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One of Ours by Willa Cather
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One of Ours (edition 2014)

by Willa Cather (Author)

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1,2143915,942 (3.84)242
One of Ours, winner of the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, is my third Willa Cather read, the first two being her more well-known stories Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Antonia. Cather’s prose is fabulous, as is her ability to bring to life her portrayal of Midwest Plains life. Her character development is exceptional, as is her vivid descriptions. Reading this one, it was like being exposed to a series of Impressionist agrarian paintings, where time (and technological advancements) move (are accepted) at a slower pace. I feel as though I intimately know both the land and the characters. The story focus is on Claude, an intelligent young man from a Nebraska farming family, who finds that his life does not have any purpose until he decides to enlist in the army to go and fight in the Great War. For Claude, this decision provides him with a way to fight for a higher purpose and contribute to the common good. Cather approach to war fiction (the second half of the story) is the same contemplative, introspective approach she takes when writing about hardscrabble Plains living. She does not sugar coat or exclude anything but she also does not dwell on graphic war details or focus on military strategy. Cather’s writing takes on a more holistic approach to the war, although the parts of the story set in France do not come across with the same graceful flow of the earlier sections of the story. Cather captures all of this through a slightly dreamy lens that may frustrate fans of war fiction like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (apparently, Hemingway was a vocal critic of One of Ours when it was published).

Overall, another wonderful story communicated through Cather’s simple, straightforward, descriptive prose. ( )
5 vote lkernagh | Jun 7, 2019 |
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I greatly admire Cather's My Antonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop, and many of her short stories. As a longtime student of WWI, I wondered how I missed this one, especially as it was written so immediately after the war. Hemingway hated it (which is often a strong indicator for something I will like...). Had to settle for a Gutenberg e-book, as it wasn't easily available in my regional library system in print.

What a disappointment. Claude Wheeler, the protagonist, is a mopey, discontented bore, though well-intentioned and VERY hardworking. Two thirds of the book were him sweating resentfully on the farm, wishing he was somewhere else, and when he was, he wasn't happy there either. He inexplicably decides to marry a prim local girl, who doesn't really want to marry him, but she wants a house of her own so... On the wedding night it's made clear he won't be sleeping with her, understandably increasing his misery. He decides the war is the answer to his problems, so he enlists. He quickly makes lieutenant, befriends a bunch of cheerful, pleasant, noble guys; many of whom die on the troopship on the way Over There (the flu is just getting started), but no one seems too fazed by it. France turns out to be picturesque, with quaint, charming girls and kindhearted farmers... until there's an attack and everyone dies. The End.

It feels empty and devoid of much serious emotional effect, all rather an "exercise" in a wartime novel. Plenty of Cather's lovely writing describing nature and surroundings, but the people are puppets and characters with little complexity or interest. I kept going, hoping for better, but it never arrived. I guess the Pulitzer folks went with topical that year. ( )
  JulieStielstra | Nov 19, 2023 |
this read much faster than i expected for its length and topic, and the writing is often really nice. not my antoniabeautiful, in my recollection anyway, but still. i felt easily taken with the story and found that far more pages would go by before i realized it. but at the same time, i'm not really sure i like that she's given such a view of war - one that seems to really solidify many men's purpose - and how she depicts being over in france - almost as a series of small trips or vacations punctuated with spots of battle. i know that war can actually be a highlight for people, but showing it this way didn't feel right to me. she also didn't tie up the loose ends between claude and enid, or with any of the rest of his family. i don't know, i think i liked this well enough when reading it because her language and descriptions carried me along, but the more i think about it, the less i think i did actually like it.

"'You Americans are always looking for something outside yourselves to warm you up, and it is no way to do. In old countries, where not very much can happen to us, we know that,--and we learn to make the most of little things.'" ( )
  overlycriticalelisa | Jul 18, 2023 |
Summary: The story of Claude Wheeler, raised on a Nebraska farm, longs to live his ideals and find his purpose and does so in the First World War.

