When women went west, 16 Mar 2008
The narrator of this story makes a point of mentioning that the name of the heroine is pronounced with a stress on the first syllable, like the male name `Anthony', with an `a' on the end. This is not an insignificant choice by the author, who in her youth dressed in men's clothes and called herself `William'. Not that this is a `lesbian novel' as such, but it is a very particular viewpoint, in which strong, androgynous women carve a civilization out of a hostile landscape often despite their menfolk rather than thanks to them.

There are some parallels with Owen Wister's The Virginian, where the narrator often leaves the scene to be replaced by the heroine, so that the two take turns in interacting with the idealized hero. Here, Cather has a male narrator speak for her and to interact with Antonia. However, he often adopts a distinctly womanly perspective, with feminine references to hairstyles and fashions and so forth, references that sound somewhat out of character. Many readers have been puzzled by the relationship between the narrator and Antonia, but if you occasionally think of him as really being a woman, it all makes perfect sense.

The story unfolds in a gentle, understated manner. It is about characters and their relationship to the landscape, and how the former and the latter evolve together. There is a hint of mystery associated with a violent death early in the story, but this is not developed or remarked on again.

What makes the novel worthwhile is the fine quality of the writing and the authenticity that Cather brings to the narrative. This is my second Cather novel, the other being Oh Pioneers! which I did not particularly like. If you are new to Cather, I think My Antonia is the place to start.



The drama of the American immigrant struggling to survive., 09 Oct 2005
In 1882, when author Willa Cather was nine years-old, her family left their home in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, and moved to Nebraska, near the settler country in Red Cloud where they farmed a homestead. Ms. Cather, often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West, frequently drew on her memories of prairie culture and her own personal experiences. She wrote about the themes closest to her heart. Of primary importance was the drama of the immigrant struggling to survive in a new world, epitomized here in "My Antonia." In this extraordinary novel, Miss Cather weaves together the story of Antonia Shimerda, an immigrant girl from Bohemia who represents the optimism, determination and pure grit that newcomers to America needed to make a successful life, and that of American-born Jim Burden, our narrator.

Burden, a successful and cultured East-coast lawyer, is returning to his childhood home in Blackhawk, Nebraska for a visit. On the long train ride, he reminisces with an unnamed friend about the place where they had both grown up and about the people they knew - especially their dear friend Antonia, "who seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood."

When young Jim Burden was orphaned at age ten, he left his native Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm, just outside of Blackhawk. At almost the same time that Jim arrived, the Shimerda family settled on their land. Mrs. Shimerda had argued effectively for a move to America so that the children, especially Ambrosch, the eldest son, would have the chance to make a better life for themselves, with more possibilities of moving up in the social hierarchy and of acquiring wealth. The Bohemian newcomers were the Burden's closest neighbors. Fourteen year-old Antonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter became a close friend of Jim's. He was immediately drawn to her warmth and friendliness. When Antonia's father, a sensitive, refined man, discovered that Jim was educated he asked the boy to teach his daughter to speak English. "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my �n-tonia!" he told/asked Mrs. Burden. Together the two young people worked the land and explored the glorious prairie. And Antonia began to learn English.

Unfortunately, Antonia's studies came to an end with her father's tragic suicide. The man missed his native land terribly and was not able to accept his family's extreme poverty or the demands of his wife and son. When he lost his only friends, he sunk into a deep depression from which he was not able to escape. After Mr. Shimerda's death, Antonia had to work even harder, performing the heaviest, most physically demanding chores, just to keep the farm from going under. She was not able to go to school with Jim, and began to slowly lose the refined ways she had learned from her dad.

The author describes Antonia's life as Jim perceives it, and from information he gathers from others about the long periods when he did not have contact with her. Their widely different positions in society dictated their life choices and their fortunes. And their lives, their personal histories, parallel the changes and the transformation of the Great Plains. When Antonia and Jim explored the Nebraskan wilderness, it was a wilderness as far as the eye could see. "There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land--slightly undulating..." And, "I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. 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." When Jim makes his return trip by train, years later, everything had changed.

Willa Cather's prose is straightforward, the narrative is deceptively simple and crystal clear. Her characters are complex and the wonderful, richly textured descriptions of the landscape and life on the plains make reading the novel pure pleasure. The author also captures the interior landscape of her characters with great perception and sensitivity. This is a great work of fiction which depicts a people, and a place in time, which only remain on the pages of a book, preserved vividly by Willa Cather.

H.L. Mencken wrote, "No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as 'My Antonia.'"
JANA

A TIMELESS CLASSIC..., 18 Jul 2004
I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. Consequently, the book has a faintly feminist undercurrent to it, as all the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

Pioneering fiction, 16 Jun 2004
On my limited experience of Willa Cather's fiction (based in My Antonia and the almost equally impressive O Pioneers!), she had a remarkable ability to blend matter-of-fact realism with moving sentiment. Everything is done with the utmost simplicity, yet the characters (the female characters at any rate) are vivid and real, drawn with honesty and integrity. Equally important is the Nebraska landscape, poetically described and interacting with the characters. The male characters may be seen as less of a positive: even the likeable narrator, Jim Burden, is not particularly individualised, except in his relationships with Antonia, Lena Lingard, his grandmother and other female characters. A bonus in this edition (and, possibly, in other recent editions) is restoration of the Introduction which gives the framework for Jim's narration.

Tells a Story!!, 17 Feb 2001
Willa Cather tells a good story. That is the trouble. You are always conscious that you are listening to the author rather than listening to her characters. A S Byatt maintains that Cather's pared down style is to be admired, and while there is indeed much to be admired in her depiction of the early settlers in the Great Plains, the reader always feels distanced from the characters. This may be acceptable in a tale where there is a lot of action, but in a story where character is all it leaves something of a vacuum. My Antonia is regarded as Cather's masterpiece, but I do not think that it compares well with say, Ethan Frome, which was written about the same time and is much more involving.

Willa Cather's second novel is abundant with interwoven themes. In one respect Cather bears witness to the early 20th-century Pioneers. The farmer taming the wild Northern States of America, battling with the elements and an unforgiving land to create a home, family and livlihood. On another level O Pioneers! is the story of Alexandra Bergson. Due to the death of her father she becomes the head of the household and spends her time between protecting her younger brother and out in the countryside that has become hers. Overshadowed somewhat by the more popular My Antonia this early work of Cather's is a much admired example of early 20th-century American fiction. O Pioneers! is a powerful testimony to love, the land and the pioneering spirit. --Jon Smith

When women went west, 16 Mar 2008
The narrator of this story makes a point of mentioning that the name of the heroine is pronounced with a stress on the first syllable, like the male name `Anthony', with an `a' on the end. This is not an insignificant choice by the author, who in her youth dressed in men's clothes and called herself `William'. Not that this is a `lesbian novel' as such, but it is a very particular viewpoint, in which strong, androgynous women carve a civilization out of a hostile landscape often despite their menfolk rather than thanks to them.

There are some parallels with Owen Wister's The Virginian, where the narrator often leaves the scene to be replaced by the heroine, so that the two take turns in interacting with the idealized hero. Here, Cather has a male narrator speak for her and to interact with Antonia. However, he often adopts a distinctly womanly perspective, with feminine references to hairstyles and fashions and so forth, references that sound somewhat out of character. Many readers have been puzzled by the relationship between the narrator and Antonia, but if you occasionally think of him as really being a woman, it all makes perfect sense.

The story unfolds in a gentle, understated manner. It is about characters and their relationship to the landscape, and how the former and the latter evolve together. There is a hint of mystery associated with a violent death early in the story, but this is not developed or remarked on again.

What makes the novel worthwhile is the fine quality of the writing and the authenticity that Cather brings to the narrative. This is my second Cather novel, the other being Oh Pioneers! which I did not particularly like. If you are new to Cather, I think My Antonia is the place to start.



