Point Books To The Living
| Original Title: | The Living: A Novel |
| ISBN: | 006092411X (ISBN13: 9780060924119) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Pearl Bright, John Ireland Sharp, The Fishburns, Eustace and Minta, Obenchain and Clare |
Annie Dillard
Paperback | Pages: 464 pages Rating: 3.84 | 2702 Users | 365 Reviews
Mention Out Of Books The Living
| Title | : | The Living |
| Author | : | Annie Dillard |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 464 pages |
| Published | : | November 12th 2013 by Harper Perennial (first published May 1st 1992) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Historical. Historical Fiction. Literature |
Ilustration Concering Books The Living
Ninety miles north of Seattle on the Washington coast lies Bellingham Bay, where a rough settlement founded in the 1850s would become the town of Whatcom. Here, the Lummi and Nooksack Indian people fish and farm, hermits pay their debts in sockeye salmon, and miners track gold-bearing streams.Here, too, is the intimate, murderous tale of three men. Clare Fishburn believes that greatness lies in store for him. John Ireland Sharp, an educated orphan, abandons hope when he sees socialists expel the Chinese workers from the region. Beal Obenchain, who lives in a cedar stump, threatens Clare Fishburn's life.
A killer lashes a Chinese worker to a wharf piling at low tide. Settlers pour in to catch the boom the railroads bring. People give birth, drown, burn, inherit rich legacies, and commit expensive larcenies. All this takes place a hundred years ago, when these vital, ruddy men and women were ''the living.''
Rating Out Of Books The Living
Ratings: 3.84 From 2702 Users | 365 ReviewsCriticize Out Of Books The Living
The Living by Annie Dillard portrays the numerous hardships and the strengths and weaknesses of character of the original white settlers and their immediate descendents in the northwest corner of Washington State during the last half of the Nineteenth Century. Her novel begins in the fall of 1855 with the arrival of a fictitious pioneer family, the Fishburns, and ends in July 1897 with a celebratory gathering of second and third generation friends that include a Fishburn son and granddaughter.This book offered a non-sentimental perspective of the settlement of the West by Europeans. Behind the complex plot full of many intertwining stories, there was a philosophical commentary on how life is defined by death. I read this book because my library branch didn't have anything by Willa Cather, and I was in the mood for a book about this time period. I read "An American Childhood" years ago, and I am very glad I had this book in hand. It did take awhile to become engrossed in the plot.
As when I read it twenty years ago, I'm struck by the irony of the title. An awful lot of this book is about The Dying, which people did with far more regularity and gusto on the 19th century frontier than we see currently. But then, living and dying are two sides of the same coin, and it is true that the story continues to follow the adventures of the living characters rather than the dead ones, and this is a good thing; the dead have so few adventures, and that is one of the reasons we sorrow
This piece of historical fiction really took perseverence! It's a lengthy story set in the mid- to late- 1800's, about settlers to the Puget Sound area of Washington. I learned a lot about that place and time--relations between white settlers and native americans and then later, Chinese immigrants, the density and enormity of the timber and the difficulties that posed, the impact of the economic crashes of that period, and just how precarious life was in that wilderness... but Dillard doesn't
I didn't like it as much as her, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, but it took place where I now live and that made it very interesting.
What I loved:1) Again, I'm a sucker for a way-out-west pioneer story. Just love 'em. And the more settlement details the better.2) Chocked full of historical tidbits of the Pacific Northwest. Made me want to move there right now (so what if I'm a few centuries late...)3) The stark unromanticism of Dillard's story-telling. It made everything feel very authentically harsh and unforgiving---pretty apropo for the setting.What I hated:1) Like another reviewer, I wasn't all that interested in ANY of
When I got home from my annual pilgrimage to Powell's City of Books, I looked over my treasures. Those that had been on my wish list got read first. Now I am down to the books I bought because a Powell's employee liked them, or from impulse (rare). I also sometimes buy a book if it has won awards and is in a subject area of interest to me.This book made me wince when I saw I had paid 75% of the original price. It did not look promising.Stained, or fly-specked around the edges; pages yellowing
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