This is my last read in what I might call “The Year of Willa Cather.” I discovered her fine writing this year (how did I miss her so long). This work, a later one, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1923. Yet I found it the least satisfying of the works I’ve read.

The story is in two parts. In the first, Claude grows into adulthood on a Nebraska farm. Unlike his father and older brother with minds for business, Claude is something of a romantic, his mind filled with heroic ideals from conversations with his mother, a stint at a Christian school and his association with the Erlich family, culturally refined freethinkers. Called back to help on the farm, Claude faces the death of his romantic visions, even while still cherishing something of the pastoral beauty of the land. After an accident, he is nursed by the beautiful Enid, whose aspirations are more toward missionary service than love. Claude ardently seeks her hand in marriage, hoping that in love with such a perfect soul, he’ll find purpose. Despite warnings and the attentions of the more worldly Gladys Farmer, he marries Enid, only to find her uninterested in his affections. When her sister, a missionary in China turns ill, she leaves Claude to nurse her and take her place. His hopes dashed, he closes up the house he lovingly build to return home to his parents.

And so it might have ended were it not for the war. One of the great “might have beens” is what might have happened if he would have gotten together with Gladys. Instead, the war intervenes, he enlists and becomes an officer. Cather describes the horror of a plague ship as the flu of 1918 strikes his troop transport. Heroically he assists the doctor in caring for his bunkmate, and many other soldiers, some who do not make it but are buried at sea. He experiences something of the “band of brothers” solidarity with his company of solders, including a fellow officer, Gerhardt, with whom he is billeted.

It seems he finds the fulfillment of ideals and purpose in the Allied cause, during a series of battles. But I wonder whether this is really so, or rather, does he achieve a sense of worth in acting with courage, something he has always lacked? I find myself struggling with Cather’s portrayal of war–at times startlingly real in describing the realities of trench warfare, and at other times, creating an ideal, at least in the mind of Claude, that seems to idealize a terrible war. Sergeant Hicks seems more realistic, wanting to retreat to the “logical and beautiful inwards of automobiles for the rest of his life.”

What Cather does capture is the reality of wars that usurp the lives of so many young still trying to make sense out of life, leaving them cynical and traumatized, offering brief shining moments to others, and snuffing out the lives of too many too soon. She alludes to the number who return who take their own lives, which may be one of the early instances of writing about the inner wounds of war. And she leaves us wondering about all the “might-have-beens” of the beautiful-souled character of Claude. ( )
  BobonBooks | Dec 28, 2022 |
One of Ours has been my favorite Cather novel for some time now. I feel an affinity with Claude and admire how compassionately Cather details his feelings of discontentment, how she takes her time to show what it's like to feel like you don't fit in one's community, family, or even in one's own skin.

I don't know of another novel that so painstakingly and patiently presents the pain of a young person's struggle to find a place where he belongs and a sense of purpose. I was thinking that usually such characters end up becoming rebels without a cause. But Claude is certainly no rebel. He isn't strong enough or knowledgeable enough to break free of his family or community until the US enters the war. The war is raging for three years by the time the US enters and by then Claude has the familial and social backing to leave. He finds freedom in the military, as many young people still do today. Had Claude stayed in Frankfort, it's pretty clear he would have ended up one of the walking dead that Gladys describes. Or, perhaps he would have eventually committed suicide like his mother fears he would have had he come home from the war. He was already becoming disillusioned and had he not joined the military it's clear that life in Frankfort would have crushed his soul.

This is the first time I've read the novel since I started reading more about World War I. Several years ago a friend and I had our own WWI study group that grew out of our mutual appreciation for All Quiet on the Western Front. The first time I read One of Ours I had no reference point for the Claude's war experience other than having felt that sense of general excitement and sense of purpose that my own military service had given me back in the 80s. From talking with combat veterans, current service members, and reading military fiction and nonfiction, I know the excitement and sense of purpose is even more profound during a time of war. The reading I've done about WWI had made One of Ours seem even more realistic and "true" what the experience may have been like for some. But this is the only novel that I know of that details why the war could be so exciting and liberating. ( )
  Chris.Wolak | Oct 13, 2022 |
3.5 stars, rounded up.