The drama of the American immigrant struggling to survive., 09 Oct 2005
In 1882, when author Willa Cather was nine years-old, her family left their home in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, and moved to Nebraska, near the settler country in Red Cloud where they farmed a homestead. Ms. Cather, often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West, frequently drew on her memories of prairie culture and her own personal experiences. She wrote about the themes closest to her heart. Of primary importance was the drama of the immigrant struggling to survive in a new world, epitomized here in "My Antonia." In this extraordinary novel, Miss Cather weaves together the story of Antonia Shimerda, an immigrant girl from Bohemia who represents the optimism, determination and pure grit that newcomers to America needed to make a successful life, and that of American-born Jim Burden, our narrator.

Burden, a successful and cultured East-coast lawyer, is returning to his childhood home in Blackhawk, Nebraska for a visit. On the long train ride, he reminisces with an unnamed friend about the place where they had both grown up and about the people they knew - especially their dear friend Antonia, "who seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood."

When young Jim Burden was orphaned at age ten, he left his native Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm, just outside of Blackhawk. At almost the same time that Jim arrived, the Shimerda family settled on their land. Mrs. Shimerda had argued effectively for a move to America so that the children, especially Ambrosch, the eldest son, would have the chance to make a better life for themselves, with more possibilities of moving up in the social hierarchy and of acquiring wealth. The Bohemian newcomers were the Burden's closest neighbors. Fourteen year-old Antonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter became a close friend of Jim's. He was immediately drawn to her warmth and friendliness. When Antonia's father, a sensitive, refined man, discovered that Jim was educated he asked the boy to teach his daughter to speak English. "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my �n-tonia!" he told/asked Mrs. Burden. Together the two young people worked the land and explored the glorious prairie. And Antonia began to learn English.

Unfortunately, Antonia's studies came to an end with her father's tragic suicide. The man missed his native land terribly and was not able to accept his family's extreme poverty or the demands of his wife and son. When he lost his only friends, he sunk into a deep depression from which he was not able to escape. After Mr. Shimerda's death, Antonia had to work even harder, performing the heaviest, most physically demanding chores, just to keep the farm from going under. She was not able to go to school with Jim, and began to slowly lose the refined ways she had learned from her dad.

The author describes Antonia's life as Jim perceives it, and from information he gathers from others about the long periods when he did not have contact with her. Their widely different positions in society dictated their life choices and their fortunes. And their lives, their personal histories, parallel the changes and the transformation of the Great Plains. When Antonia and Jim explored the Nebraskan wilderness, it was a wilderness as far as the eye could see. "There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land--slightly undulating..." And, "I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. 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." When Jim makes his return trip by train, years later, everything had changed.

Willa Cather's prose is straightforward, the narrative is deceptively simple and crystal clear. Her characters are complex and the wonderful, richly textured descriptions of the landscape and life on the plains make reading the novel pure pleasure. The author also captures the interior landscape of her characters with great perception and sensitivity. This is a great work of fiction which depicts a people, and a place in time, which only remain on the pages of a book, preserved vividly by Willa Cather.

H.L. Mencken wrote, "No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as 'My Antonia.'"
JANA

A TIMELESS CLASSIC..., 18 Jul 2004
I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. Consequently, the book has a faintly feminist undercurrent to it, as all the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

Pioneering fiction, 16 Jun 2004
On my limited experience of Willa Cather's fiction (based in My Antonia and the almost equally impressive O Pioneers!), she had a remarkable ability to blend matter-of-fact realism with moving sentiment. Everything is done with the utmost simplicity, yet the characters (the female characters at any rate) are vivid and real, drawn with honesty and integrity. Equally important is the Nebraska landscape, poetically described and interacting with the characters. The male characters may be seen as less of a positive: even the likeable narrator, Jim Burden, is not particularly individualised, except in his relationships with Antonia, Lena Lingard, his grandmother and other female characters. A bonus in this edition (and, possibly, in other recent editions) is restoration of the Introduction which gives the framework for Jim's narration.

Tells a Story!!, 17 Feb 2001
Willa Cather tells a good story. That is the trouble. You are always conscious that you are listening to the author rather than listening to her characters. A S Byatt maintains that Cather's pared down style is to be admired, and while there is indeed much to be admired in her depiction of the early settlers in the Great Plains, the reader always feels distanced from the characters. This may be acceptable in a tale where there is a lot of action, but in a story where character is all it leaves something of a vacuum. My Antonia is regarded as Cather's masterpiece, but I do not think that it compares well with say, Ethan Frome, which was written about the same time and is much more involving.

A very special book, 19 Jul 2007
I dont know if I read the same book as the reviewers who so eloquently stated 'It stunk', but it doesn't feel like it. I read this book, amongst others by Cather, during a long, lonely stay in an old, clapperboard Nebraskan farm house and for me, she evokes the time and land so purely and with such understated and simple beauty, the book has been unforgettable.

"The land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty.", 14 Oct 2006
Willa Cather's second novel draws on Cather's own experiences on the Nebraska plains, where she knew, first-hand, the harsh beauty of the land, the resilience of the farmers who tried to tame it, and the accidents of nature that could, overnight, destroy years of dreams. Here Alexandra Bergson, the bright and hard-working daughter of a farmer, inherits the responsibilities of running the family farm upon the death of her father. With two older, less business-like brothers to work the land, she turns what had been a marginally successful farm into a business profitable enough that she is able to buy land other farmers have abandoned.

Beginning in the late 1800s, when Alexandra is a teenager, and continuing until Alexandra is in her forties, the novel celebrates Alexandra's strength and dedication to her land, at the same time that it emphasizes how isolating farm life can be. Though Alexandra's farm becomes the most successful farm in the area, she has few friends and no lovers, and there is little opportunity for social life. When her earliest friend, Carl Linstrum, whose family long ago gave up their farm, suddenly returns for a visit, Alexandra and Carl find themselves "keeping company," despite the opposition of her brothers. The love of her youngest brother Emil for Marie Shabata, an unhappily married woman, is a parallel love story with additional complications. In both love stories, the accidents of fate, so common in farm life, play a key role in characters' personal lives.

Filled with gorgeous descriptions of the changing seasons, from the brutal harshness of winter to the rebirth in spring and the flourishing of summer, the novel also shows how fickle nature can be. Those who survive, physically and emotionally, are those like Alexandra who can accept and adapt to whatever life offers, instead of fighting against unpredictable disasters. To be successful, one must sublimate the desire for adventure, the urge to explore, and the human tendency to ask oneself, "What if...?" Day-to-day activities, minutely explored here, keep farmers like Alexandra rooted in the real world--imagination is a "luxury" few can afford.

One of the first realistic novels about the pioneer experience, O Pioneers conveys the values and the personal qualities needed for success on the plains, at the same time that it also reveals how quickly and unpredictably nature can change outcomes. Even love is not a haven here--sudden, unpredictable changes occur in love, too. Dramatic and powerful in its depiction of pioneer life, the novel is a paean to the resilient spirit of the early pioneers and the enduring power of nature. Mary Whipple


THE LAND TO WHICH WE BELONG..., 01 Mar 2005
In this, the author's second published work, the author writes about that which she knew best, early pioneer life in Nebraska, the place to which she and her family moved in 1883 when she was a mere slip of a girl. She eventually attended the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1995, at a time when most girls did no such thing.

In this work, the author was on very sure footing. Her clear, straightforward prose lends itself capably to the story of early pioneers who went to Nebraska and set down roots, weathering the exigencies that often plagued a newcomer to a particular region. It is a surprisingly unsentimental look at pioneer life.

This thematically complex, but simply written story focuses primarily on Alexandra Bergson, the intelligent, independent, resourceful, and strong-willed daughter of pioneer John Bergson. Upon his death he did what was then the nearly unthinkable. He left his land in the hands of his oldest child, his daughter, Alexandra, rather than in those of his sons, recognizing in his daughter those qualities that would ensure that his land would prosper under her stewardship.

This then is the story of not only Alexandra but of that land and those whose sustenance depended upon its fruitfulness. The reader follows the Bergson clan as they live their lives and interact with their neighbors. Under Alexandra's skillful management, the Bergson farm prospers. As the farm prospers, so does its environs, as the area becomes a bustling center of activity with more and more settlers developing the land around that of the Bergsons.

