Books by Willa Cather
“Over the years I’ve re-read it a number of times and I’ve come to recognize it as a radical book, quietly so. It occupies a weird zone, in that it initially seems to behave like a 19th-century romance despite being published in 1918, but the novel itself is as ‘modern’ as anything by Faulkner. If you synopsize it, a man remembers his youth in the Midwest and his ongoing friendship with a Bohemian immigrant farm girl. It sounds quite realist, but Cather isn’t interested in following the traditional route of an agrarian romance at all. They don’t eventually get together, for one – 99% of books like this would end with them realizing their feelings for each other – and the novel’s approach to family, which is often the point towards which bildungsroman narratives converge, is profoundly ambivalent. Family units are dysfunctional or cobbled together, and characters find other ways of living together.” Read more...
“Thea is such a striking character; the story really spins on her crazy sense of will.” Read more...
Kayla Rae Whitaker on Stories about Women Artists
Kayla Rae Whitaker, Journalist
“It’s an extraordinary story of a Swedish family who stepped over the frontier into this raw, untouched and very harsh land.” Read more...
Simon Winchester, Journalist
Interviews where books by Willa Cather were recommended
The Best American Stories, recommended by Simon Winchester
Modern America is a story of expanding frontiers, says bestselling author Simon Winchester. He tells us about five novels that shed light on the social history of his adopted homeland, from the late 19th century to the Great Depression.
Kayla Rae Whitaker on Stories about Women Artists
Kayla Rae Whitaker composes an ode to ‘women who make things’, from wooden dolls to indie music, and post-modern triptychs to the best candy bar you’ll ever taste. These are tales about what happens when the muse becomes the artist
The Best 20th-Century American Novels, recommended by David Hering
The story of America is not one of a manageable unified nation, says novelist and critic David Hering. It may, however, be the story of America’s dream — which is why many of the best American novels have a distinctly dreamlike quality. He picks out five of the best American novels of the 20th century, from 1905 through to 1987.
