My Antonia (Signet Classics)

Wonderful, marvelous book! Deserves its classic stature. Descriptions of Nebraska prairie are utterly delicious; I could richly visualize that vast, open space. Her colors are almost always bold. I think the book better in describing the country than in portraying the people who inhabit it. Particularly the narrator, Jim Burden, who seems flat. The book quite obviously was written by a woman; few men write about land in quite the same way. This land was captured on film in the first part of the first "Superman" and in "Days of Heaven". The description of the negro blind piano player was breathtaking. Mrs. Harding, Grandpa and Mrs. Schmerda were very good characters. But the whole tone was too adult for a 10-year-old boy's memory. Antonia herself was almost the quintessential Earth Mother. Why didn't Jim marry her? Cather loves characters who love life.