Thematically, the book explores the vicissitudes of life, as well as its life-affirming moments. As in all lives, the characters in this book experience moments of high drama and great tragedy, as well as memorable moments of love and hate. All this is grounded within the context of pioneer life, with all its hardships and privations, as well as its occasional abundance. The author skillfully re-creates a melting pot of the many nationalities that cultivated the land known as Nebraska.

This is a book that those who like reading about pioneer life will certainly enjoy, as will those who simply like a well-written book with a tale to tell. This classic novel was also adapted for a Hallmark Hall of Fame film, starring Jessica Lange in the role of Alexandra Bergson.

When men were men and women were more so., 11 Sep 2003
The first half of this novel is curiously disjointed. Months, sometimes years elapse between each chapter, making it rather like reading fragments of a long family saga. The effect is to distance the reader from the characters. The second half is a more continuous and involving narrative, developing into a conventional social drama with a surprisingly melodramatic climax.

The writing is fine, with an especially strong visual sense, sometimes reading almost like a treatment for a screenplay. The author manages a simple and elegant style that suits her theme perfectly.

Cather's sympathies are firmly with the strong central female character Alexandra. The male characters are mostly insipid and unstable; and an affection, tinged with contempt, is shown toward the more submissive female characters. Apart from Alexandra, the author's deepest sympathy is reserved for the country itself. Cather writes of the Nebraska that she knew in her youth and of the immigrant men and women who tamed a hostile landscape.

The title is taken from a very poor and overblown poem by Walt Whitman, appropriate only in that the poem is as hard going for the reader as the land was for the pioneer. But, title apart, the novel remains a solid rendition of Western pioneer life, which was a vital strand of American cultural history.

The characters are real to the hardships immigrants dealt w/, 18 May 1999
Willa Cather's novel, O Pioneers! is true to the tough times the American Westerners had to endure day after day. Alexandra, Carl, and Marie's love triangle will keep you pondering what will happen in the end? This novel is truely realistic and kept my attention throughout it's Five Parts. A short read. I definitely recommend it to the many strong-minded women, who will easily relate to Alexandra Bergson.

When women went west, 16 Mar 2008
The narrator of this story makes a point of mentioning that the name of the heroine is pronounced with a stress on the first syllable, like the male name `Anthony', with an `a' on the end. This is not an insignificant choice by the author, who in her youth dressed in men's clothes and called herself `William'. Not that this is a `lesbian novel' as such, but it is a very particular viewpoint, in which strong, androgynous women carve a civilization out of a hostile landscape often despite their menfolk rather than thanks to them.

There are some parallels with Owen Wister's The Virginian, where the narrator often leaves the scene to be replaced by the heroine, so that the two take turns in interacting with the idealized hero. Here, Cather has a male narrator speak for her and to interact with Antonia. However, he often adopts a distinctly womanly perspective, with feminine references to hairstyles and fashions and so forth, references that sound somewhat out of character. Many readers have been puzzled by the relationship between the narrator and Antonia, but if you occasionally think of him as really being a woman, it all makes perfect sense.

The story unfolds in a gentle, understated manner. It is about characters and their relationship to the landscape, and how the former and the latter evolve together. There is a hint of mystery associated with a violent death early in the story, but this is not developed or remarked on again.

What makes the novel worthwhile is the fine quality of the writing and the authenticity that Cather brings to the narrative. This is my second Cather novel, the other being Oh Pioneers! which I did not particularly like. If you are new to Cather, I think My Antonia is the place to start.



The drama of the American immigrant struggling to survive., 09 Oct 2005
In 1882, when author Willa Cather was nine years-old, her family left their home in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, and moved to Nebraska, near the settler country in Red Cloud where they farmed a homestead. Ms. Cather, often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West, frequently drew on her memories of prairie culture and her own personal experiences. She wrote about the themes closest to her heart. Of primary importance was the drama of the immigrant struggling to survive in a new world, epitomized here in "My Antonia." In this extraordinary novel, Miss Cather weaves together the story of Antonia Shimerda, an immigrant girl from Bohemia who represents the optimism, determination and pure grit that newcomers to America needed to make a successful life, and that of American-born Jim Burden, our narrator.

Burden, a successful and cultured East-coast lawyer, is returning to his childhood home in Blackhawk, Nebraska for a visit. On the long train ride, he reminisces with an unnamed friend about the place where they had both grown up and about the people they knew - especially their dear friend Antonia, "who seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood."

When young Jim Burden was orphaned at age ten, he left his native Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm, just outside of Blackhawk. At almost the same time that Jim arrived, the Shimerda family settled on their land. Mrs. Shimerda had argued effectively for a move to America so that the children, especially Ambrosch, the eldest son, would have the chance to make a better life for themselves, with more possibilities of moving up in the social hierarchy and of acquiring wealth. The Bohemian newcomers were the Burden's closest neighbors. Fourteen year-old Antonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter became a close friend of Jim's. He was immediately drawn to her warmth and friendliness. When Antonia's father, a sensitive, refined man, discovered that Jim was educated he asked the boy to teach his daughter to speak English. "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my �n-tonia!" he told/asked Mrs. Burden. Together the two young people worked the land and explored the glorious prairie. And Antonia began to learn English.

Unfortunately, Antonia's studies came to an end with her father's tragic suicide. The man missed his native land terribly and was not able to accept his family's extreme poverty or the demands of his wife and son. When he lost his only friends, he sunk into a deep depression from which he was not able to escape. After Mr. Shimerda's death, Antonia had to work even harder, performing the heaviest, most physically demanding chores, just to keep the farm from going under. She was not able to go to school with Jim, and began to slowly lose the refined ways she had learned from her dad.

The author describes Antonia's life as Jim perceives it, and from information he gathers from others about the long periods when he did not have contact with her. Their widely different positions in society dictated their life choices and their fortunes. And their lives, their personal histories, parallel the changes and the transformation of the Great Plains. When Antonia and Jim explored the Nebraskan wilderness, it was a wilderness as far as the eye could see. "There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land--slightly undulating..." And, "I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. 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." When Jim makes his return trip by train, years later, everything had changed.

Willa Cather's prose is straightforward, the narrative is deceptively simple and crystal clear. Her characters are complex and the wonderful, richly textured descriptions of the landscape and life on the plains make reading the novel pure pleasure. The author also captures the interior landscape of her characters with great perception and sensitivity. This is a great work of fiction which depicts a people, and a place in time, which only remain on the pages of a book, preserved vividly by Willa Cather.

H.L. Mencken wrote, "No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as 'My Antonia.'"
JANA

A TIMELESS CLASSIC..., 18 Jul 2004
I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. Consequently, the book has a faintly feminist undercurrent to it, as all the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

Pioneering fiction, 16 Jun 2004
On my limited experience of Willa Cather's fiction (based in My Antonia and the almost equally impressive O Pioneers!), she had a remarkable ability to blend matter-of-fact realism with moving sentiment. Everything is done with the utmost simplicity, yet the characters (the female characters at any rate) are vivid and real, drawn with honesty and integrity. Equally important is the Nebraska landscape, poetically described and interacting with the characters. The male characters may be seen as less of a positive: even the likeable narrator, Jim Burden, is not particularly individualised, except in his relationships with Antonia, Lena Lingard, his grandmother and other female characters. A bonus in this edition (and, possibly, in other recent editions) is restoration of the Introduction which gives the framework for Jim's narration.

Tells a Story!!, 17 Feb 2001
Willa Cather tells a good story. That is the trouble. You are always conscious that you are listening to the author rather than listening to her characters. A S Byatt maintains that Cather's pared down style is to be admired, and while there is indeed much to be admired in her depiction of the early settlers in the Great Plains, the reader always feels distanced from the characters. This may be acceptable in a tale where there is a lot of action, but in a story where character is all it leaves something of a vacuum. My Antonia is regarded as Cather's masterpiece, but I do not think that it compares well with say, Ethan Frome, which was written about the same time and is much more involving.

