Status
Available
Genres
Publication
W. W. Norton & Company (1982), Edition: Reissue, Paperback, 336 pages
Description
The Country of the Pointed Firs (1896) is Sarah Orne Jewett's most popular book. In its elegantly constructed sketches, a worldly, anonymous writer spends the summer in a tiny Maine fishing village where she hopes to find peace and solitude. As she gains the acceptance and trust of her hosts, the community's power and complexity are slowly revealed. While its episodes portray the difficulty and loneliness of rural life, they also display its dignity and strength, particularly as expressed in the bonds between women: mothers, daughters, and friends. Written during a time of rapid change and national conflict, surprisingly modern in its treatment of character and its literary techniques, The Country of the Pointed Firs addresses the delicate and uncertain art of understanding others. This centennial edition contains a facsimile of the original text, thereby restoring the novel to Jewett's own version, which had been considerably altered in other published versions, plus four related stories. Further enhancing the importance of this volume is editor Sarah Way Sherman's introduction, which includes a sketch of Jewett's life and professional development, a commentary on textual accuracy, and a discussion of the book's themes and techniques as well as its historical context.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member d.homsher
Story told by a self-effacing first-person narrator who resides with an older woman, a Maine herbalist, for the summer. Her hostess is sturdy native who introduces the (nameless) narrator to a cast of seafaring folk who belong to an earlier, stronger generation. Set in late nineteenth century.Such
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a wonderful book, and sad yet full of light, with a host of strong, salty, companionable women sketched in these few pages. There's a deep, deep nostalgia saturating the work. The narrator does not want to look toward the future (the twentieth century). She keeps her eye pinned, instead, on the residents of a seaside, Maine village, many of them old, most childless. Her hostess is an herbalist ... a classic figure, slightly witchy, frank, healthy, and an accomplished sailer. The story of the self-exiled woman on Shell-Heap Island is key. Women's friendship ... and women's isolation. Show Less
LibraryThing member yarb
If you like insipid family yarns and the nattering of old women, if you're charmed by homespun wisdom and wowed by ordinary rural New England folk saying (rarely doing) ordinary rural New England things, and if you like literature to be a gentle balm, a comforter, a restorative herbal tea naturally
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sweetened with honey, served lukewarm so that you barely notice it while imbibing, then you will probably like this book. I loathed it. Show Less
LibraryThing member Marensr
Sarah Orne Jewett’s THE COUNTRY OF POINTED FIRS is a visitor’s tale. Set in the fictional Maine coast town of Dunnet Landing where the author/narrator has settled for the summer to write. As a visitor, the narrator inevitably recounts only the pieces of history she comes in contact with through
Like a vacation, outside cares fade while focusing on the lives, habits and landscape of this place. The writing is finely wrought. A real affection for a place and people one knows briefly shines through the work and makes one wish for a time and place when travel, life and writing unfolded at a the speed of a long walk.
Some editions incorporate other stories written about Dunnet Landing into the body of the novella. This can lead to a change in the narrator’s voice that is incongruous with the rest of the work. Look for a version that preserves the order of one of the early publications with other short works in a separate section.
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her landlady and the people she meets in the community. The stories are portraits, bits and pieces, of lives that exist outside the narrator’s brief visit. As a result, the reader feels like a companion on this holiday. The novella moves at the pace of a quiet seacoast village, and is refreshing to read for that very reason. Like a vacation, outside cares fade while focusing on the lives, habits and landscape of this place. The writing is finely wrought. A real affection for a place and people one knows briefly shines through the work and makes one wish for a time and place when travel, life and writing unfolded at a the speed of a long walk.
Some editions incorporate other stories written about Dunnet Landing into the body of the novella. This can lead to a change in the narrator’s voice that is incongruous with the rest of the work. Look for a version that preserves the order of one of the early publications with other short works in a separate section.
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LibraryThing member doogiewray
Characters that equal Mark Twain's. One of the first books that I ever read while on Monhegan Island, and, while it is not specifically about Monhegan, I will always associate this book with my time there (hence the Monhegan Island tag).
When I return to Monhegan Island each year, the feeling I have
When I return to Monhegan Island each year, the feeling I have
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is captured perfectly in Sarah's words of "But the first salt wind from the east, the first sight of a lighthouse set boldly on its outer rock, the flash of a gull, the waiting procession of seaward-bound firs on an island, made me feel solid and definite again, instead of a poor, incoherent being. Life had resumed, and anxious living blew away as if it had not been. I could not breathe deep enough or long enough. It was a return to happiness." Show Less
LibraryThing member scatterall
I picked up this book after reading Cranford, and if you enjoy one, I think you will enjoy the other.
This one takes you through a months-long summer visit to a small seaside town in Maine during the 19th century. It is about as eventful as a summer vacation normally would be, there is no great
It is a slow paced book, and I wanted to pick up a pencil and edit her in places, but it was worth my time, and many of the images and stories have been lingering in my mind.
