A review by shanviolinlove
The Song of the Lark by Willa Cather

reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

I wanted to like this novel, especially given how much I adore Cather's works, O Pioneers and My Antonia. But this novel was so flat and dry that finishing it felt like a chore. The deep flaw I found here is that the main character is a paper doll. I could not get myself to care about her. Thea Kronborg is a cold little genius, but throughout the 100+ first part that chronicles her childhood it is never once made clear if she actually enjoys the music that others use to define her. She's marked out for brilliance, but she doesn't excuse much. Barely any character flaws, she just performs all that is expected of her. The one defining passion we do see is that she likes to read, which I guess fleshes out some agency for her, but it doesn't make for a compelling heroine. 

I found all the adjacent characters far more compelling, and for them I kept returning to this book when the stifling soporific of Thea's piano practicing got tiresome. The piano teacher Wunsch does very interesting things in the novel, and his whole origin demands a novel in itself: how does a tortured virtuoso from Germany end up a frustrated drunkard in Moonstone, Colorado? Ray Kennedy has lived ten lives, and while the age gap between him and his crush Thea was at first off-putting, the genuine emotion he exuded and the desires that shaped his action made him the most intriguing character. His devotion for flat Thea made her more interesting, though it spoke more to his character than to hers. The aunt, Tillie, self-effacing and essential to keeping the burgeoning Kronborg family functioning, is given so little spotlight, but the few pages Cather devotes to her shows a wildly interesting little life. Had she fleshes out Tillie more, as a possible foil to Thea's more ambitious trajectory, it would have justified an epilogue devoted almost entirely to her. As it was, I almost had to remind myself who this minor character was.

I was initially interested to learn about the first mentioned character, Doctor Archie, his comically failed marriage and his own activities, but as his character seemed only to exist as a lens for Thea, I soon got bored with any mention of his character as I knew it was just leading up to more praise for a character that did very little in scenes with him. It made me wonder why he, of all the characters, framed the story in its opening scene.

The novel does showcase Cather's meticulous staging: the attention to the landscape, the geographical and sociological mapping of a village, the social dynamics of men and women across professions and denominations. However, I arrived at the end of the novel caring not a whit for any of the characters I spent pages learning very little about.