My Ántonia by Willa Cather

I eagerly bought this book, published in 1918, as it is considered by many to be Willa Cather’s masterpiece.

Having read it, I don’t feel any closer to greatness.

The story is told by the orphan – Jim Burden - who travels to Black Hawk in Nebraska to live with his grandparents, where he meets Antonia Shimerda and her family who have had a much longer journey from Bohemia. Living on neighbouring farms they become childhood friends and Jim is asked by Antonia’s mother to teach her two daughters English.

The girls’ father never really wanted to move from his native Bohemia, preferring to spend time with his friends, playing his violin. For him the ‘American Dream’ ends in suicide. Jim’s grandparents move to the edge of Black Hawk where he studies and eventually becomes a lawyer on the East Coast.

Antonia’s life has been hard – both working the land and various positions of domestic drudgery. Eventually – after being duped by a fraudster – she marries and has a large family who Jim meets many years later and resolves to remain close to.

Almost immediately, the isolation of farmsteads on the prairie and the harsh conditions in which such pioneering families had to survive are paramount, as is the poverty and the ever-present mindfulness of the riches of others close at hand. The descriptive prose is lovely until it becomes so much more wallpaper, waiting patiently to witness some action in the room.

Antonia is a tragic figure in many ways. She works extraordinarily hard her whole life and never really gets ahead. Her mother is arrogant and difficult; her father dies; she is abused by seemingly everyone and we are supposed to believe that she ultimately finds salvation in her family, back out there on the prairie. I’m not sure I believe it.

Antonia and Jim remain friends though their different paths through life cause them to live world’s apart until they cross once more. I got a sense of strong friendship between the two but never really love – certainly not the desperation of unrequited love. I didn’t really feel strongly about either of them and, once the interest in and admiration of their will to survive faded, so did my interest in the book.

I enjoyed the first part of the book and absolutely loved the last chapter. When I’d finished it, I just felt there was so much I had missed in between. In terms of character building and plot development it seemed to meander like a small stream along the floor of a largely forgettable valley: much less grand canyon as great hype.

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