The first half of this novel is Willa Cather in her element. She knows the plains and its people, and as long as Claude was on the farm and in his small town, I found each word true and compelling. The second half of the novel, which takes place in France during WWI, does not ring as true and loses its grip on the characters somewhat. The horrors of the trenches of WWI are well-known and any idea that a man could feel happy to be there seems far-fetched. Happy to go, yes, happy to stay, no. With so much death and destruction around you, how could you not look back at your life and family with a bit of longing and nostalgia. As a matter of fact, I should have thought that Claude would find a much deeper appreciation of his life in the States by being in France at this moment in time.

Cather won the Pulitzer for this novel, and I think it is one of those selections that must be put into the context of the time. Having recently emerged from WWI, I think the world was anxious to look at the war as something worthwhile and the men who died there (and those who came home in pieces) as having been enhanced by the experience. This novel might be more of a case of how we “want” to see things than a case of how they actually were.

I did enjoy this story, found it particularly appealing as a coming of age tale in the portions that take place before the war. I would have liked a different ending or at least one that made a different statement. But, this is Cather’s tale, not mine. When I had finished, I went and pulled a photograph of a WWI soldier that I happen to have in my possession. I looked at his face and those of his simple, farming family. He stands proudly in his uniform, and I tried to impose Claude’s thoughts onto him...it wouldn’t work for me. I think Hemingway got the war right; I think Cather did not.


( )
  mattorsara | Aug 11, 2022 |
Even though it's been a few years since I read this book, I still remember it. The pictures in my mind are still bright. Some very poignant scenes and quite a story. ( )
  Chica3000 | Dec 11, 2020 |
A sweeping story about coming-of-age, purpose, and the changes to a war-torn society. ( )
  DrFuriosa | Dec 4, 2020 |
Loved a few other Cather books years ago, so jumped on this one at an AAUW used book sale several years back. It's languished on my shelf since then. Finally read it last week. Meh! It was a struggle to finish but I did. ONE OF OURS is a drab tale of Claude Wheeler, a sensitive, well-off Nebraska farm boy, (perhaps too well loved by his doting mother) who marries the wrong woman, endures a loveless marriage and an uninteresting life for a couple years. Then his wife goes off to China to care for her sick missionary sister, and Claude joins the Army to fight in the First World War in France, where he distinguishes himself, sees more of the world and makes a few good friends. The ending is sadly predictable and even a bit sappy in its sentimentality. While the writing was, I must admit, classic Cather, the story just did not work for me. Sorry, Willa. It was "just okay" for me, and I wouldn't recommend it. Try OH, PIONEERS or MY ANTONIA instead.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER ( )
1 vote TimBazzett | Jul 21, 2020 |
I love Willa Cather's stories built around the lives of folks on the prairie some century or more ago. This is another of those, mostly. It involves a young man, Claude, who grows up on a farm in western Nebraska. He feels that he doesn't fit in, for some reason he can't really articulate, and keeps searching for something more in life. He goes to college in Lincoln for a while, but his parents stop that nonsense when they realize he has academic aspirations, e.g. history, and their only reason for sending him was in case he might decide to be a preacher. So, he has to go back to make a life for himself on the farm.

His family gets quite interested in the reports of the doings in Europe regarding the beginning of World War I. After a few years, Claude sees a chance to try something different and enlists in the army. The last bit of the book describes his life in the army in France.

