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A review by manwithanagenda
The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
I have no idea where this book came from, sometime in the past few years it just sort of appeared on the bookshelf in my old room at my parents...I probably picked it up at a yard sale before leaving for school one summer.
The prose is engaging, features dead-on dialect, and good folkisms; it's real slice of life stuff - so nothing really happens.
Thirtysomething Victorian Woman Author Stays in Rural Coastal Maine Town for Summer and Makes Friends. The narrator supposedly is working on some project but she, unnamed, never mentions if she even finishes it. It's just a plot convenience for her to be in town for the whole summer.
But, Jewett does develop her characters nicely and while reading it you begin to experience the setting and the realities of life in coastal Maine at the end of the nineteenth century.
Where Jewett really shines is in her short stories, there are four Dunnett Landing stories that share a narrator and setting with 'The Country of the Pointed Firs', but would not sit well with the novella itself simply because they are such extended portraits and, with the possible exception of the last, so self-sustaining. That last story was one I was glad to read because it offered rare closure.
The other four stories are great, especially "Martha's Lady", which is very neatly done. There is little else I can say about it other than that the tone of sadness and expectation are something else.
The prose is engaging, features dead-on dialect, and good folkisms; it's real slice of life stuff - so nothing really happens.
Thirtysomething Victorian Woman Author Stays in Rural Coastal Maine Town for Summer and Makes Friends. The narrator supposedly is working on some project but she, unnamed, never mentions if she even finishes it. It's just a plot convenience for her to be in town for the whole summer.
But, Jewett does develop her characters nicely and while reading it you begin to experience the setting and the realities of life in coastal Maine at the end of the nineteenth century.
Where Jewett really shines is in her short stories, there are four Dunnett Landing stories that share a narrator and setting with 'The Country of the Pointed Firs', but would not sit well with the novella itself simply because they are such extended portraits and, with the possible exception of the last, so self-sustaining. That last story was one I was glad to read because it offered rare closure.
The other four stories are great, especially "Martha's Lady", which is very neatly done. There is little else I can say about it other than that the tone of sadness and expectation are something else.