A very special book, 19 Jul 2007
I dont know if I read the same book as the reviewers who so eloquently stated 'It stunk', but it doesn't feel like it. I read this book, amongst others by Cather, during a long, lonely stay in an old, clapperboard Nebraskan farm house and for me, she evokes the time and land so purely and with such understated and simple beauty, the book has been unforgettable.

"The land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty.", 14 Oct 2006
Willa Cather's second novel draws on Cather's own experiences on the Nebraska plains, where she knew, first-hand, the harsh beauty of the land, the resilience of the farmers who tried to tame it, and the accidents of nature that could, overnight, destroy years of dreams. Here Alexandra Bergson, the bright and hard-working daughter of a farmer, inherits the responsibilities of running the family farm upon the death of her father. With two older, less business-like brothers to work the land, she turns what had been a marginally successful farm into a business profitable enough that she is able to buy land other farmers have abandoned.

Beginning in the late 1800s, when Alexandra is a teenager, and continuing until Alexandra is in her forties, the novel celebrates Alexandra's strength and dedication to her land, at the same time that it emphasizes how isolating farm life can be. Though Alexandra's farm becomes the most successful farm in the area, she has few friends and no lovers, and there is little opportunity for social life. When her earliest friend, Carl Linstrum, whose family long ago gave up their farm, suddenly returns for a visit, Alexandra and Carl find themselves "keeping company," despite the opposition of her brothers. The love of her youngest brother Emil for Marie Shabata, an unhappily married woman, is a parallel love story with additional complications. In both love stories, the accidents of fate, so common in farm life, play a key role in characters' personal lives.

Filled with gorgeous descriptions of the changing seasons, from the brutal harshness of winter to the rebirth in spring and the flourishing of summer, the novel also shows how fickle nature can be. Those who survive, physically and emotionally, are those like Alexandra who can accept and adapt to whatever life offers, instead of fighting against unpredictable disasters. To be successful, one must sublimate the desire for adventure, the urge to explore, and the human tendency to ask oneself, "What if...?" Day-to-day activities, minutely explored here, keep farmers like Alexandra rooted in the real world--imagination is a "luxury" few can afford.

One of the first realistic novels about the pioneer experience, O Pioneers conveys the values and the personal qualities needed for success on the plains, at the same time that it also reveals how quickly and unpredictably nature can change outcomes. Even love is not a haven here--sudden, unpredictable changes occur in love, too. Dramatic and powerful in its depiction of pioneer life, the novel is a paean to the resilient spirit of the early pioneers and the enduring power of nature. Mary Whipple


THE LAND TO WHICH WE BELONG..., 01 Mar 2005
In this, the author's second published work, the author writes about that which she knew best, early pioneer life in Nebraska, the place to which she and her family moved in 1883 when she was a mere slip of a girl. She eventually attended the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1995, at a time when most girls did no such thing.

In this work, the author was on very sure footing. Her clear, straightforward prose lends itself capably to the story of early pioneers who went to Nebraska and set down roots, weathering the exigencies that often plagued a newcomer to a particular region. It is a surprisingly unsentimental look at pioneer life.

This thematically complex, but simply written story focuses primarily on Alexandra Bergson, the intelligent, independent, resourceful, and strong-willed daughter of pioneer John Bergson. Upon his death he did what was then the nearly unthinkable. He left his land in the hands of his oldest child, his daughter, Alexandra, rather than in those of his sons, recognizing in his daughter those qualities that would ensure that his land would prosper under her stewardship.

This then is the story of not only Alexandra but of that land and those whose sustenance depended upon its fruitfulness. The reader follows the Bergson clan as they live their lives and interact with their neighbors. Under Alexandra's skillful management, the Bergson farm prospers. As the farm prospers, so does its environs, as the area becomes a bustling center of activity with more and more settlers developing the land around that of the Bergsons.

Thematically, the book explores the vicissitudes of life, as well as its life-affirming moments. As in all lives, the characters in this book experience moments of high drama and great tragedy, as well as memorable moments of love and hate. All this is grounded within the context of pioneer life, with all its hardships and privations, as well as its occasional abundance. The author skillfully re-creates a melting pot of the many nationalities that cultivated the land known as Nebraska.

This is a book that those who like reading about pioneer life will certainly enjoy, as will those who simply like a well-written book with a tale to tell. This classic novel was also adapted for a Hallmark Hall of Fame film, starring Jessica Lange in the role of Alexandra Bergson.

When men were men and women were more so., 11 Sep 2003
The first half of this novel is curiously disjointed. Months, sometimes years elapse between each chapter, making it rather like reading fragments of a long family saga. The effect is to distance the reader from the characters. The second half is a more continuous and involving narrative, developing into a conventional social drama with a surprisingly melodramatic climax.

The writing is fine, with an especially strong visual sense, sometimes reading almost like a treatment for a screenplay. The author manages a simple and elegant style that suits her theme perfectly.

Cather's sympathies are firmly with the strong central female character Alexandra. The male characters are mostly insipid and unstable; and an affection, tinged with contempt, is shown toward the more submissive female characters. Apart from Alexandra, the author's deepest sympathy is reserved for the country itself. Cather writes of the Nebraska that she knew in her youth and of the immigrant men and women who tamed a hostile landscape.

The title is taken from a very poor and overblown poem by Walt Whitman, appropriate only in that the poem is as hard going for the reader as the land was for the pioneer. But, title apart, the novel remains a solid rendition of Western pioneer life, which was a vital strand of American cultural history.

The characters are real to the hardships immigrants dealt w/, 18 May 1999
Willa Cather's novel, O Pioneers! is true to the tough times the American Westerners had to endure day after day. Alexandra, Carl, and Marie's love triangle will keep you pondering what will happen in the end? This novel is truely realistic and kept my attention throughout it's Five Parts. A short read. I definitely recommend it to the many strong-minded women, who will easily relate to Alexandra Bergson.

Little lives on the Prairie, 06 Dec 2007
Orphan Jim Burden moves from Virginia to relatives living on the frontier farmlands of Nebraska where `native' American settlers and immigrants from Scandinavia and Eastern and Central Europe are involved in opening up the Prairies. The eponymous heroine Antonia is the spirited elder daughter of the Shimerda family, poor Bohemian neighbours of the Burden's, who is forced to become a servant after her father has committed suicide. Her difficult life and that of the narrator Jim Burden are the central focus of this elegiac but unsentimental novel from the beginning of the twentieth century. It is most notable for evocative descriptions of the Prairies and pioneer lives in tough circumstances but also says a lot about ordinary human motivations. Plainly and lovingly written but a little lacking in excitement for today's readers.


Leaves You Wondering!, 16 Apr 2007
I started "My Antonia" just to find out what this literary classic was about. I soon found myself captivated by a development of characters and their relationships.

The story is seen through the eyes of Jim Burton, who begins the story as a ten year old orphan traveling from his family home in Virginia to his grandparents' farm near Black Hawk, Nebraska. The other two primary characters in the book are Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant four years older than Jim, and Lena Lingard, a similarly aged girl from the local Norwegian community. As the years and the book pass, we see the characters develop in different ways. During this their relationships change, but the reader's interest is held.

The ability of this book to captivate the reader in intriguing! It has no real crises, no particular tragedies, just developing personalities and relationships. Although the main characters change, they all seem to develop along self directed lines, with no winners or losers. At the end the reader rides off with Jim, possessing many of the same feelings as he expresses. One test I apply to a novel is whether it leaves me wondering. Wondering why the characters lives develop as they do, wondering if the characters are really satisfied with their lives, wondering whether they desire something that the others have, wondering what happens to them after the last page. I am still wondering about "My Antonia." Any book that can do that has earned its status as a classic.

When women went west, 16 Mar 2008
The narrator of this story makes a point of mentioning that the name of the heroine is pronounced with a stress on the first syllable, like the male name `Anthony', with an `a' on the end. This is not an insignificant choice by the author, who in her youth dressed in men's clothes and called herself `William'. Not that this is a `lesbian novel' as such, but it is a very particular viewpoint, in which strong, androgynous women carve a civilization out of a hostile landscape often despite their menfolk rather than thanks to them.

