My wife brought this Willa Cather classic home from the Peace Church library recently.� I’d just finished another book and it was handy, so I read it.
The only other Cather I’ve ever read was Death Comes to the Archbishop, which I’d found to be a very dramatic title for a pleasant and unmemroable little piece of pastoral prose.� I was living in New Mexico at the time, so I enjoyed the setting and the history, and it was a pleasant read, but I wouldn’t ever have called it gripping or powerful.� My Antonia is much the same.� I’ve travelled across Nebraska and lived in western North Dakota, and so the prairie descriptions made me nostalgic, but the book�seemed rather rambling and purposeless much of the time.
The premise is that we’re reading the remembrances of Jim Burden about his compelling childhood friend, the immigrant Antonia.� What we really read are stories about Jim where Antonia occassionally make appearances, and frankly doesn’t stand out as all that remarkable.
Sill, I really like when Jim and Antonia wander into the prairie dog town and Jim kills a rattler with a stick.