It's a good story. Cather doesn't go in for cheap melodrama. She just provides a calm recital of people's lives and explores their thoughts and feelings as they live those lives. She is truly a gem. I have no idea why I was put off by the idea of Cather in high school (probably my older sister's fault), despite never actually having had to read her. It's rather sad that I had to wait until I began bordering on dotage before I discovered this wonderful author. Then again, I also didn't really discover Dickens until I was approaching my dotage (and let's not forget Charlie Chan). I guess better late than never, huh? ( )
  lgpiper | Jun 21, 2019 |
One of Ours, winner of the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, is my third Willa Cather read, the first two being her more well-known stories Death Comes for the Archbishop and My Antonia. Cather’s prose is fabulous, as is her ability to bring to life her portrayal of Midwest Plains life. Her character development is exceptional, as is her vivid descriptions. Reading this one, it was like being exposed to a series of Impressionist agrarian paintings, where time (and technological advancements) move (are accepted) at a slower pace. I feel as though I intimately know both the land and the characters. The story focus is on Claude, an intelligent young man from a Nebraska farming family, who finds that his life does not have any purpose until he decides to enlist in the army to go and fight in the Great War. For Claude, this decision provides him with a way to fight for a higher purpose and contribute to the common good. Cather approach to war fiction (the second half of the story) is the same contemplative, introspective approach she takes when writing about hardscrabble Plains living. She does not sugar coat or exclude anything but she also does not dwell on graphic war details or focus on military strategy. Cather’s writing takes on a more holistic approach to the war, although the parts of the story set in France do not come across with the same graceful flow of the earlier sections of the story. Cather captures all of this through a slightly dreamy lens that may frustrate fans of war fiction like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms (apparently, Hemingway was a vocal critic of One of Ours when it was published).

Overall, another wonderful story communicated through Cather’s simple, straightforward, descriptive prose. ( )
5 vote lkernagh | Jun 7, 2019 |
Cather's 1923 Pulitzer prize winning novel about Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska farm boy who never quite figures out what he wants to do with his life until he finally enlists in the Army to go fight in World War I. Where Hemingway provides a more stark account of life on and off the battlefield, Cather has a much more gentle and rolling prose that easily conveys the mystique of prairies as well as the wounded features of a war-torn France. Cather's characters are real, imperfect, and at times tortured by many of the selfsame questions that transcend generations: who am I, where do I belong, why am I here? Only the last third of the book really covers Claude's experience in Europe, but Cather does a superb job of capturing the experiences of young men going off to war, the waiting, the peril of a sea voyage, and the toils of combat. She must have read a great deal and spoken to a lot of veterans to have been able to retell it in her own way. One of my top five reads and an excellent supplement to a study in the Great War. ( )
1 vote traumleben | Apr 12, 2018 |
This is a splendid novel, well deserving of the Pulitzer Prize it received in 1923.

Claude Wheeler is a, idealistic, restless young farmer, pulled from a small religious college to be put in charge of his father's Nebraska farmlands. He feels he has no purpose in life, hemmed in by a narrow education and an American materialism that he finds meaningless.

It is only when he enlists in the Army as the US is pulled into WWI that he feels he find a purpose and sense of the wider world. He is sent to France and as a lieutenant leads his men into the horrors of trench warfare.

The novel has been criticized, most notably by Hemingway, as idealizing war, but I didn't see it that way at all. Certainly Cather is sympathetic to a young man's idealism that leads him to enlist to fight such a war, but her descriptions of the trenches and war-ravaged France leave no such impression.

The prose is gorgeous, and her characterizations are subtle and multi-faceted, even of minor characters. At times I was reminded of DH Lawrence's layers in a novel such as [Women in Love].

One of Ours, The Song of the Lark, and My Antonia are certainly Cather's best novels.

