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The Song Of The Lark (Signet Classics)
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Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Author: Willa Cather
Publisher: Signet Classics
Average Customer Rating:
Our Price: $6.95
You Save: $ ( % )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Author: Willa Cather
Publisher: Signet Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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The Song Of The Lark (Signet Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780451530486
ISBN: 0451530489
Label: Signet Classics
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2007-11-06
Publisher: Signet Classics
Reading Level: Young Adult
Studio: Signet Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.52
EAN: 9780451530486
ISBN: 0451530489
Label: Signet Classics
Manufacturer: Signet Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 480
Publication Date: 2007-11-06
Publisher: Signet Classics
Reading Level: Young Adult
Studio: Signet Classics
Editorial Review of The Song Of The Lark (Signet Classics)
Thea Kronberg and her singing voice are headed for great things. But her provincial Colorado town has practically stifled her. Her talent and pioneer's spirit takes Thea to New York, even Germany, but with loneliness as her only companion...
Customer Reviews of The Song Of The Lark (Signet Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A novel about artistic development
Review: The Song of the Lark is Willa Cather's somewhat autobiographical novel about artistic growth.
It follows the life of a fictional opera singer, Thea Kronborg, as she develops her musical and interpretive gifts.
Thea is not an entirely lovable character, but I deeply identify with her passion, ambition, and - most of all - her fierce struggle to protect and nurture her talent.
Throughout the work, Cather brings up questions about what it means to be an artist and how the process of becoming one affects the artist herself and those around her.
As in so may of Cather's works, the land (the vast, untamed American Midwest) is both a metaphor and a character in its own right.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: the song of the lark...written by the lark
Review: made me cry...and I dont cry. full of her love of the land, and her annoyance with the men who farm it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: An engrossing, harmonious story
Review: The Song of the Lark was Cather's third novel. Written between O Pioneers! and My Antonia, it is very different from those novels for which Cather is better known. The story is set among sand hills and canyons, big crowded cities and harmonious music. It is the story of the making of an artist, from her humble beginnings in Moonstone, Colorado to the big time singing operas in New York. It is a story in three parts.
Part one: A young, talented girl from an immigrant family grows up in a rural town. Those familiar with Cather's more famous works will feel right at home with Thea Kronberg as a young girl surrounded by her large Swedish family, German music teacher with a taste for the booze, all-American sweetheart, and Mexican musical compatriots.
Parts two and three break with Cather's traditional fare to follow Thea in search of musical knowledge and finally, as the star of the New York opera scene. If the story were simply Thea's struggles inner and outer during her rise to fame, it would have been tiresome from the start. For all her imagination and talent, Thea is not entirely likable. However we are provided with a colorful cast of supporting characters that carry us through the story. We start and end with supporting characters-not Thea-and it is through them that we find a reason for empathy. We are in fact her audience even while reading her story.
If you're searching for Cather's famous prairie stories, you should probably move on and come back to The Song of the Lark when in a more introspective mood. However, if you're looking for the making of an artist as she realizes her talent and struggles to find herself and her place in the limelight, this one's for you.
A couple of notes:
I believe there are some misconceptions about this novel arising from the fact that not many people have actually read it. First, this book is regularly billed as the second in Cather's "Prairie Trilogy". There is little if any prairie in this novel. Second, this novel also is billed as Cather's most autobiographical. I find this very hard to believe. The story is so entirely musical and Thea so self absorbed, that I do not believe Cather saw herself in her at all. If you want an autobiographical novel, read My Antonia which is based on short stories Cather wrote about growing up on the prairie in Nebraska.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Insipid
Review: The penguin classic editions are sure nice little books. It's my first Wila Cather book and I was expecting much more (actually not more, but better) from the reviews I've read. The style is of a quiet, unpretentious storyteller, almost intimistic tone; but it doesn't deliver anything. I was waiting and waiting for the great moment in the narrative, thinking the story would produce at any time some interesting twist, some exciting and unpexpected bonus, but there's nothing extraordinary. The plot flows in a totally predicatable way. Predictability is not the reason why it fails, though, is its plain lack of interest all through. Let me be fair: it could be interesting, and her style would be much more appreciated, if she had reduced the book to 100 pages at most. The book is way too long for what it gives us. The landscapes that the critics seem to relish are just a little insert among the several hundred chit-chat pages.
After reading almost the whole book a gave up at the finish line. I wouldn't discourage other would-be readers from further delving into this lady's prose. It has its enchantment. But one has to be in the mood for it, or be very idle.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Story of Achievement
Review: This is a brilliant and readable novel about the struggles of an artist and the friends who helped her along the way. To be honest, the first part of the book didn't pull me in. "Friends of Childhood," which takes up the first 150 pages, is a simple story about a girl growing up in a small town, and the trouble and adventure she finds for herself. It's full of great characterizations, but wasn't quite what I thought I had gotten myself into. The story quickly takes a change of pace as Thea goes to study in Chicago, and her true artistic struggle begins.
