How do I explain why I loved this classic coming of age story? It's very much a mid-20th century American novel with stellar prose, rugged individual How do I explain why I loved this classic coming of age story? It's very much a mid-20th century American novel with stellar prose, rugged individualism, man vs nature, and unfortunate stereotyping of boys and girls, men and women, and derogatory slurs for non-Whites.
Molly and Ralph Fawcett, ages 8 and 10 and particularly close when we meet them, divide their time between their family home in Covina, CA with their widowed mother and older sisters, and a Colorado cattle ranch with their mother's half-brother, his housekeeper, and ranch hands. The juxtaposition of genteel and feminine with earthy and masculine surroundings and people reflects the conflicting desires and disgusts, passions and antipathy of childhood Stafford brilliantly explores through these unforgettable children. I am quite sure no one who has read this startingly dark story will ever forget Molly Fawcett. This novel is bleak, but compelling and I highly recommend it....more
This was my favorite childhood book and rereading it 50 years later I know why I loved it so. This story of Buck, a St. Bernard-German Shepherd mix, sThis was my favorite childhood book and rereading it 50 years later I know why I loved it so. This story of Buck, a St. Bernard-German Shepherd mix, stolen from his California home and sold into the Yukon as a sled dog, is beautifully written and the transformation of Buck from a pet to lead sled-dog to a creature at home in the wild is surprisingly moving since I don’t read books about animals usually. It’s listed as YA, but I think readers of any age would love this classic.
“And not only did he learn by experience, but instincts long dead became alive again. The domesticated generations fell from him. In vague ways he remembered back to the youth of the breed, to the time the wild dogs ranged in packs through the primeval forest and killed their meat as they ran it down. It was no task for him to learn to fight with cut and slash and the quick wolf snap. In this manner had fought forgotten ancestors. They quickened the old life within him, and the old tricks which they had stamped into the heredity of the breed were his tricks. They came to him without effort or discovery, as though they had been his always. And when, on the still cold nights, he pointed his nose at a star and howled long and wolf-like, it was his ancestors, dead and dust, pointing nose at star and howling down through the centuries and through him. And his cadences were their cadences, the cadences which voiced their woe and what to them was the meaning of the stiffness, and the cold, and dark.�
This was a quiet read, perfect for the terrific storms that hit northeast Ohio this weekend. This novel is told in first person by a solitary man who This was a quiet read, perfect for the terrific storms that hit northeast Ohio this weekend. This novel is told in first person by a solitary man who grew up on a northern coast of England and became a botany illustrator. The story opens on the night a violent storm hits his small village and the narrator, a young teenager, is home alone, his mother having left to attend the death bed of her father. The boy finds something cast up onto the shore that he cannot make sense of. This experience and watching a crew of scientists examining the carcass of a whale on that same shore creates an awareness in the young man of the transformations, mutations, and metamorphic processes in the natural world. The rest of the book is this man’s thoughts and observations on nature, art, literature, folk tales and shared myths, and the ways in which our environment shapes us.
This is a perfect book for a stormy day spent under s blanket reading and contemplating the world around us and artists� attempt to capture it in different art forms.
This was a fantastic collection of short-stories, almost all of which were based on real people who tried in big ways and small to help people, animalThis was a fantastic collection of short-stories, almost all of which were based on real people who tried in big ways and small to help people, animals, and the world around them.
It’s translated from the Tamil and I feel certain that people who know better than I would deem this a very good translation. There were just enough Tamil words, culture, foods, historical figures, etc., that I had to do some research, but not so much that it interrupted the flow of the stories for English readers.
As with all short story collections, some stories were weaker than others, but the strong stories were so moving, heartbreaking, and hopeful that together they earned this book 5 stars. The standout stories: He Who Will Not Bow, The Elephant Doctor, The Meat Talley, One Hundred Chairs, The Palm Leaf Cross each contained more story, more character development, more insight into human nature, and more emotional weight in 20 to 40 pages than some novels provide in 300 pages.
I cannot recommend this collection strongly enough....more
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