When Ernest left, Claude walked as far as the Yoeder's place with him, and came back across the snow-drifted field, under the frosty brilliance of the winter stars. As he looked up at them, he felt more than ever that they must have something to do with the fate of nations, and with the incomprehensible things that were happening in the world. In the ordered universe there must be some mind that read the riddle of this one unhappy planet, that knew what was forming in the dark eclipse of this hour. A question hung in the air; over all this quiet land about him, over him, over his mother, even. He was afraid for his country, as he had been that night on the State House steps in Denver, when this war was undreamed of, hidden in the womb of time. ( )
  janeajones | May 15, 2017 |
Most of us felt that One of Ours was not Cather's best work but liked the gentle telling of the story and the War. WWI was such a brutal war and could have been handled in a raw and ripping manner, much as Hemingway felt Cather should have done. We felt like we knew Claude but were frustrated by his malaise and lack of backbone until he entered the war. We really felt the ending appropriate. We also noted the strong female characters that Cather uses, with the male characters with smaller supporting roles. The description of place and tone of the story matches Cather's other works. Wonderful storytelling. ( )
  Bibliofemmes | Apr 23, 2017 |
My favorite book by Cather - the story of a young midwest farm boy who enlists during WWI and finds himself leading troops in France. Beautiful descriptions of French countryside amidst the horror of war. ( )
1 vote Oodles | Feb 16, 2016 |
Too old-fashioned for my tastes ultimately. Everyone is charmingly quaint and the storyline lacks any punch. The protagonist doesn't feel at home in his own hometown, so he joins the Navy where he finds some of what he is looking for. The novel criticizes technology and the innovations of society which followed the population of the American frontier. The protagonist looks to the past for comfort and finds what he desires in France. I think that a nation troubled by war is hardly the place of one's dreams and find the concept a bit condescending. ( )
  dulcinea14 | Sep 18, 2014 |
I find I just need to sit quitely after finishing a Willa Cather. This was profoundly moving, a brilliant character study and both a pro- and anti-war statement. Truly remarkable.
1 vote amyem58 | Jul 16, 2014 |
I read this book as part of the Virago Great War Theme Read, and really liked it. It is the story of Claude Wheeler, a Nebraska farm boy who is dissatisfied with his life. His parents send him to a religious college, when he would have preferred the State University, and the opportunities he thinks it would have given him. Claude's father gives him the opportunity to run the farm, and a few bad decisions on his part, only deepen his feelings that he is in the wrong place. Various situations and decisions continue to enhance these feelings. As war breaks out in Europe, Claude and his mother begin to devour the information they find in the newspapers, and pull out an unused map to find the places they are reading about. Claude begins to feel a sense of purpose and the need to get into uniform.

"One stormy morning Claude was driving the big wagon to town to get a load of lumber. The roads were beginning to thaw out, and the country was black and dirty looking. Here and there on the dark mud, grey snow crusts lingered, perforated like honeycomb, with wet weedstalks sticking up through them. As the wagon creaked over the high ground just above Frankfort, Claude noticed a brilliant new flag flying from the schoolhouse cupola. He had never seen the flag before when it meant anything but the Fourth of July, or a political rally. Today it was as if he saw it for the first time; no bands, no noise, no orators; a spot of restless colour against the sodden March sky."

