prendrelemick
12-24-2010, 02:24 AM
The Maytrees by Annie Dillard, tells the story of Toby and Lou Maytree's life together. Or some of it at least. It is almost exclusively concerned with the internal journey of the characters . Their coming together, their sundering, and reattaching, impacts upon their view of life, love, beauty and mortality. They try to make sense of a secular life in their different ways, she by deep thought - cutting out all distractions in order to glimpse a truth, he by devising book length poems hardly anyone will read.
This “drama” is set on the Cape Cod coastline, a landscape of sea, sky and dunes. That old literary device of landscape as a character is fully exploited here, as is the metaphor of the stars diminishing as civilisation swells.
The lack of the physical experience within its pages was a drawback. real life is a physical thing, I kept thinking how D H Lawrence had covered most of what was being said, in a much more tactile gritty day to day way.
This was a book club read, once again demonstrating the value of book clubs – I would not have read it otherwise. I enjoyed it for the quality of writing, its insights (whether I agreed with them or not) and , because it is not my usual sphere, its American-ness - those little folksy convoluted epigrams that American authoresses use so well.
I shall give it a seven out of ten
This “drama” is set on the Cape Cod coastline, a landscape of sea, sky and dunes. That old literary device of landscape as a character is fully exploited here, as is the metaphor of the stars diminishing as civilisation swells.
The lack of the physical experience within its pages was a drawback. real life is a physical thing, I kept thinking how D H Lawrence had covered most of what was being said, in a much more tactile gritty day to day way.
This was a book club read, once again demonstrating the value of book clubs – I would not have read it otherwise. I enjoyed it for the quality of writing, its insights (whether I agreed with them or not) and , because it is not my usual sphere, its American-ness - those little folksy convoluted epigrams that American authoresses use so well.
I shall give it a seven out of ten