This one takes you through a months-long summer visit to a small seaside town in Maine during the 19th century. It is about as eventful as a summer vacation normally would be, there is no great
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suspense or dramatic action. The narrator is the author, a woman writer boarding with a local herbalist (and renting the small schoolhouse as an office). Visits, meals, walks, and boat trips make up most of the narrative. There is a lot of vivid detail, and if you are going to love this book, that is likely to be what you will love: being taken back in time for a good close look around a quiet traditional village community. No-one is rich, and most of the characters are women, most of them self-sufficient and highly competent in relationships, work, and boating. The significant male characters are misfits: a very shy but sweet old man living with his mother; a retired ship's captain possessed by visions of a surreal Arctic journey that may or may not have taken place; a widowed fisherman who has never gotten over the death of his adored wife. It is a slow paced book, and I wanted to pick up a pencil and edit her in places, but it was worth my time, and many of the images and stories have been lingering in my mind.
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LibraryThing member CurrerBell
I highly recommend this edition. Although I also have the Library of America edition of Jewett, this volume is a wonderful accessory simply for the eight-page introduction by the late Mary Ellen Chase, herself a highly regarded novelist and for many years a professor and eventually department chair
NOTE: In case it is unclear, the "edition" to which I refer is the 1968 edition "selected and introduced" by Mary Ellen Chase and published in hardcover by W.W. Norton (but not a Norton Critical Edition).
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in English at Smith College. As a young girl, Chase met Jewett, who was the principal influence on Chase's own fiction, and Chase is the "bridge" between Jewett and Carolyn Chute among Maine fiction writers.NOTE: In case it is unclear, the "edition" to which I refer is the 1968 edition "selected and introduced" by Mary Ellen Chase and published in hardcover by W.W. Norton (but not a Norton Critical Edition).
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LibraryThing member jphilbrick
this has been on my to-read list for years, and i finally picked it up this fall. i've only just read the main novella; i'd really like to read the stories after it, but i'm just not in a place to do that with any reasonable speed right now. i really wanted to be absorbed by this more than i was,
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and maybe i will be some other time - it wasn't as plot driven as the stuff i've been reading lately, and i had to force myself to get chapters done here and there. maybe next time! Show Less
LibraryThing member LizaHa
This is basically my favorite book of all times. I might be biased because I am maybe a little bit in love with SOJ? Something I like to think about a lot is whether someone could write a book like this nowadays. I know that I could not. You would probably have to be a very good person.
LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Jewett’s novel The Country of the Pointed Firs is the culmination of the regional characters, themes, and techniques that Jewett explored for so many years. It is a composite novel organized around alternating currents of separation and reunion, Jewett never wrote a conventionally-plotted novel,
Soon the narrator feels the need to separate so that she can complete the writing project she brought with her. After listening to a strange tale about a limbo-like “waiting place” between this world and the next in the fog-bound arctic regions, the narrator reunites with Mrs. Todd, and they both discover that their relationship has improved in mutual consideration and empathy as a result of the separation. They have achieved a balance between the basic human needs for both connection and separation. This alternating pattern of separation and reunion continues in a number of different ways throughout the novel, ending with the narrator’s departure from Dunnet Landing.
Dunnet Landing and the surrounding country is populated with charming characters whose stories fill the spaces between the description of the lovely Maine north country. One of those characters, Captain Littlepage, had time for both sailing and reading. The latter activity was evidently also a pastime of the narrator who dotted the narrative with references to Shakespeare, Milton, and others.
The scenery is captured in moments like this:
"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge."(p. 33)
The chill in the air on winter nights was tempered by the heat from a Franklin Stove (no doubt very much like the one in my sister's home in the high country of northeastern Nevada). One of the best moments in the story was the Bowden family reunion that brought together many of the people from the area in a way that you can only experience in small out of the way communities like Dunnet Landing.
The Country of the Pointed Firs was greeted with strongly positive reviews. Indeed, a few years later, Jewett's friend Willa Cather would rate it as one of the three great classics of American literature (the other two being The Scarlet Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). I'm not sure I agree completely with Cather, but this is a fine short novel depicting late nineteenth century Americana.
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and in this tale a visiting writer-narrator from the city is slowly changed from an outsider into an initiated insider in the life of the largely female community of Dunnet Landing, a tiny seacoast village in Maine. The first chapter, titled “Return”, represents a reunion of sorts in that the narrator is returning to a place with which she previously fell in love. After that very short opening she is quickly drawn into the world of her landlady, Mrs. Almira Todd, the local herbalist who seems to possess a special spiritual outlook.Soon the narrator feels the need to separate so that she can complete the writing project she brought with her. After listening to a strange tale about a limbo-like “waiting place” between this world and the next in the fog-bound arctic regions, the narrator reunites with Mrs. Todd, and they both discover that their relationship has improved in mutual consideration and empathy as a result of the separation. They have achieved a balance between the basic human needs for both connection and separation. This alternating pattern of separation and reunion continues in a number of different ways throughout the novel, ending with the narrator’s departure from Dunnet Landing.
