The Living

Annie Dillard wrote an amazing novel of western struggle in the late 1800's. This book was filled with conflict, vivid images, and a great plot. This book takes the reader to the northern part of Washington in the late 1800's. The book fallows many charcters through hardships, death, joy, and many generations of families. I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters pulled me into their world by the triangles that intangled their lives. This book deals a lot with death and imagetry that seems pull the reader into the charcters lives. Ada Fishburn the main character of the book sets the theme for the book. Her family moved to Whatcom, a providence in Washington to start a new life. The reader gets a sence of sadness from this charcter that seems to fallow to the other charaters that come together later in the book. I thought that this book gave a very historical point of view and also a faction view of what life might of been like in those trying times. I give this book five stars because I know that any intellectual reader will fall in love with this book and its many charcters. The only negitive thing I have to say about this book is that the reading is at a high level and may take a while to read. Besides that point I think that it is worth all the hard work.

This is a dreadful, exhausting book. But I've read it three times! Annie Dillard is an unflinching, straightforward writer who has a firm grasp on the strengths and frailties of human nature. She accurately captures the feel of NW Washington "high woods" and the people who settled the area. By the time you finish this novel you will not just feel like you know the characters, you'll feel like you're related to each one of them and have greived their passing. I highly recommend it to anyone who is from this area of the United States - you will recognize the landscape, the attitudes, and certainly the weather. A character states, after a looong spell of rain and overcast skies, "We live in a lidded pot."

Loved it. Gets to the central problem of life as we know it. Death is all around and we don't want to look, but until you do, you can't choose life, you just avoid the question.... comes down to the line from The Shawshank Redemption..."get busy living, or get busy dying". If you liked Cold Moutain, you'll probably like this.

I read Annie Dillard's The Living through the library and am now buying a copy to send to my sister in Vancouver, B.C. When visiting there, we traveled the area discussed in the book, which has come alive for me now. The protaganist IS the Great Northwest, and as such, the trials, triumphs and tribulations of Ms. Dillard's 'main character' enthrall, delight and dismay - but never disappoint. Much as I have enjoyed her non-fiction, I look forward to more fiction from her pen.

This is prose craftsmanship at its finest. Dillard's imagery shimmers; her sentences are watertight. She tells a vast story with prose that is poetic in its economy of language. When Dillar is at her best -- and she is often in this book -- her words ring like church bells