Tuesday, March 4, 2008

March Book: Death Comes for the Archbishop


March's meeting is to take place next week at Sharon's. Hope to see everyone there! The book we're reading this month is Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop. I found this brief summary at Time Magazine's top 100 book list.

Cather at her most matter-of-fact and, as a consequence, her most powerful. She based this book on the life of Bishop Jean Baptiste L'Amy—she calls him Father Latour—the French-born Ohio cleric who was assigned by the church to rebuild the faith in New Mexico after the territory was annexed by the U.S. in 1831. With an old friend, Father Vaillant, Latour sets out for Santa Fe. He will find the church there to be fragmented and corrupt, with priests taking wives and charging exorbitant fees to perform marriages. Latour embarks on a decades-long effort to reform and reinvigorate the diocese. The style and structure of this book are strange, unemphatic, as if Cather had simply laid the scenes side by side in a tapestry. She compared the book to a legend, in which no event is given much dramatic weight. If this sounds like a formula for boredom, it's not. Her serene language, with its immemorial simplicity, gives the story a weight mere drama could never provide.—R.L.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

All-time Reading List

girl with the pearl earring by t. chevalier • fall on your knees by a. m. macdonald • me talk pretty one day by d. sedaris • the french lieutenant's woman by j. fowles • prozac nation by e. wurtzel • in cold blood by t. capote • frontera street by t. barrientos • the chosen by c. potok • charming billy by a. mcdermott • mrs. dalloway by v. woolf • the hours by m. cunningham • waiting by h. jin • atonement by i. mcewan • the adventures of cavalier and clay by m. chabon • travels with charley by j. steinbeck • summer by e. wharton • fear of flying by e. jong • personal history by k. graham • the life of pi by y. martel• flux: women on sex, work, love, kids… by p. orenstein • best american short stories of 2003 • middlesex by j. eugenides • da vinci code by d. brown • palace walk by n. mahfouz • balzac and the little chinese seamstress by d. sijie • guns, germs, and steel by j. diamond • the quality of life report by m. daum • the poisonwood bible by b. kingsolver • everything is illuminated by j. safran foer • nine parts of desire by g. brooks • beowulf by s. heaney • the beggar maid by a. munro • 9-11 report • mountains beyond mountains by t. kidder • good in bed by j. weiner • bowling alone by r. putnam • the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by m. haddon • the master by c. toibin• the kite runner by k. hosseini • smilla’s sense of snow by p. hoeg• common ground by j.a. Lukas • sideways by r. pickett• pride and prejudice by j. austen • the lion, the witch and the wardrobe by c.s. lewis • housekeeping by m. robinson • class matters by b. keller • i'm a stranger here myself by b. bryson • marly and me by j. grogan • the glass castle by j. walls • white teeth by z. smith• the devil wears prada by l. weisberger • the devil in the white city by e. larson • rebecca by d. du marier • jane eyre by c. bronte • love in the time of cholera by g. garcia marquez • the tender bar by j.r. moerhinger • freakonomics by s. levitt • kettlebottom by d. fisher • the memory keepers daughter by k. edwards • three junes by j. glass • the painted veil by w.s. maugham • there are no children here by a. kotlowitz • the lost painting by j. harr • a great deliverance by e. george • the other boleyn girl by p. gregory • thirteenth tale by d. setterfield • eat, pray, love by e. gilbert