Annie Dillard

If you like those "historical village" tourist attractions where they recreate old-timey life in static 3D detail — the milkmaid's stool, the cans of cocoa powder, the underequipped schoolroom — then you might like this book. I found it lifeless, its characters smothered under a blanket of superfluous exposition, their thoughts chaperoned tiresomely by Dillard's control-freaky, omniscient 3rd person. What little dialogue there is seems to be more a showcase for the author's lovingly-gathered period vernacular than an engine of character or plot. No character is permitted to appear without a fulsome description of their looks and apparel; no article without an explanation of its provenance, manufacture, etc. We're treated to interminable descriptions of carpentry, dressmaking, agriculture, trees living and dead, and all the other minutiae of life in 19th century Puget Sound, but we never really feel at home there. It's the commonest pitfall of the historical novel — the research overpowering the story — and with "The Living", Dillard hitches up her bloomers, or whatever ladies wore back then (I suppose I should know this after ~500 pages) and leaps enthusiastically in.… (mere)

A book like The Maytrees confirms my resolve to award three stars to a good book. Only so do I leave myself room to signal a book that is beyond good, one that I would urge on anyone I knew, friend or enemy, saying, “You owe it to yourself to read this.” This is one of those.
The tale centers on three people, Maytree, Lou, and Daisy, ethical bohemians ideally suited to the improbable sandspit that is the fist of Cape Cod. They are unlike anyone I’ve ever encountered in a book, but they reminded me of some people I know—some of my favorite people. As for the plot, it’s about nothing much, other than love and mortality. In between, the unsolvable question, Does life have a point?
Heavy stuff, right? Dillard clothes it all in elliptical prose that made me read slowly, sometimes twice. She finds countless ways to express what she observes freshly. The book is spiced throughout with sage aphorisms, such as, “The tragedy of old age . . . is not that one is old but that one is young.”
Spoiler alert: all three main characters die. In fact, their deaths are described at length, almost clinically. But Dillard doesn’t do this morbidly. Instead, these scenes illustrate the theme of the book. Maytree, Lou, and Daisy question throughout whether they love—they seem hesitant to claim this word for their relation to each other. Their lives illustrate, though, that love isn’t something that is; love does.
This book often made me laugh out loud. At the same time, it is one of the saddest books I’ve read, as sad as life itself. Dillard gives it away on the second page: “Falling in love, like having a baby, rubs against the current of our lives: separation, loss, and death. That is the joy of them.”… (mere)

Annie Dillard is an acquired taste, and I thought that I had acquired it. I started [Pilgrim at Tinker Creek] many years ago, and couldn't get into it. Then I picked it up again a few years ago, and virtually drowned in it. I read [An American Childhood] with great pleasure. When I started [The Maytrees] late last year and wasn't pulled in, I decided I needed to wait until life was quieter, or my mood was, or something. I re-started it a few weeks ago, and was ripping right along until I hit a snag in the plot line that made me want to throw things. I put it aside, to deliberate whether I wanted to continue. Waffled. Read a few more chapters. Almost decided to give it up. Read other LT reviews. Counted the pages left. Decided by god to finish the thing. So I did.
As another LT'er wrote here, it works best as a book-length poem, rather than a novel. There is amazing imagery here. And insight into the human heart. But there are many many sentences that just don't say anything I can grasp. Syntax to Dillard is a plaything, and sometimes she breaks a window with it. If you blink your eyes, you'll miss the story. I want story. I closed the book dissatisfied with both the author and myself. I suspect I may one day revisit this novel. A second reading might be just what it needs.
Read and reviewed in 2009… (mere)