Cather, Willa. Shadows on the Rock (1931). New York: Vintage, 1971.
I'm tardy. Not only did I finish this book yesterday, but I also discussed it in class. It's over like my early twenties are and yet it's my duty to say something about it. How unfortunate that I don't even have my copy in front of me.
You probably shouldn't read this novel, I think, and we as a class kind of agreed. I mean you have only X number of reading hours in your life and there's no reason to read all of Cather's oeuvre so you'll of course have to skip over at least one of her novels and if it is only one (though really you could skip over several) this should be it. It takes place over the course of a year in Quebec City in 1697. Yes, that seventeenth century. So what happens from, like, November to, like, June, it seems, is that all waterways to Quebec City freeze up and make any kind of trading or news-bringing impossible for people living there in an age before the Internet and air travel.
This is nice to consider for a while, particularly if you read this novel when you are snowed in, as I did, this week. Imagine living in a tight-knit community (pop. 2000 ca. 1690) in which you get no news whatever from the outside world. Also, you're living on a large rock amid rivers that are frozen solid. Imagine the colors and the grey, diffused light of your already short day. If Cather does anything well, here, it's evoke such things. (This is the time I'd have a quote for you but let's just take my word for it.)
Oh, also medicine. The main character is an apothecary, and much of the fun of this book is watching him do things with pine branches to cure various characters who are "dropsiacal," or to prescribe "liquorice" for an infant's cough. He takes a stance against bloodletting, though. Also grinding up human skulls. People apparently once thought this healing, and without having tried tht cure myself who am I to say it wasn't?
You probably shouldn't read this novel, I think, and we as a class kind of agreed. I mean you have only X number of reading hours in your life and there's no reason to read all of Cather's oeuvre so you'll of course have to skip over at least one of her novels and if it is only one (though really you could skip over several) this should be it. It takes place over the course of a year in Quebec City in 1697. Yes, that seventeenth century. So what happens from, like, November to, like, June, it seems, is that all waterways to Quebec City freeze up and make any kind of trading or news-bringing impossible for people living there in an age before the Internet and air travel.
This is nice to consider for a while, particularly if you read this novel when you are snowed in, as I did, this week. Imagine living in a tight-knit community (pop. 2000 ca. 1690) in which you get no news whatever from the outside world. Also, you're living on a large rock amid rivers that are frozen solid. Imagine the colors and the grey, diffused light of your already short day. If Cather does anything well, here, it's evoke such things. (This is the time I'd have a quote for you but let's just take my word for it.)
Oh, also medicine. The main character is an apothecary, and much of the fun of this book is watching him do things with pine branches to cure various characters who are "dropsiacal," or to prescribe "liquorice" for an infant's cough. He takes a stance against bloodletting, though. Also grinding up human skulls. People apparently once thought this healing, and without having tried tht cure myself who am I to say it wasn't?
posted by Dusty at 11:33 AM
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