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The Sojourner
The Sojourner is the story of a good man: of the influence of his steady, quiet strength upon others, especially the members of his immediate family, and of what they--characters less strong and less stable--do to him throughout the course of a long life.
313 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1951
About the author
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
75 books617 followersPeople know American writer Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings for her novel
The Yearling
(1938).
This author lived in rural Florida with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same title, The Yearling. The book was written long before the concept of young-adult fiction, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.
This author lived in rural Florida with rural themes and settings. Her best known work, The Yearling, about a boy who adopts an orphaned fawn, won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1939 and was later made into a movie of the same title, The Yearling. The book was written long before the concept of young-adult fiction, but is now commonly included in teen-reading lists.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews
May 2, 2010
This is a beautifully written story about one man's quest to find his right and proper place in life. I read this one as part of a challenge to read a book published my year of birth - 1953 and am so glad that I chose this one from the many available that year.
I loved much about this story, especially the main character, Asahel (Ase) Linden. The reader watches life from Ase's perspective in rural New York state in the late 1800s and early 1900s from the day his brother leaves the farm through the early years of marrying and raising a family on to a resolution of his life's work. We rejoice in his prosperity as a farmer and share his anguish when loved ones are lost. This is a great story of Americana and of an honest, hardworking average man who treats others with respect and honor (even those who may not be seen as deserving of such by many), endures heavy disappointments and heartaches and in the end triumphs over his losses finding the right way for his legacy to continue and to be honored.
This is a hard book to find because of its age, but it is so worth reading if you can find one. Ase Linden will long stay with me.
I loved much about this story, especially the main character, Asahel (Ase) Linden. The reader watches life from Ase's perspective in rural New York state in the late 1800s and early 1900s from the day his brother leaves the farm through the early years of marrying and raising a family on to a resolution of his life's work. We rejoice in his prosperity as a farmer and share his anguish when loved ones are lost. This is a great story of Americana and of an honest, hardworking average man who treats others with respect and honor (even those who may not be seen as deserving of such by many), endures heavy disappointments and heartaches and in the end triumphs over his losses finding the right way for his legacy to continue and to be honored.
This is a hard book to find because of its age, but it is so worth reading if you can find one. Ase Linden will long stay with me.
May 12, 2022
May 11, 1120am ~~ Review asap.
May 12, 130pm ~~ The GR blurb for this book comes from the inside flap of the cover, but here is the missing first sentence:
In her first novel in more than ten years, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, whose earlier The Yearling has taken its place as classic in our native American literature, tells......
That book The Yearling was my introduction to this author many many years ago. I read it as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book (something I would never do these days!) and I still remember the impact the story made on my young self. In my years of great used book sales in El Paso, I kept an eye out for Rawlings titles, but found only one, Cross Creek, which I have not yet read 'officially' for GR.
I read The Yearling for the first time as an adult in 2020, was surprised at how I could not tell what might have been 'condensed' out of it, and then rushed off once again to Thriftbooks to order more Rawlings. The Sojourner was one of the titles I ordered, and after two years, here we are at last to write a review.
So get on with it, right? Sorry, I can't always keep from babbling about how certain books make their way to my overstuffed shelves. lol
Anyway, The Sojourner was originally published in 1951, just two years before the author passed away. Mine is a 1953 Book Club edition. This is the story of Asahel Linden, a man of no special outstanding talents or ambitions, but with a different outlook on life than almost everyone around him.
We first meet Ase on the day of his father's funeral. Ase, his mother Amelia and his older brother Benjamin are on their way home from the cemetery; Ase is trying to understand the tension between his mother and Benjamin. He learns the reason for it after supper at the house, when Benjamin announces that he is leaving the farm that very night. He refuses Ase's offer to drive him to town in the wagon, he would rather walk. The brothers say goodbye at a bridge on the road that leads to the village four miles away. Ben tells Ace to marry his own ex-girlfriend Nellie in the spring, and then he turns away, out of Ase's life. Forever? It feels that way at the moment for Ase:
"Everything was retreating, going away into distant places, and he was left behind, to plow, to sow, to reap."
