was the country, as the water is the sea. The red of the grass made all the reat prairie the colour of wine-stains, 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.

I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, every sunflower stalk and clump of snow on the mountain, drew itself up high and pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand up sharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comes of those fields at nightfall.

rachelol's review against another edition

4.5

4.5 stars

Read for history class. 

It's always a beautiful feeling to fall in love with a book read for school. 

Spoiler

To me, the best love stories are the ones where the stars just don't perfectly align and they don't end up together. But they still live long, happy lives and eventually reconnect. As Jim puts it: "For Antonia and for me, 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. Now I understood that the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the noncommunicable past."

monte05's review against another edition

3.0

My Antonia is not what I thought is was going to be. I thought it was going to be a book about a young, immigrant's struggle with adapting to the new world, and while at the heart of the book it is the way in which it was presented left me wanted more of the main character, Jim. The book does an excellent job in describing how life used to be, but did not do too good of a job in developing the individuality of the characters; rather, the characters were used as a means to describe how life differed during this time period. I was looking for more of a story, with a flare of excitement, and this novel struck me as dull at times. There are a few memorable quotes, but not enough substance to make me suggest this book to another.

ethib77's review against another edition

5.0

I read this book in high school and recently picked it up again, I loved it both times.

the_weirdling's review against another edition

2.0

I picked up a copy of this book due to its regular listing as one of the best western novels ever written. In this regard, I probably had unrealistically high expectations for the book. For whatever reason, the book never spoke to me. The beauty of it’s prose is undeniable. But I found the plot to be long, meandering, and at times seemingly directionless. It seemed more like a pastiche of scenes from the heartland, less like a coherent novel with a tight plan.

The book pretends to be the written reminiscences of Jim Burdon, who moved to Nebraska at the end of the 19th century after becoming an orphan. Primarily written about a neighboring Bohemian couple and their children, much of the skeletal structure of the novel revolves around Burdon’s infatuation with their daughter Antonia. However, from there, it branches off into numerous asides which sometimes read like short stories jimmy-rigged to the spine. While I enjoyed many of these side stories, they eventually give the novel a feeling of being dissed jointed and directionless. It was this feeling that in the end became very distracting, taking the joy out of the book for me.

I would certainly recommend the book for the beauty of its prose. Willa Cather Is rightly lauded for her ability as a storyteller and wordsmith. That said, I really could not recommend the book as an excellent example of the best of what the Western genre can be.

miss_meg's review against another edition

5.0

My Ántonia is framed as a memoir of Jim Burden, a man who met Ántonia when moving out west to live with his grandparents. The novel begins with Burden’s journey west, on which he firsts meets Ántonia Shimerda, the daughter of Bohemian immigrants. Ántonia and her family struggle to adapt to their new lives as American pioneers, facing poverty and cultural change. As a teenager, Ántonia goes to work for a family in town. She is enthralled by the social events in town, and slowly begins to act in a more wild and rebellious manner. Burden watches as Ántonia matures from an animated child to a resolute and enduring woman.

Cather’s writing is wonderfully visual. The richness in description made me feel as if I was watching the events of the story unfold. The characterization is also developed in a visual way; much of each character’s personality is shown through their appearance and bearing. For example, Jim’s initial impression of his grandmother is given through his description of her: “She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carry her head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she was looking at something, or listening to something, far away. … She was quick footed and energetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedingly desirous that everything should go with due order and decorum” (13).

Ántonia’s struggle to find a balance between societal expectations and happiness is one most people can relate to, and though the story contains drama and tragedy, My Ántonia is not a thriller or fast-paced story compared with many contemporary novels. The novel is not plot driven, but rather relies on the characters to drive the story and events develop at rate determined by the characters. I vastly enjoyed My Ántonia and was completely riveted by the characters. I think readers who enjoyed Summer, by Edith Wharton, and who enjoy lyrically written coming of age stories would enjoy My Ántonia. However, I would not recommend My Ántonia to someone who needs a constantly fast paced, exciting, and thrilling plot to engage them in a story.