This takes place at about 50% of the way through the book. The first half of the book is filled with descriptions of Nebraska and the people that Cather loved. In the second half of the book, war takes over as Claude, now a lieutenant, and his men travel overseas on a troop transport. Even here, Cather's descriptions of the people of France, who have lost almost everything and still have the courage to go on, are beautiful. Claude changes in the second half of the book too, as he interacts with these people and with the men he commands. This is a book about the war, and yet is very un-warlike. It is more a story of people and place. ( )
  NanaCC | Mar 24, 2014 |
‘One of Ours’ is Willa Cather’s 1923 Pulitzer prize winning novel that I read for the ongoing Librarything Virago group’s Great War theme read.
Cather is particularly known for writing about Nebraskan frontier life, and this novel opens in the Nebraskan farming community at around the time that the First World War was starting in Europe. Claude Wheeler is the son of a successful farmer, his future on the farm, seems assured. Many of Claude’s friends and neighbours are European immigrants – several of them Germans, it is some of these friends who help to open Claude’s eyes to other possibilities in life, as he is exposed to lively family gatherings, and people who love the arts. Claude is certain that there is more to life than the world he sees around him on his father’s farm.
“Life was so short that it meant nothing at all unless it were continually reinforced by something that endured; unless the shadows of individual existence came and went against a background that held together.”
Attending a small religious college, rather than the State College he had set his sights on, Claude is dissatisfied with the future he sees ahead of him. As the war in Europe takes hold Claude his mother and Mahailey, who works for them, eagerly pore over newspapers carrying the latest bulletins. When Claude’s father hands over responsibility of the farm to Claude, he feels a terrible weight of responsibility, the errors he makes along the way depress him out of all proportion.
Claude’s sense of dissatisfaction and disappointment only increases when he rashly marries the local miller’s daughter Enid. Having built a lovely new house for himself and Enid, Claude tries to settle down to the life of a Nebraskan farmer. However Enid is far more interested in prohibition work, quietly envying her sister’s missionary work in China, than she is in either her new husband or their home, leaving him to eat a cold supper while she goes off to meetings in town. When news arrives that Enid’s sister is sick, she rushes off to China to help – leaving her new husband to move back to the family farm house with his mother. What Claude sees as his abandonment by his young wife, embarrasses him, Claude imagines the entire community must surely be talking about his situation.
By this time America has finally entered the war, and this gives Claude his chance, his chance to finally do something. At a time when very few khaki clad men have yet to be seen around the small Nebraskan town where he is known – Claude is quick to join up. Initially used to train other men, Claude is eventually on his way to France in the summer of 1917 – aboard a ship struck down by the dreadful flu epidemic. Claude assists with the treatment of his stricken men, and revels in an unexpected sense of freedom and usefulness. Arriving in France with their numbers hugely depleted Claude and his comrades find a France heavily scarred by three years of war. The trenches await them, and Claude and his friends are soon caught up in the horrors of trench warfare.
I have read that Cather’s depictions of war have been criticised even accused of being too positively portrayed – I find that hard to understand, for me at least, Cather’s descriptions are always vivid – her characters realistic and very human. I found Willa Cather’s France of that last year of war a place where war had become a way of life. Where people had already paid the price of war again and again, and where fresh young American soldiers arriving, with limited French at their disposal, have to quickly learn the ways of war and what it means, while living alongside the local people.
“One night he dreamed that he was at home, out in the ploughed fields, where he could see nothing but the furrowed brown earth, stretching from horizon to horizon. Up and down it moved a boy, with a plough and two horses. At first he thought it was his brother Ralph; but on coming nearer he saw it was himself, and he was full of fear for this boy. Poor Claude, he would never, never get away; he was going to miss everything! While he was struggling to speak to Claude, and warn him, he awoke.”
Claude Wheeler’s sense of disillusionment leads him to make the decisions he does and ultimately take him to the battlefields of France. The ending is necessarily poignant, how could it be otherwise – and give much food for thought. ‘One of Ours’ is a beautifully written novel; I especially loved the longer section set in Nebraska. Cather is adept at beautiful descriptions of the rural landscape she knew so well, and in her memorable characters, are the mix of people that made up those communities. This may not be my favourite Willa Cather (I will only know which that is, when I have read more) but it is a fascinating novel – which is about far more than America’s involvement in World War One. ( )
  Heaven-Ali | Mar 14, 2014 |
I LOVED "My Antonia" with all-the-five-stars love! "One of Ours" just did not grab me in the same way. ( )
  countrylife | Jan 31, 2014 |
Claude Wheeler was ill-suited as a Nebraska farm boy. His longings were realized after he entered a one-sided marriage and became obsessed with the news of WWI. When he decided he must enter the fray rather than live his life in shame because he did nothing to help innocent people, it was as if a different book was being written. The latter part of the book was about a hero rather than an angst riddled dreamer.

When an idealist goes to war, something must change in him. Claude gladly gave up his malaise and assumed responsibility for the young men in his charge. He showed endurance under formidable conditions; he showed courage in the face of danger. I rather liked this change. I began thinking of him by his rightful name rather than "Clod" which I thought more descriptive in the beginning.