In my ignorance I thought Ben would be the sojourner of the title. I dive into books knowing as little about them as possible, since I prefer to let them speak for themselves. So it took me quite some time to realize that even though Ben was the traveler, Ace was the true sojourner. Ase, with his love for the land, for what it means to care for the earth that we are given so little time to enjoy. Ase, with his desire to learn so many things, his steadiness, his slow but sure way of doing things, his moments of supposed daydreaming when he ponders age-old topics that philosophers have wrestled with for centuries.
But Ase cannot make clear to many people what he feels. Over the decades he misses many opportunities to try and change the direction the people around him might take, and can only watch as his family veers radically from his own path to one of greed and corruption. He tortures himself with this seeming defect, but all he can do is keep being himself. Was his silence truly a weakness? Perhaps, and many times I silently urged him to try harder. But his moments pass, like so many do in life. He did the best he could, just as we all must do.
Ase has only three true friends in the world. The type of friends who share a connection beyond mere words, who understand and recognize each other without effort, and always with acceptance. Mink Fisher, the band of gypsies who stop by every summer, and Tim McCarthy. Only with these people does Ase feel that he is seen as the person he is.
The years go by and as each page is turned, the reader slowly becomes another of Ase's friends, able to see him as a man of quality, a truly rare treasure, an example of what Man could have and should have been throughout the centuries.
This was a rich story, full of wisdom for anyone who will listen closely to Ase and his 'daydreaming'. I wish everyone could read it.
May 12, 130pm ~~ The GR blurb for this book comes from the inside flap of the cover, but here is the missing first sentence:
In her first novel in more than ten years, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, whose earlier The Yearling has taken its place as classic in our native American literature, tells......
That book The Yearling was my introduction to this author many many years ago. I read it as a Reader's Digest Condensed Book (something I would never do these days!) and I still remember the impact the story made on my young self. In my years of great used book sales in El Paso, I kept an eye out for Rawlings titles, but found only one, Cross Creek, which I have not yet read 'officially' for GR.
I read The Yearling for the first time as an adult in 2020, was surprised at how I could not tell what might have been 'condensed' out of it, and then rushed off once again to Thriftbooks to order more Rawlings. The Sojourner was one of the titles I ordered, and after two years, here we are at last to write a review.
So get on with it, right? Sorry, I can't always keep from babbling about how certain books make their way to my overstuffed shelves. lol
Anyway, The Sojourner was originally published in 1951, just two years before the author passed away. Mine is a 1953 Book Club edition. This is the story of Asahel Linden, a man of no special outstanding talents or ambitions, but with a different outlook on life than almost everyone around him.
We first meet Ase on the day of his father's funeral. Ase, his mother Amelia and his older brother Benjamin are on their way home from the cemetery; Ase is trying to understand the tension between his mother and Benjamin. He learns the reason for it after supper at the house, when Benjamin announces that he is leaving the farm that very night. He refuses Ase's offer to drive him to town in the wagon, he would rather walk. The brothers say goodbye at a bridge on the road that leads to the village four miles away. Ben tells Ace to marry his own ex-girlfriend Nellie in the spring, and then he turns away, out of Ase's life. Forever? It feels that way at the moment for Ase:
"Everything was retreating, going away into distant places, and he was left behind, to plow, to sow, to reap."
In my ignorance I thought Ben would be the sojourner of the title. I dive into books knowing as little about them as possible, since I prefer to let them speak for themselves. So it took me quite some time to realize that even though Ben was the traveler, Ace was the true sojourner. Ase, with his love for the land, for what it means to care for the earth that we are given so little time to enjoy. Ase, with his desire to learn so many things, his steadiness, his slow but sure way of doing things, his moments of supposed daydreaming when he ponders age-old topics that philosophers have wrestled with for centuries.