There are some parallels with Owen Wister's The Virginian, where the narrator often leaves the scene to be replaced by the heroine, so that the two take turns in interacting with the idealized hero. Here, Cather has a male narrator speak for her and to interact with Antonia. However, he often adopts a distinctly womanly perspective, with feminine references to hairstyles and fashions and so forth, references that sound somewhat out of character. Many readers have been puzzled by the relationship between the narrator and Antonia, but if you occasionally think of him as really being a woman, it all makes perfect sense.

The story unfolds in a gentle, understated manner. It is about characters and their relationship to the landscape, and how the former and the latter evolve together. There is a hint of mystery associated with a violent death early in the story, but this is not developed or remarked on again.

What makes the novel worthwhile is the fine quality of the writing and the authenticity that Cather brings to the narrative. This is my second Cather novel, the other being Oh Pioneers! which I did not particularly like. If you are new to Cather, I think My Antonia is the place to start.



The drama of the American immigrant struggling to survive., 09 Oct 2005
In 1882, when author Willa Cather was nine years-old, her family left their home in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, and moved to Nebraska, near the settler country in Red Cloud where they farmed a homestead. Ms. Cather, often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West, frequently drew on her memories of prairie culture and her own personal experiences. She wrote about the themes closest to her heart. Of primary importance was the drama of the immigrant struggling to survive in a new world, epitomized here in "My Antonia." In this extraordinary novel, Miss Cather weaves together the story of Antonia Shimerda, an immigrant girl from Bohemia who represents the optimism, determination and pure grit that newcomers to America needed to make a successful life, and that of American-born Jim Burden, our narrator.

Burden, a successful and cultured East-coast lawyer, is returning to his childhood home in Blackhawk, Nebraska for a visit. On the long train ride, he reminisces with an unnamed friend about the place where they had both grown up and about the people they knew - especially their dear friend Antonia, "who seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood."

When young Jim Burden was orphaned at age ten, he left his native Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm, just outside of Blackhawk. At almost the same time that Jim arrived, the Shimerda family settled on their land. Mrs. Shimerda had argued effectively for a move to America so that the children, especially Ambrosch, the eldest son, would have the chance to make a better life for themselves, with more possibilities of moving up in the social hierarchy and of acquiring wealth. The Bohemian newcomers were the Burden's closest neighbors. Fourteen year-old Antonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter became a close friend of Jim's. He was immediately drawn to her warmth and friendliness. When Antonia's father, a sensitive, refined man, discovered that Jim was educated he asked the boy to teach his daughter to speak English. "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my �n-tonia!" he told/asked Mrs. Burden. Together the two young people worked the land and explored the glorious prairie. And Antonia began to learn English.

Unfortunately, Antonia's studies came to an end with her father's tragic suicide. The man missed his native land terribly and was not able to accept his family's extreme poverty or the demands of his wife and son. When he lost his only friends, he sunk into a deep depression from which he was not able to escape. After Mr. Shimerda's death, Antonia had to work even harder, performing the heaviest, most physically demanding chores, just to keep the farm from going under. She was not able to go to school with Jim, and began to slowly lose the refined ways she had learned from her dad.

The author describes Antonia's life as Jim perceives it, and from information he gathers from others about the long periods when he did not have contact with her. Their widely different positions in society dictated their life choices and their fortunes. And their lives, their personal histories, parallel the changes and the transformation of the Great Plains. When Antonia and Jim explored the Nebraskan wilderness, it was a wilderness as far as the eye could see. "There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land--slightly undulating..." And, "I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. 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." When Jim makes his return trip by train, years later, everything had changed.

Willa Cather's prose is straightforward, the narrative is deceptively simple and crystal clear. Her characters are complex and the wonderful, richly textured descriptions of the landscape and life on the plains make reading the novel pure pleasure. The author also captures the interior landscape of her characters with great perception and sensitivity. This is a great work of fiction which depicts a people, and a place in time, which only remain on the pages of a book, preserved vividly by Willa Cather.

H.L. Mencken wrote, "No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as 'My Antonia.'"
JANA

A TIMELESS CLASSIC..., 18 Jul 2004
I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. Consequently, the book has a faintly feminist undercurrent to it, as all the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

Pioneering fiction, 16 Jun 2004
On my limited experience of Willa Cather's fiction (based in My Antonia and the almost equally impressive O Pioneers!), she had a remarkable ability to blend matter-of-fact realism with moving sentiment. Everything is done with the utmost simplicity, yet the characters (the female characters at any rate) are vivid and real, drawn with honesty and integrity. Equally important is the Nebraska landscape, poetically described and interacting with the characters. The male characters may be seen as less of a positive: even the likeable narrator, Jim Burden, is not particularly individualised, except in his relationships with Antonia, Lena Lingard, his grandmother and other female characters. A bonus in this edition (and, possibly, in other recent editions) is restoration of the Introduction which gives the framework for Jim's narration.

Tells a Story!!, 17 Feb 2001
Willa Cather tells a good story. That is the trouble. You are always conscious that you are listening to the author rather than listening to her characters. A S Byatt maintains that Cather's pared down style is to be admired, and while there is indeed much to be admired in her depiction of the early settlers in the Great Plains, the reader always feels distanced from the characters. This may be acceptable in a tale where there is a lot of action, but in a story where character is all it leaves something of a vacuum. My Antonia is regarded as Cather's masterpiece, but I do not think that it compares well with say, Ethan Frome, which was written about the same time and is much more involving.

A very special book, 19 Jul 2007
I dont know if I read the same book as the reviewers who so eloquently stated 'It stunk', but it doesn't feel like it. I read this book, amongst others by Cather, during a long, lonely stay in an old, clapperboard Nebraskan farm house and for me, she evokes the time and land so purely and with such understated and simple beauty, the book has been unforgettable.

"The land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty.", 14 Oct 2006
Willa Cather's second novel draws on Cather's own experiences on the Nebraska plains, where she knew, first-hand, the harsh beauty of the land, the resilience of the farmers who tried to tame it, and the accidents of nature that could, overnight, destroy years of dreams. Here Alexandra Bergson, the bright and hard-working daughter of a farmer, inherits the responsibilities of running the family farm upon the death of her father. With two older, less business-like brothers to work the land, she turns what had been a marginally successful farm into a business profitable enough that she is able to buy land other farmers have abandoned.

Beginning in the late 1800s, when Alexandra is a teenager, and continuing until Alexandra is in her forties, the novel celebrates Alexandra's strength and dedication to her land, at the same time that it emphasizes how isolating farm life can be. Though Alexandra's farm becomes the most successful farm in the area, she has few friends and no lovers, and there is little opportunity for social life. When her earliest friend, Carl Linstrum, whose family long ago gave up their farm, suddenly returns for a visit, Alexandra and Carl find themselves "keeping company," despite the opposition of her brothers. The love of her youngest brother Emil for Marie Shabata, an unhappily married woman, is a parallel love story with additional complications. In both love stories, the accidents of fate, so common in farm life, play a key role in characters' personal lives.

Filled with gorgeous descriptions of the changing seasons, from the brutal harshness of winter to the rebirth in spring and the flourishing of summer, the novel also shows how fickle nature can be. Those who survive, physically and emotionally, are those like Alexandra who can accept and adapt to whatever life offers, instead of fighting against unpredictable disasters. To be successful, one must sublimate the desire for adventure, the urge to explore, and the human tendency to ask oneself, "What if...?" Day-to-day activities, minutely explored here, keep farmers like Alexandra rooted in the real world--imagination is a "luxury" few can afford.

One of the first realistic novels about the pioneer experience, O Pioneers conveys the values and the personal qualities needed for success on the plains, at the same time that it also reveals how quickly and unpredictably nature can change outcomes. Even love is not a haven here--sudden, unpredictable changes occur in love, too. Dramatic and powerful in its depiction of pioneer life, the novel is a paean to the resilient spirit of the early pioneers and the enduring power of nature. Mary Whipple


THE LAND TO WHICH WE BELONG..., 01 Mar 2005
In this, the author's second published work, the author writes about that which she knew best, early pioneer life in Nebraska, the place to which she and her family moved in 1883 when she was a mere slip of a girl. She eventually attended the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1995, at a time when most girls did no such thing.