Willa Cather received the Pulitzer Prize for this book in 1923. She was both praised and reviled for writing a war story. I think she did a fine job of exposing the stink and scourge of war as well as portraying the story of a young man who found his true calling as a soldier. This was another beautifully written book by a revered author. ( )
1 vote Donna828 | Jan 14, 2014 |
One of Ours by Willa Cather was originally published in 1922 and won a Pulitzer Prize in 1923. This is a book that tackles America’s place on the world stage before and during World War I and in a more intimate way, it is the story of a young American man who found his place of belonging upon the battlefields of France.

Claude Wheeler was often dissatisfied with his life. He was the son of a wealth Nebraska farmer, and at the story’s opening is attending classes at a religious college, but he is unhappy with the level of teaching. When he comes home, however, he feels a misfit in the small prairie town. When circumstances put Claude out in the fields he is discontented and longs for a different life. A definite pattern emerges around Claude and when he woos and marries Enid, this pattern continues. Personally, I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for Claude as I felt he made no effort to make any changes in his life, he just seemed to drift.

When his wife decides to go to China to nurse her ill missionary sister, he closes up his house and moves back home where is he generally fussed over by his mother and the family housekeeper. He becomes interested in current events and when America enters the war, Claude volunteers. As Lieutenant Wheeler, he matures into a much more likeable person, he becomes responsible and caring toward his men, interested in life and what is going on around him.

While Willa Cather does impart a sense of romance into her war story, I understand that this book was written as a tribute to a cousin that died during the war. Overall I enjoyed this story and can attest to the fact that her books stand the test of time. However, for me, her writing strength still remains the picaresque and vivid descriptions she paints of the American landscape. ( )
3 vote DeltaQueen50 | Jan 12, 2014 |
When I have had time to digest this novel a bit longer, I may bump it up to 5 stars... extremely moving. The first half of the story takes place in Nebraska & has all of Cather's trademark descriptive passages -- during this part of the book I thought it quite similar in feel to My Antonia. However, when Cather turns her extraordinary imagery to Claude's life as a WWI soldier, first on a flu-ridden troop transport and then at the front & in the trenches, it is heart-breaking. ( )
  leslie.98 | Jun 26, 2013 |
Goodness. This is a book that often feels plodding when one is reading, but in retrospect (even only an hour on) it's so clear and crystalline and lovely that one knows that it will stay with one forever. Claude is the quintessential flawed hero who makes bad choices and fails to understand himself until it is nearly too late. He is nestled in his setting of pre=WWI America like a filbert in a shell. The war brings him into his own but at a cost. This book is truly tragic but I'm better for having read it. I don't know if I can bear to read it again, but I'll always be glad that Darsa strong-armed me into it. ( )
  satyridae | Apr 5, 2013 |
It may just be a characteristic of the Willa Cather novels that I have been reading, but so far I have found a common voice and perspective that make them collectively appealing. I have seen One of Ours, described as a "prize winning but much maligned novel". It's scope is the most ambitious of her novels that I have read. It traces the early adulthood of Claude Wheeler, starting in Nebraska, then moving to the trenches in WWI France. Most readers find the Nebraska portion more convincing, while a few find the war narrative more so. I found that Cather was more sure footed in the Midwest and ironically, as Claude Wheeler starts to find his feet in the service, she seems to lose hers. There is a disconnect between the telling of these two parts of his life that, while entirely reasonable, has elicited ambivalence in her readers. Although to my mind this is not her strongest work (see Death comes for the Archbishop or My Antonia) it has the elements that characterize Cather's best novels: the superbly plain writing (i.e. not too "well furnished"), the way that she captures family relations (Claude's mother in this book is wonderful), and her depiction of friendships. While as a whole the book is not as satisfying as the other Cather novels noted above, Claude Wheeler is a fine study in youth, and particularly captures how the young will, and cannot help but, make so much trouble for themselves. ( )
  maritimer | Apr 22, 2012 |
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0.5
1 2
1.5 2
2 9
2.5 1
3 40
3.5 19
4 75
4.5 13
5 41

 

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