This is part of the continuing series of random book reviews that'll be nothing like a New York Times book review. Gone is the ten thousand word analysis. Instead, here is a book review like you'd tell your friends.
The book: Willa Cather's O Pioneers!
Okay, sure, Cather has some issues with dialogue. A lot of issues with dialogue.
But she does write non-dialogue passages like this:
There was about Alexandra something of the impervious calm of the fatalist, always disconcerting to very young people, who cannot feel that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the mercy of storms; unless its strings can scream to the touch of pain.
And like this:
Emil was the one who trembled, through all his frame. After he left Marie at her gate, he wandered about the fields all night, till morning put out the fireflies and the stars.
And this:
Marie sat sewing or crocheting and tried to take a friendly interest in the game, but she was always thinking about the wide fields outside, where the snow was drifting over the fences; and about the orchard, where the snow was falling and packing, crust over crust. When she went out into the dark kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by the window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it would come again!
It's like talking to someone who can't cook a turkey dinner, but damned if they don't make some fantastic pumpkin pie.
That's Willa Cather's writing style.
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