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Indlæser... A Lost Lady (1923)af Willa Cather
Indlæser...
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Thirty or forty years ago, in one of those grey towns along the Burlington railroad, which are so much greyer today than they were then, there was a house well known from Omaha to Denver for its hospitality and for a certain charm of atmosphere. Well known, that is to say, to the railroad aristocracy of that time; men who had to do with the railroad itself or with one of the land companies which were its by-products. Quizá esta historia de fascinación sostenida y sueños traicionados, vista por un joven que se abre a la vida, nos dé la respuesta. Ma-rianne Forrester, esposa de un pionero del ferrocarril, anfitriona de la única casa elegante de la triste población de Sweet Water, siempre alegre en la riqueza y siempre resistente en la penuria, pasa de ser una gran señora a una mujer señalada por todas las habladurías. Un joven que la adora acaba despreciándola, y sobre su relación construye la autora un espléndido ejercicio sobre los entresijos de toda idealización. There was much in this to remind me of My Antonia, even a servant named Bohemian Mary, but it feel short of that novel for me. I wanted to be more charmed and intrigued by Mrs. Forester but I wasn't. There was an enigmatic quality to her but there didn't seem to be that solid core that Antonia had that made her feel so remarkable. I wanted more development in this, just when I started to know the characters, they would leave the scene. This short novel was published in 1923, but it begins several decades earlier, in the American West. The lady of the title is Mrs. Forrester, the wife of a man who amassed considerable wealth in the railroad business, but who, in the course of the story, finds himself in what such folks might call "reduced circumstances." It's told from the point of view of a young friend of the family, who idolizes her as having all the virtues considered most fitting to a woman of her social class: beauty and charm and a certain air of purity. But, through his eyes, we also see tiny glimpses of the woman behind that exterior, someone flawed, and much more complicated, and sadder. I'm really impressed by Willa Cather's ability to make a character like Marian Forrester feel so much like a real, complex person in such a surprisingly minimalist way. Everything about her is more suggested than explored, and it doesn't feel like that should work remotely as well as it does. This is also an interesting glimpse into a small piece of American history. A history, it must be said, that invites judgment from 21st-century readers with its causal racism, its ingrained classism, and its musings on the whole Manifest Destiny thing as a lovely, idealistic dream, albeit one now giving way to a sort of degraded banality. Such things can sometimes be uncomfortable to read, but in this case I felt mostly a sort of anthropological fascination with it all. ingen anmeldelser | tilføj en anmeldelse
Tilhører ForlagsserienLimited Editions Club (S:47.03) Indeholdt iLater Novels: A Lost Lady / The Professor's House / Death Comes for the Archbishop / Shadows on the Rock / Lucy Gayheart / Sapphira and the Slave Girl af Willa Cather Har tilpasningenIndeholder elevguide
Classic Literature.
Fiction.
Literature.
HTML:A Lost Lady is the portrait of a frontier woman who reflects the conventions of her age even as she defies them. To the people of Sweet Water, a fading railroad town on the Western plains, Mrs. Forrester is the resident aristocrat, at once gracious and comfortably remote. To her aging husband she is a treasure whose value increases as his powers fail. To Niel Herbert, who falls in love with her as a boy and becomes her confidant as a man, Mrs. Forrester is by turns steadfast and faithless, dazzling and pathetic: a woman whose charm is intertwined with a terrifying vulnerability. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Indlæser... GenrerMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.52Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1900-1944LC-klassificeringVurderingGennemsnit:
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