In this work, the author was on very sure footing. Her clear, straightforward prose lends itself capably to the story of early pioneers who went to Nebraska and set down roots, weathering the exigencies that often plagued a newcomer to a particular region. It is a surprisingly unsentimental look at pioneer life.

This thematically complex, but simply written story focuses primarily on Alexandra Bergson, the intelligent, independent, resourceful, and strong-willed daughter of pioneer John Bergson. Upon his death he did what was then the nearly unthinkable. He left his land in the hands of his oldest child, his daughter, Alexandra, rather than in those of his sons, recognizing in his daughter those qualities that would ensure that his land would prosper under her stewardship.

This then is the story of not only Alexandra but of that land and those whose sustenance depended upon its fruitfulness. The reader follows the Bergson clan as they live their lives and interact with their neighbors. Under Alexandra's skillful management, the Bergson farm prospers. As the farm prospers, so does its environs, as the area becomes a bustling center of activity with more and more settlers developing the land around that of the Bergsons.

Thematically, the book explores the vicissitudes of life, as well as its life-affirming moments. As in all lives, the characters in this book experience moments of high drama and great tragedy, as well as memorable moments of love and hate. All this is grounded within the context of pioneer life, with all its hardships and privations, as well as its occasional abundance. The author skillfully re-creates a melting pot of the many nationalities that cultivated the land known as Nebraska.

This is a book that those who like reading about pioneer life will certainly enjoy, as will those who simply like a well-written book with a tale to tell. This classic novel was also adapted for a Hallmark Hall of Fame film, starring Jessica Lange in the role of Alexandra Bergson.

When men were men and women were more so., 11 Sep 2003
The first half of this novel is curiously disjointed. Months, sometimes years elapse between each chapter, making it rather like reading fragments of a long family saga. The effect is to distance the reader from the characters. The second half is a more continuous and involving narrative, developing into a conventional social drama with a surprisingly melodramatic climax.

The writing is fine, with an especially strong visual sense, sometimes reading almost like a treatment for a screenplay. The author manages a simple and elegant style that suits her theme perfectly.

Cather's sympathies are firmly with the strong central female character Alexandra. The male characters are mostly insipid and unstable; and an affection, tinged with contempt, is shown toward the more submissive female characters. Apart from Alexandra, the author's deepest sympathy is reserved for the country itself. Cather writes of the Nebraska that she knew in her youth and of the immigrant men and women who tamed a hostile landscape.

The title is taken from a very poor and overblown poem by Walt Whitman, appropriate only in that the poem is as hard going for the reader as the land was for the pioneer. But, title apart, the novel remains a solid rendition of Western pioneer life, which was a vital strand of American cultural history.

The characters are real to the hardships immigrants dealt w/, 18 May 1999
Willa Cather's novel, O Pioneers! is true to the tough times the American Westerners had to endure day after day. Alexandra, Carl, and Marie's love triangle will keep you pondering what will happen in the end? This novel is truely realistic and kept my attention throughout it's Five Parts. A short read. I definitely recommend it to the many strong-minded women, who will easily relate to Alexandra Bergson.

Little lives on the Prairie, 06 Dec 2007
Orphan Jim Burden moves from Virginia to relatives living on the frontier farmlands of Nebraska where `native' American settlers and immigrants from Scandinavia and Eastern and Central Europe are involved in opening up the Prairies. The eponymous heroine Antonia is the spirited elder daughter of the Shimerda family, poor Bohemian neighbours of the Burden's, who is forced to become a servant after her father has committed suicide. Her difficult life and that of the narrator Jim Burden are the central focus of this elegiac but unsentimental novel from the beginning of the twentieth century. It is most notable for evocative descriptions of the Prairies and pioneer lives in tough circumstances but also says a lot about ordinary human motivations. Plainly and lovingly written but a little lacking in excitement for today's readers.


Leaves You Wondering!, 16 Apr 2007
I started "My Antonia" just to find out what this literary classic was about. I soon found myself captivated by a development of characters and their relationships.

The story is seen through the eyes of Jim Burton, who begins the story as a ten year old orphan traveling from his family home in Virginia to his grandparents' farm near Black Hawk, Nebraska. The other two primary characters in the book are Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant four years older than Jim, and Lena Lingard, a similarly aged girl from the local Norwegian community. As the years and the book pass, we see the characters develop in different ways. During this their relationships change, but the reader's interest is held.

The ability of this book to captivate the reader in intriguing! It has no real crises, no particular tragedies, just developing personalities and relationships. Although the main characters change, they all seem to develop along self directed lines, with no winners or losers. At the end the reader rides off with Jim, possessing many of the same feelings as he expresses. One test I apply to a novel is whether it leaves me wondering. Wondering why the characters lives develop as they do, wondering if the characters are really satisfied with their lives, wondering whether they desire something that the others have, wondering what happens to them after the last page. I am still wondering about "My Antonia." Any book that can do that has earned its status as a classic.


Worthy, but not Cather at her best, 13 Aug 2002
I enjoyed this book, a story of lost youth and opportunities. It is told largely restrospectively, the tale of the young Tom Outland and his impact on the lives of his mentor and his family. As you would expect from Cather, the characters are moving and well drawn and her descriptions of landscapes and ruins with personalities of their own don't disappoint.

This is a very good book, better than most things I've read recently, and I would highly recommend it. As with some of her other books, the sense of place and atmosphere stayed with me a long time after I'd finished.

But it's not "My Antonia" or "Death Comes for the Archbishop", and perhaps I'm unfairly holding that against it.

When women went west, 16 Mar 2008
The narrator of this story makes a point of mentioning that the name of the heroine is pronounced with a stress on the first syllable, like the male name `Anthony', with an `a' on the end. This is not an insignificant choice by the author, who in her youth dressed in men's clothes and called herself `William'. Not that this is a `lesbian novel' as such, but it is a very particular viewpoint, in which strong, androgynous women carve a civilization out of a hostile landscape often despite their menfolk rather than thanks to them.

There are some parallels with Owen Wister's The Virginian, where the narrator often leaves the scene to be replaced by the heroine, so that the two take turns in interacting with the idealized hero. Here, Cather has a male narrator speak for her and to interact with Antonia. However, he often adopts a distinctly womanly perspective, with feminine references to hairstyles and fashions and so forth, references that sound somewhat out of character. Many readers have been puzzled by the relationship between the narrator and Antonia, but if you occasionally think of him as really being a woman, it all makes perfect sense.

The story unfolds in a gentle, understated manner. It is about characters and their relationship to the landscape, and how the former and the latter evolve together. There is a hint of mystery associated with a violent death early in the story, but this is not developed or remarked on again.

What makes the novel worthwhile is the fine quality of the writing and the authenticity that Cather brings to the narrative. This is my second Cather novel, the other being Oh Pioneers! which I did not particularly like. If you are new to Cather, I think My Antonia is the place to start.



The drama of the American immigrant struggling to survive., 09 Oct 2005
In 1882, when author Willa Cather was nine years-old, her family left their home in Back Creek Valley, Virginia, and moved to Nebraska, near the settler country in Red Cloud where they farmed a homestead. Ms. Cather, often thought of as a chronicler of the pioneer American West, frequently drew on her memories of prairie culture and her own personal experiences. She wrote about the themes closest to her heart. Of primary importance was the drama of the immigrant struggling to survive in a new world, epitomized here in "My Antonia." In this extraordinary novel, Miss Cather weaves together the story of Antonia Shimerda, an immigrant girl from Bohemia who represents the optimism, determination and pure grit that newcomers to America needed to make a successful life, and that of American-born Jim Burden, our narrator.

Burden, a successful and cultured East-coast lawyer, is returning to his childhood home in Blackhawk, Nebraska for a visit. On the long train ride, he reminisces with an unnamed friend about the place where they had both grown up and about the people they knew - especially their dear friend Antonia, "who seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood."

