Marian Forrester is the symbolic flower of the Old American West. She draws her strength from that solid foundation, bringing delight and beauty to her elderly husband, to the small town of Sweet Water where they live, to the prairie land itself, and to the young narrator of her story, Neil Herbert. All are bewitched by her brilliance and grace, and all are ultimately betrayed. For Marian longs for "life on any terms," and in fulfilling herself, she loses all she loved and all who loved her.Niel Herbert, the young narrator ...
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Marian Forrester is the symbolic flower of the Old American West. She draws her strength from that solid foundation, bringing delight and beauty to her elderly husband, to the small town of Sweet Water where they live, to the prairie land itself, and to the young narrator of her story, Neil Herbert. All are bewitched by her brilliance and grace, and all are ultimately betrayed. For Marian longs for "life on any terms," and in fulfilling herself, she loses all she loved and all who loved her.Niel Herbert, the young narrator of Willa Cather's "A Lost Lady," is haunted by the reckless, flawed loveliness of the heroine of that novel, her passionate power for life, "the promise," when her eyes for a moment laughed into his, "of a wild delight" such as he might never know.A Lost Lady is undoubtedly a masterpiece. A highly concentrated novel, widely regarded as the closest of Willa Cather's books to perfection in form.Willa Sibert Cather (1873-1947) American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains. She was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1923 for One of Ours (1922), a novel set during World War I.
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Written in 1923, "A Lost Lady" is a novel from Willa Cather's (1873 -- 1947) middle period of writing -- between "My Antonia" and "Death Comes to the Archbishop". This may be the least known but best portion of her output.
As does "My Antonia", "A Lost Lady" pictures the American frontier in the middle west and its closing due to urbanization, the demise of the pioneer spirit, and commercialization.
Together with its picture of the changing of the West, the book is a coming of age novel of a special sort and a portrait of a remarkable, because human and flawed, woman.
As with many of Cather's works the story is told by a male narrator, Neil Herbert.
The novel portrays Neil from adolescence as an admirer of, and perhaps infatuated by Marian Forrester, the heroine and the wife of a former railroad magnate now settled on a large farm in South Dakota. Neil matures and leaves to go to school in the East. His idea of Ms. Forrester changes as he learns that there is both more and less to her than the glittering self-assured woman that meets his young eyes.
The book is also the story of Marian herself, of her marriage, her self-assuredness, and her vulnerability. She is independent and a survivor and carries on within herself through harsh times and difficult circumstances, including the change in character of her adopted home in the mid-west.
This is a tightly written, thoughtful American novel.
Robin Friedman
bluelady
Apr 13, 2009
read the book
The book came in excellent shape for being a used book.Was very well pleased.
Love Willa Cather writtings.Good clean reading.
My cover was of a Window with a pot of flowers .
rainbow
Jul 23, 2007
wistful look back on life
a woman in old age looks back on life with wisdom, regret and compassion most moving having lived an opulent, wealthy life and then to reach old age with nothing left or to show for it
