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Willa Cather
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Book
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Publisher | Virago | ||
ISBN | 978-184408376 | ||
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Reviewer
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Jayne
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Synopsis
On the eve of his move to a new, more desirable residence, Professor Godfrey St Peter finds himself in the shabby study of his former home. Surrounded by the comforting, familiar sights of his past, he surveys his life and the people he has loved: his wife Lillian, his daughters and, above all, Tom Outland, his most outstanding student and once, his son-in-law to be. Enigmatic and courageous - and a tragic victim of the Great War - Tom has remained a source of inspiration to the professor. But he has also left behind him a troubling legacy which has brought betrayal and fracture to the women he loves most ...
Review
This is a completly different type to the other books I have read by Willa Cather. Professor St Peter has built a new house on the proceed's of his life 's works - that is eight volume history of the Spanish Explorers!
Having bought and moved into his new house something in him rebels and he goes and stays back in the comfortable and yet shabby study of his former family home. He spends the time reflecting on his life and the people he has known. He remembers his most gifted student Tom Outland, who looked at one time as if he was going to be his son-in-law.
Tom Outland is the enigmatic and couragous victim of the Great War, and has remained an inspiration to the professor, but Tom has left behind a troubling legacy that threatens to tear his family apart.
Willa Cather builds her imagined world almost as solidly as our five senses build the universe that we live in today. Professor St Peter is a very realistic character he is complex yet also thoroughly imagined.
Wow I thought the first three books I read were brilliant but this one takes the number one prize. Willa is a marverlous, complex writer and she is easily an author who will become a classic with her stories of the American West and other tales. Willa Cather died in 1947 no wonder these stories are fast becoming the classics of the 21st century.
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