When young Jim Burden was orphaned at age ten, he left his native Virginia to live with his grandparents on their farm, just outside of Blackhawk. At almost the same time that Jim arrived, the Shimerda family settled on their land. Mrs. Shimerda had argued effectively for a move to America so that the children, especially Ambrosch, the eldest son, would have the chance to make a better life for themselves, with more possibilities of moving up in the social hierarchy and of acquiring wealth. The Bohemian newcomers were the Burden's closest neighbors. Fourteen year-old Antonia Shimerda, the eldest daughter became a close friend of Jim's. He was immediately drawn to her warmth and friendliness. When Antonia's father, a sensitive, refined man, discovered that Jim was educated he asked the boy to teach his daughter to speak English. "Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my �n-tonia!" he told/asked Mrs. Burden. Together the two young people worked the land and explored the glorious prairie. And Antonia began to learn English.

Unfortunately, Antonia's studies came to an end with her father's tragic suicide. The man missed his native land terribly and was not able to accept his family's extreme poverty or the demands of his wife and son. When he lost his only friends, he sunk into a deep depression from which he was not able to escape. After Mr. Shimerda's death, Antonia had to work even harder, performing the heaviest, most physically demanding chores, just to keep the farm from going under. She was not able to go to school with Jim, and began to slowly lose the refined ways she had learned from her dad.

The author describes Antonia's life as Jim perceives it, and from information he gathers from others about the long periods when he did not have contact with her. Their widely different positions in society dictated their life choices and their fortunes. And their lives, their personal histories, parallel the changes and the transformation of the Great Plains. When Antonia and Jim explored the Nebraskan wilderness, it was a wilderness as far as the eye could see. "There seemed to be nothing to see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If there was a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made. No, there was nothing but land--slightly undulating..." And, "I had the feeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge of it, and were outside man's jurisdiction. 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." When Jim makes his return trip by train, years later, everything had changed.

Willa Cather's prose is straightforward, the narrative is deceptively simple and crystal clear. Her characters are complex and the wonderful, richly textured descriptions of the landscape and life on the plains make reading the novel pure pleasure. The author also captures the interior landscape of her characters with great perception and sensitivity. This is a great work of fiction which depicts a people, and a place in time, which only remain on the pages of a book, preserved vividly by Willa Cather.

H.L. Mencken wrote, "No romantic novel ever written in America, by man or woman, is one half so beautiful as 'My Antonia.'"
JANA

A TIMELESS CLASSIC..., 18 Jul 2004
I first read this book when I was in junior high school. I admit that, at the time, I did not appreciate the strengths of the book and the quality of its writing. I am quite glad that I decided to give it another chance, as I now understand why it is considered to be a classic in literature. It is simply a beautifully written book, covering many of the themes that one stumbles across in life and coalescing them into a work of extraordinary breadth.

The book is the story of two young people, Jim Burden and Antonia Shimerda. They meet for the first time when Jim is ten years old and Antonia is fourteen. Recently orphaned, Jim has moved to the Great Prairie to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. Antonia, on the other hand, has been wrenched from her homeland in Bohemia, emigrating with her parents to the United States and finding herself in Nebraska. Jim and Antonia's chance encounter on a train sets the stage for the forging of a friendship and unconditional love that time will not diminish.

The book relates the harshness of immigrant life through the eyes of Jim, who narrates the events contained in the book. There is a relentless stoicism about the book, which is written in spare, clear prose. With intense imagery and descriptive exactitude, late nineteenth century Nebraska comes to life. It also relates the paths that each of the characters choose to follow, as well as the vicissitudes of life that mold and shape them in ways that no one would have imagined.

The focus of the book, which is also a coming of age tale, seems to be on the female characters and their strengths. Consequently, the book has a faintly feminist undercurrent to it, as all the women in it seem to be survivors, despite the hardships that they encounter. This is, without a doubt, a life affirming book, wrought with great feeling and a decided sense of time and place. Yet, despite its poignancy, the book is surprisingly unsentimental and straightforward. It is a testament to the author's literary talent that this book has emerged as a timeless classic. Bravo!

Pioneering fiction, 16 Jun 2004
On my limited experience of Willa Cather's fiction (based in My Antonia and the almost equally impressive O Pioneers!), she had a remarkable ability to blend matter-of-fact realism with moving sentiment. Everything is done with the utmost simplicity, yet the characters (the female characters at any rate) are vivid and real, drawn with honesty and integrity. Equally important is the Nebraska landscape, poetically described and interacting with the characters. The male characters may be seen as less of a positive: even the likeable narrator, Jim Burden, is not particularly individualised, except in his relationships with Antonia, Lena Lingard, his grandmother and other female characters. A bonus in this edition (and, possibly, in other recent editions) is restoration of the Introduction which gives the framework for Jim's narration.

Tells a Story!!, 17 Feb 2001
Willa Cather tells a good story. That is the trouble. You are always conscious that you are listening to the author rather than listening to her characters. A S Byatt maintains that Cather's pared down style is to be admired, and while there is indeed much to be admired in her depiction of the early settlers in the Great Plains, the reader always feels distanced from the characters. This may be acceptable in a tale where there is a lot of action, but in a story where character is all it leaves something of a vacuum. My Antonia is regarded as Cather's masterpiece, but I do not think that it compares well with say, Ethan Frome, which was written about the same time and is much more involving.

A very special book, 19 Jul 2007
I dont know if I read the same book as the reviewers who so eloquently stated 'It stunk', but it doesn't feel like it. I read this book, amongst others by Cather, during a long, lonely stay in an old, clapperboard Nebraskan farm house and for me, she evokes the time and land so purely and with such understated and simple beauty, the book has been unforgettable.

"The land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty.", 14 Oct 2006
Willa Cather's second novel draws on Cather's own experiences on the Nebraska plains, where she knew, first-hand, the harsh beauty of the land, the resilience of the farmers who tried to tame it, and the accidents of nature that could, overnight, destroy years of dreams. Here Alexandra Bergson, the bright and hard-working daughter of a farmer, inherits the responsibilities of running the family farm upon the death of her father. With two older, less business-like brothers to work the land, she turns what had been a marginally successful farm into a business profitable enough that she is able to buy land other farmers have abandoned.

Beginning in the late 1800s, when Alexandra is a teenager, and continuing until Alexandra is in her forties, the novel celebrates Alexandra's strength and dedication to her land, at the same time that it emphasizes how isolating farm life can be. Though Alexandra's farm becomes the most successful farm in the area, she has few friends and no lovers, and there is little opportunity for social life. When her earliest friend, Carl Linstrum, whose family long ago gave up their farm, suddenly returns for a visit, Alexandra and Carl find themselves "keeping company," despite the opposition of her brothers. The love of her youngest brother Emil for Marie Shabata, an unhappily married woman, is a parallel love story with additional complications. In both love stories, the accidents of fate, so common in farm life, play a key role in characters' personal lives.

Filled with gorgeous descriptions of the changing seasons, from the brutal harshness of winter to the rebirth in spring and the flourishing of summer, the novel also shows how fickle nature can be. Those who survive, physically and emotionally, are those like Alexandra who can accept and adapt to whatever life offers, instead of fighting against unpredictable disasters. To be successful, one must sublimate the desire for adventure, the urge to explore, and the human tendency to ask oneself, "What if...?" Day-to-day activities, minutely explored here, keep farmers like Alexandra rooted in the real world--imagination is a "luxury" few can afford.

One of the first realistic novels about the pioneer experience, O Pioneers conveys the values and the personal qualities needed for success on the plains, at the same time that it also reveals how quickly and unpredictably nature can change outcomes. Even love is not a haven here--sudden, unpredictable changes occur in love, too. Dramatic and powerful in its depiction of pioneer life, the novel is a paean to the resilient spirit of the early pioneers and the enduring power of nature. Mary Whipple


THE LAND TO WHICH WE BELONG..., 01 Mar 2005
In this, the author's second published work, the author writes about that which she knew best, early pioneer life in Nebraska, the place to which she and her family moved in 1883 when she was a mere slip of a girl. She eventually attended the University of Nebraska, graduating in 1995, at a time when most girls did no such thing.