Dunnet Landing and the surrounding country is populated with charming characters whose stories fill the spaces between the description of the lovely Maine north country. One of those characters, Captain Littlepage, had time for both sailing and reading. The latter activity was evidently also a pastime of the narrator who dotted the narrative with references to Shakespeare, Milton, and others.
The scenery is captured in moments like this:
"We were standing where there was a fine view of the harbor and its long stretches of shore all covered by the great army of the pointed firs, darkly cloaked and standing as if they waited to embark. As we looked far seaward among the outer islands, the trees seemed to march seaward still, going steadily over the heights and down to the water's edge."(p. 33)
The chill in the air on winter nights was tempered by the heat from a Franklin Stove (no doubt very much like the one in my sister's home in the high country of northeastern Nevada). One of the best moments in the story was the Bowden family reunion that brought together many of the people from the area in a way that you can only experience in small out of the way communities like Dunnet Landing.
The Country of the Pointed Firs was greeted with strongly positive reviews. Indeed, a few years later, Jewett's friend Willa Cather would rate it as one of the three great classics of American literature (the other two being The Scarlet Letter and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). I'm not sure I agree completely with Cather, but this is a fine short novel depicting late nineteenth century Americana.
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LibraryThing member SeriousGrace
It could take you a day to read The Country of the Painted Firs. A mere 88 pages in length, you could spend just an afternoon with Ms. Jewett's novel. That being said, I urge you to take more time with this sweet little book. This is portrait of turn of the century coastal Maine living at its
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simplest and most honest. Jewett illustrates a time when hospitality, good manners, friendship and community mattered most. While there is not much of a plot, the characters are carefully crafted. Today, the people you meet throughout all of Maine are just as colorful and hard working as they were in Jewett's fictional town of Dunnet Landing. The statement, "One trade helps another" as one character says, is as true today as it was in 1896 when Country of the Pointed Firs was first published. Show Less
LibraryThing member knightlight777
I came across a description of this book somewhere somehow and it somehow got my attention and I said to myself you should probably read this. Since I don't read a lot of fiction I decided yes it's for your own good. So I read it. And I went back and forth on whether it was a waste of my time.
Written apparently around the turn of the last century it depicts the experience of a woman on a summer vacation type stint somewhere up in Maine along the rocky coast there. The woman she stays with is a fixture in the community of plain clannish types supported primarily be a seagoing and fishing workforce.
Individual stories of some of these individuals is laid out in an enticing enough way to keep ones interest. Of special note was a woman who lived entirely by herself out in the remote due to a past incident in her life there. Having past on she is still somewhat memorialized by the locals. It winds up with a reunion of many of the related people and finally a old man who live the previous woman lives alone and mourns his wife eternally.
The sense of life as it was in those days and how it does or does not relate to how we conduct our lives today with our rampant and intrusive technology was the impression this work left me with. Also how the human drams continues to play out much like the past no matter how the present plays itself out.
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Overall it added to my thinking it was worthwhile.Written apparently around the turn of the last century it depicts the experience of a woman on a summer vacation type stint somewhere up in Maine along the rocky coast there. The woman she stays with is a fixture in the community of plain clannish types supported primarily be a seagoing and fishing workforce.
Individual stories of some of these individuals is laid out in an enticing enough way to keep ones interest. Of special note was a woman who lived entirely by herself out in the remote due to a past incident in her life there. Having past on she is still somewhat memorialized by the locals. It winds up with a reunion of many of the related people and finally a old man who live the previous woman lives alone and mourns his wife eternally.
The sense of life as it was in those days and how it does or does not relate to how we conduct our lives today with our rampant and intrusive technology was the impression this work left me with. Also how the human drams continues to play out much like the past no matter how the present plays itself out.
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LibraryThing member jennybeast
I'm not sure how to categorize this -- it's literary fiction, and quite beautiful literary fiction at that, but it reads like a quiet and cadenced memoir and it's a novel made up of short stories. Sarah Orne Jewett's language is a delight, and something about the structure and the telling makes the
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reader feel as though they are the mysterious visitor, writing, observing, and ever enjoying Mrs. Todd and her circle of community. It's a beautiful respite to visit Dunnett's Landing -- a story from a different space and time, one, I think, that was fading even as the book was written. Lovely, and like stepping through a window into historical Maine, or any secluded seaside town. Show Less
LibraryThing member nogomu
Absolutely nothing happens in this book and I love it.
Subjects
Original publication date
1896
Physical description
336 p.; 0.56 inches
ISBN
0393311376 / 9780393311372
Local notes
Fiction