About this title: In this powerfully moving novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Dillard displays penetrating insight into the human condition with a remarkable story about the unknowable, unbreakable bonds of love and family.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: HarperCollins
Date Published: 2007
ISBN-13:9780061239533ISBN:0061239534
Description: Good in Good jacket. 40-W. Ex-library. Books rated "Good" may have some notes, underlining, or highlighting. These books also may contain the previous owner's name, stamp, sticker, or gift inscription, or may be library discards. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Light shelf wear and minimal interior marks. Millions of satisfied customers and climbing. Thriftbooks is the name you can trust, guaranteed. Spend Less. Read More. read more
Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Former Library book. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Description: Very Good. Great condition for a used book! Minimal wear. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
"I've been enamored of Annie Dillard since reading Pilgrim at Tinker's Creek. Her body of work is primarily non-fiction, so I grabbed this quickly to see how she would handle fiction.
On one level I was disappointed -- the characters are so eccentric and quirky, and the narrative so sparse and staccato, that I was put off.
Yet her language is so exquisite that I was captivated, and as I reflected back on the story, I found it more interesting.
Annie Dillard must collect words the way some people might collect exquisite specimens of jewels. She crafts her sentences so perfectly that each is a work of art in itself (perhaps to the detriment of the overall story). She uses alliteration better than anyone I've ever read:
"A bluefish boil blackened the water...overhead clouds cracked the last light like crude."
She puts words together in wonderful, memorable ways. Who cares if the plot isn't riveting? She is an amazing language artist. She uses ordinary words in ways you'd never think of, yet her images are startlingly clear and pitch perfect. Fascinating..."
"It's hard to know what to make of this book; you can let yourself to be taken in by its beautiful prose and wallow in its lyricism; or to delight in the precise, glowing descriptions of landscapes and seascapes and emotional states-of-mind. But if you're into creating writing, perhaps not as a course but you have internalized its rules from reading too much genre, you may be angry that Dillard breaks all the rules: she mostly tells rather than shows (never mind that the telling is luminous). And her timeline is chaotic, like she threw darts at a fifty-year calender. Yet, she starts at the beginning and ends at the end--not unlike our lives and how we think about them. Moralists may also have a problem with the unpunished betrayal at the center of the story. There is even a central clichéNYTimes reviewer) of not restricting herself to words readers learned in high school. Dillard does use BIG words, though I don't what that means since they all take up the same space the dictionary. Undiscovered describes them better, and Dillard shows us what wondrous treasures they can be."
"I have loved Dillard's nonfiction, so when I saw this little book of fiction, published in 2007, I snapped it up. It's a difficult book to describe. Elegant. Evocative. Quiet. Poetic. NOT a page turner. Sometimes, however, that is okay. This is definitely a book to read rather than listen to, as you have to go slowly to soak up all the beautiful imagery.
The plot involves a young couple, the eponymous Maytrees. Dillard follows their courtship and the early days of their marriage, which is shattered when Toby Maytree somewhat inexplicably leaves his wife Lou and his son Petie for another woman. Several decades later, when that woman is dieing, Toby (who has fallen and broken several bones and can't care for her himself) brings her back to Lou and Petie for nursing care. Lou's response makes up the final quarter of the book.
I had a hard time rating this book. I think it is one I could read a second time and enjoy even more. I'm not sure it's for everyone, and while you may not be overcome by the very quiet plot, you should read The Maytrees just to experience Dillard's language. Here is one random example: "As a boy, Pete noticed that old people like Reevadare Weaver and Cornelius Blue could horrifyingly persist in oldness for decade after decade, no end in sight, without shame. Old people were those who lacked will to leave, or tact to know, when their party was over. At thirty-two he had begun the rocketry recalibration of what constitutes old people--whose merry ranks he did not plan, in any case, to join. Drowning at sea was a likely option. Better, when the time came, was shooting himself. This was America.""
"Sometime last fall, I read a review of this book in which the reviewer criticized Dillard's arcane and at times unintelligable syntax. I remember the reviewer essentially quoting an entire paragraph, then writing "What does this mean?" I began this book committed to proving the reviewer wrong. At first, I was worried. Too many passages were bewildering, vague, and opaque. But as I got going, I began to appreciate Dillard's willingness to leave things unexplained, to let some phrases and sentences function as enigmas. In this way, the book seemed almost sculptural to me, rather than two-dimensional. I don't think it always worked, but I appreciate her attempt to use language to build something, to balance words on top of each other, to experiment with unusual word orders that conveyed more of a feeling than a literal meaning. I ended up loving the book, loving the characters and their mystery, loving the descriptions of the dunes and the sky above the ocean. Loving everything she left out as well as included."
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