In this work, the author was on very sure footing. Her clear, straightforward prose lends itself capably to the story of early pioneers who went to Nebraska and set down roots, weathering the exigencies that often plagued a newcomer to a particular region. It is a surprisingly unsentimental look at pioneer life.

This thematically complex, but simply written story focuses primarily on Alexandra Bergson, the intelligent, independent, resourceful, and strong-willed daughter of pioneer John Bergson. Upon his death he did what was then the nearly unthinkable. He left his land in the hands of his oldest child, his daughter, Alexandra, rather than in those of his sons, recognizing in his daughter those qualities that would ensure that his land would prosper under her stewardship.

This then is the story of not only Alexandra but of that land and those whose sustenance depended upon its fruitfulness. The reader follows the Bergson clan as they live their lives and interact with their neighbors. Under Alexandra's skillful management, the Bergson farm prospers. As the farm prospers, so does its environs, as the area becomes a bustling center of activity with more and more settlers developing the land around that of the Bergsons.

Thematically, the book explores the vicissitudes of life, as well as its life-affirming moments. As in all lives, the characters in this book experience moments of high drama and great tragedy, as well as memorable moments of love and hate. All this is grounded within the context of pioneer life, with all its hardships and privations, as well as its occasional abundance. The author skillfully re-creates a melting pot of the many nationalities that cultivated the land known as Nebraska.

This is a book that those who like reading about pioneer life will certainly enjoy, as will those who simply like a well-written book with a tale to tell. This classic novel was also adapted for a Hallmark Hall of Fame film, starring Jessica Lange in the role of Alexandra Bergson.

When men were men and women were more so., 11 Sep 2003
The first half of this novel is curiously disjointed. Months, sometimes years elapse between each chapter, making it rather like reading fragments of a long family saga. The effect is to distance the reader from the characters. The second half is a more continuous and involving narrative, developing into a conventional social drama with a surprisingly melodramatic climax.

The writing is fine, with an especially strong visual sense, sometimes reading almost like a treatment for a screenplay. The author manages a simple and elegant style that suits her theme perfectly.

Cather's sympathies are firmly with the strong central female character Alexandra. The male characters are mostly insipid and unstable; and an affection, tinged with contempt, is shown toward the more submissive female characters. Apart from Alexandra, the author's deepest sympathy is reserved for the country itself. Cather writes of the Nebraska that she knew in her youth and of the immigrant men and women who tamed a hostile landscape.

The title is taken from a very poor and overblown poem by Walt Whitman, appropriate only in that the poem is as hard going for the reader as the land was for the pioneer. But, title apart, the novel remains a solid rendition of Western pioneer life, which was a vital strand of American cultural history.

The characters are real to the hardships immigrants dealt w/, 18 May 1999
Willa Cather's novel, O Pioneers! is true to the tough times the American Westerners had to endure day after day. Alexandra, Carl, and Marie's love triangle will keep you pondering what will happen in the end? This novel is truely realistic and kept my attention throughout it's Five Parts. A short read. I definitely recommend it to the many strong-minded women, who will easily relate to Alexandra Bergson.

Little lives on the Prairie, 06 Dec 2007
Orphan Jim Burden moves from Virginia to relatives living on the frontier farmlands of Nebraska where `native' American settlers and immigrants from Scandinavia and Eastern and Central Europe are involved in opening up the Prairies. The eponymous heroine Antonia is the spirited elder daughter of the Shimerda family, poor Bohemian neighbours of the Burden's, who is forced to become a servant after her father has committed suicide. Her difficult life and that of the narrator Jim Burden are the central focus of this elegiac but unsentimental novel from the beginning of the twentieth century. It is most notable for evocative descriptions of the Prairies and pioneer lives in tough circumstances but also says a lot about ordinary human motivations. Plainly and lovingly written but a little lacking in excitement for today's readers.


Leaves You Wondering!, 16 Apr 2007
I started "My Antonia" just to find out what this literary classic was about. I soon found myself captivated by a development of characters and their relationships.

The story is seen through the eyes of Jim Burton, who begins the story as a ten year old orphan traveling from his family home in Virginia to his grandparents' farm near Black Hawk, Nebraska. The other two primary characters in the book are Antonia Shimerda, a Bohemian immigrant four years older than Jim, and Lena Lingard, a similarly aged girl from the local Norwegian community. As the years and the book pass, we see the characters develop in different ways. During this their relationships change, but the reader's interest is held.

The ability of this book to captivate the reader in intriguing! It has no real crises, no particular tragedies, just developing personalities and relationships. Although the main characters change, they all seem to develop along self directed lines, with no winners or losers. At the end the reader rides off with Jim, possessing many of the same feelings as he expresses. One test I apply to a novel is whether it leaves me wondering. Wondering why the characters lives develop as they do, wondering if the characters are really satisfied with their lives, wondering whether they desire something that the others have, wondering what happens to them after the last page. I am still wondering about "My Antonia." Any book that can do that has earned its status as a classic.


Worthy, but not Cather at her best, 13 Aug 2002
I enjoyed this book, a story of lost youth and opportunities. It is told largely restrospectively, the tale of the young Tom Outland and his impact on the lives of his mentor and his family. As you would expect from Cather, the characters are moving and well drawn and her descriptions of landscapes and ruins with personalities of their own don't disappoint.

This is a very good book, better than most things I've read recently, and I would highly recommend it. As with some of her other books, the sense of place and atmosphere stayed with me a long time after I'd finished.

But it's not "My Antonia" or "Death Comes for the Archbishop", and perhaps I'm unfairly holding that against it.

LOST TO POSTERITY..., 01 Dec 2005
This is a simply written but thematically complex, metaphoric story, replete with subtle nuances. The events that transpire are seen primarily through the eyes of a boy who comes of age, a contrivance that the author successfully employed in her best selling classic, "My Antonia". Here, it is no less successful. Through the eyes of Neil Herbert, who lives in Sweet Water, a prospective railroad hub on the Western plains in one of the prairie states, the reader gets to know Marian Forrester. She is the much younger, envied wife of one of the town's more prominent and wealthier citizens, Captain Daniel Forrester, a former railroad contractor.

As Neil grows into a man, his adoration of the lovely Mrs. Forrester undergoes a change. He sees her fall from the pedestal from where he and all the townspeople have placed her and sees her, really sees her, warts and all, for the first time, when he discovers her involvement in an unexpected peccadillo. It comes as a shock to him that she may not be all that she seems to be. Still, his life is closely entwined with hers, as his uncle, with whom he lives, is Captain Forrester's personal attorney and of the same social standing in this socially circumscribed backwater.

Just as Neil's perception of Mrs. Forrester begins to change in his eyes, so do the fortunes of the town and that of Captain Forrester. As Mrs. Forrester physically deteriorates under the strain of the vicissitudes of fate, so do the town and its surrounding environs. As she revives, leaving behind her old values and adopting new ones that are anathema to those who respect the traditional ones, her revival parallels changes in the town itself, as the old makes way for the new. These changes also parallel the shifts occurring on the American frontier, as social mores and personal values undergo a change, and those stalwart pioneer values give way to new ones.

Beautifully descriptive of a bygone era and laconic in its pace, this is most certainly a novel to be savored. Fans of the author will especially enjoy it.

Not as good as it should be, somehow...., 10 Sep 2002
This is the first of Willa Cather's books that I've read and I was slightly disappointed, although I shall try more of her books to see if they live up to A.S. Byatt's 'hype'. The beginning of this little work is rather like an American 'Lady Chatterly' - but not so explicit. It ends with a bit of a whimper. What it's trying to show is the decline of the old order in the wake of a vulgar new one, but it is rather too slight to carry the feeling fully. Mrs. Forrester comes over as a rather vacuous Zuleika Dobson. I wanted to like this book but it didn't have enough substance, and wasn't good enough to be ethereal.....

When women went west, 16 Mar 2008
The narrator of this story makes a point of mentioning that the name of the heroine is pronounced with a stress on the