by Willa Cather
A little tragedy about a gay-hearted young woman in the early 20th century Great Plains. It really brought a feel for the times and the location. I liked it as a story; it kept me reading; though sometimes it risked getting a little too talky-feely. And I wish things could have gone better for Lucy.
Part of it reminded me of THE AWAKENING by Kate Chopin, particularly this: “Since then she had changed so much in her thoughts, in her ways, even in her looks, that she might wonder she knew herself – except that the changes were all in the direction of becoming more and more herself.”
Why she had to lie to her old beau, implying something had happened that hadn’t – and really why she couldn’t marry him in the first place: “She had tried to tell him the truth about a feeling; but a feeling meant nothing to him, he had to be clubbed by a situation.” I love that, “clubbed by a situation.”
Tytania 