aliwhaley 's review for:

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

3.75

hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

---

The thing I like about Cather is her nature writing. The bits where she’s writing about the plains and the prairies are beautiful and compelling, and I’ll read another Cather book just for that. I love that she lived in the world that she writes about, on the cusp of the move to industrial farming. In this book, most people are farming with horses, but one or two families have an ‘engine’. There’s a real sense of risk to the land, but also companionship and care. It’s a world that is all but lost now.

And as for the plot, I liked the characters and the drama in this book, but I felt that the focus was slightly misplaced.

The big drama turns out the be about the love between Marie and Emil, but it feels like they’ve been a subplot throughout the novel until they’re murdered. Their story is compelling and believable and heartfelt, but it was strange to me that they were a subplot until 10 pages before the end, and then suddenly there’s huge drama.

It wasn’t quite balanced somehow. I think that critique kind of extends across the novel, there are a few scenes of which I wasn’t sure the purpose. So overall the ‘plot’ is slightly unclear. Reading this book is a bit more like inhabiting a world and living through the goings-on in people’s lives than reading a constructed novel.

In terms of ‘about’ness, I think it’s about what it means to be ‘good’ and the sacrifices entailed therein, and the extent to which being good is really a good thing. (Maybe that’s just my modern scepticism of overly Christian values). It’s also about the pioneering spirit and the American dream, working the land until you make it, etc. And it’s about how greed and jealousy and drunkenness can ruin people. There’s definitely a touch of that Black Beauty-esque piety about this book.

I wish I could give it more stars but there was just something lacking here