Like in her short novel "A Lost Lady," Cather refuses to present Thea as a pleasant, likeable woman who fits some aesthetic ideal that the men in the book wish she could fit. She is at times distant, impersonal and mean. Becoming an artist changed her from the quirky, lively child in the beginning of the book to somewhat of a diva, even though the old Thea shines through. This is disappointing to the reader too, since this pushes us further from Thea as a character, but that's the whole point. This is the kind of book that lingers with you. The characters (mainly Thea, Dr. Archie and Fred Ottenburg) are some you will never forget.
Review Summary: A novel about artistic development
Review: The Song of the Lark is Willa Cather's somewhat autobiographical novel about artistic growth.
It follows the life of a fictional opera singer, Thea Kronborg, as she develops her musical and interpretive gifts.
Thea is not an entirely lovable character, but I deeply identify with her passion, ambition, and - most of all - her fierce struggle to protect and nurture her talent.
Throughout the work, Cather brings up questions about what it means to be an artist and how the process of becoming one affects the artist herself and those around her.
As in so may of Cather's works, the land (the vast, untamed American Midwest) is both a metaphor and a character in its own right.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: the song of the lark...written by the lark
Review: made me cry...and I dont cry. full of her love of the land, and her annoyance with the men who farm it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: An engrossing, harmonious story
Review: The Song of the Lark was Cather's third novel. Written between O Pioneers! and My Antonia, it is very different from those novels for which Cather is better known. The story is set among sand hills and canyons, big crowded cities and harmonious music. It is the story of the making of an artist, from her humble beginnings in Moonstone, Colorado to the big time singing operas in New York. It is a story in three parts.
Part one: A young, talented girl from an immigrant family grows up in a rural town. Those familiar with Cather's more famous works will feel right at home with Thea Kronberg as a young girl surrounded by her large Swedish family, German music teacher with a taste for the booze, all-American sweetheart, and Mexican musical compatriots.
Parts two and three break with Cather's traditional fare to follow Thea in search of musical knowledge and finally, as the star of the New York opera scene. If the story were simply Thea's struggles inner and outer during her rise to fame, it would have been tiresome from the start. For all her imagination and talent, Thea is not entirely likable. However we are provided with a colorful cast of supporting characters that carry us through the story. We start and end with supporting characters-not Thea-and it is through them that we find a reason for empathy. We are in fact her audience even while reading her story.
If you're searching for Cather's famous prairie stories, you should probably move on and come back to The Song of the Lark when in a more introspective mood. However, if you're looking for the making of an artist as she realizes her talent and struggles to find herself and her place in the limelight, this one's for you.
A couple of notes:
I believe there are some misconceptions about this novel arising from the fact that not many people have actually read it. First, this book is regularly billed as the second in Cather's "Prairie Trilogy". There is little if any prairie in this novel. Second, this novel also is billed as Cather's most autobiographical. I find this very hard to believe. The story is so entirely musical and Thea so self absorbed, that I do not believe Cather saw herself in her at all. If you want an autobiographical novel, read My Antonia which is based on short stories Cather wrote about growing up on the prairie in Nebraska.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Insipid
Review: The penguin classic editions are sure nice little books. It's my first Wila Cather book and I was expecting much more (actually not more, but better) from the reviews I've read. The style is of a quiet, unpretentious storyteller, almost intimistic tone; but it doesn't deliver anything. I was waiting and waiting for the great moment in the narrative, thinking the story would produce at any time some interesting twist, some exciting and unpexpected bonus, but there's nothing extraordinary. The plot flows in a totally predicatable way. Predictability is not the reason why it fails, though, is its plain lack of interest all through. Let me be fair: it could be interesting, and her style would be much more appreciated, if she had reduced the book to 100 pages at most. The book is way too long for what it gives us. The landscapes that the critics seem to relish are just a little insert among the several hundred chit-chat pages.
After reading almost the whole book a gave up at the finish line. I wouldn't discourage other would-be readers from further delving into this lady's prose. It has its enchantment. But one has to be in the mood for it, or be very idle.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: A Story of Achievement
Review: This is a brilliant and readable novel about the struggles of an artist and the friends who helped her along the way. To be honest, the first part of the book didn't pull me in. "Friends of Childhood," which takes up the first 150 pages, is a simple story about a girl growing up in a small town, and the trouble and adventure she finds for herself. It's full of great characterizations, but wasn't quite what I thought I had gotten myself into. The story quickly takes a change of pace as Thea goes to study in Chicago, and her true artistic struggle begins.
Like in her short novel "A Lost Lady," Cather refuses to present Thea as a pleasant, likeable woman who fits some aesthetic ideal that the men in the book wish she could fit. She is at times distant, impersonal and mean. Becoming an artist changed her from the quirky, lively child in the beginning of the book to somewhat of a diva, even though the old Thea shines through. This is disappointing to the reader too, since this pushes us further from Thea as a character, but that's the whole point. This is the kind of book that lingers with you. The characters (mainly Thea, Dr. Archie and Fred Ottenburg) are some you will never forget.