But Ase cannot make clear to many people what he feels. Over the decades he misses many opportunities to try and change the direction the people around him might take, and can only watch as his family veers radically from his own path to one of greed and corruption. He tortures himself with this seeming defect, but all he can do is keep being himself. Was his silence truly a weakness? Perhaps, and many times I silently urged him to try harder. But his moments pass, like so many do in life. He did the best he could, just as we all must do.
Ase has only three true friends in the world. The type of friends who share a connection beyond mere words, who understand and recognize each other without effort, and always with acceptance. Mink Fisher, the band of gypsies who stop by every summer, and Tim McCarthy. Only with these people does Ase feel that he is seen as the person he is.
The years go by and as each page is turned, the reader slowly becomes another of Ase's friends, able to see him as a man of quality, a truly rare treasure, an example of what Man could have and should have been throughout the centuries.
This was a rich story, full of wisdom for anyone who will listen closely to Ase and his 'daydreaming'. I wish everyone could read it.
March 31, 2017
This book is one of the best ones I've read. In many ways, it's a simple story, one of the life of a young man and ends, well, like life ends. I was transported to Asahel's shadow from the first page to the last and read late a night, fighting sleep after some really labor-intensive days, and thinking when I arose how I couldn't wait to go to bed on this next night so I could read more.
The first sentence was arresting to me: "Three crows flew low over the fresh mound in the Linden burying-ground, dark as the thoughts of the three unmourning mourners." I had no idea what this book was about at all, but after that first sentence, I was hooked. The story has some dialog, just enough to carry the characters along, and most of the sentences are written in the simple noun-verb-direct object form, yet the form does not make a simple story. The descriptions are some of the best -- "Then a wind keened far off in the west, nosed across the hills and leaped into the clearing, snapping its fangs at the limbs of the oak trees." If I marked every description that evoked a I-need-to-remember-this-one response, I would be recopying half of the book.
This is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' final book. In fact, she died just months after it was published in 1953 after she struggled with it for a decade.
I came to this title through a mention of it by Pat Conroy in his My Reading Life where he notes a plethora of book titles. In his chapter about Norm Berg, a publisher representative who befriended and advised the young author Conroy, he writes that Norm had violently disapproved with Rawling's book The Sojourner. Since Conroy read many of the books Berg mentioned to him, I thought it was likely he read this Rawlings book, and my goal is to read, or attempt to, as many of the books Conroy references.
"Living close to the land as she was growing up 'planted deep in [her] a love of the soil, the crops, the seasons and a sense of kinship with men and women everywhere who live close to the soil.'" This quote from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society is why Rawlings could write The Sojourner with such understanding and description. Every day I worked outside digging in the dirt during my time with this book and saw the new spring growth, the clouds, the rain, the trees, and the birds, I found a deeper appreciation for the natural wonders of the world.
Although I am in the age of moving books on to others after I read them, this is one that will remain on my shelves. Maybe it is my seasoned age that tightens my grip around this story, but I think you may find this a surprisingly edifying read and one that will linger in your thoughts.
A few quotes I marked:
"Yet it was . . . Asahel who knew those books secretly by heart, and read, as laboriously as he did everything else, any scrap of paper with printing on it, poring hungrily over the magic of words."
“His father had never planted an orchard. No growing thing was graceless, but that scowling, snarling man, Hiram Linden, had seemed purposely to avoid all crops that flowered in beauty. All were utilitarian, sown with surliness and harvested with oaths. Ase was the first Linden of three generations to consider the earth and its bounty with reverence and affection, to long to adorn it as best he might during his tenure.”
“She was not unattractive until she focused her eyes on a human being, when their unblinking coldness gave the effect of the stare of an adder.”
“I’ll walk off the rest of my mad.”
“He set down the milk pails to rest and stared at the bright house. This was a man’s great joy, to come at nightfall after his day’s work to a lighted house. . . . and his beloved was waiting for him with food and warmth and comfort.”
“Life is a difficult matter, and the more a simple man may learn of what greater men have thought, and taught, have spoken and have written, the better can he cope with any sort of life.”
“It occurred to him that the increasing patience of age was as great a myth as the unalloyed joy of youth. The longer he lived, the less tolerance he had for the patently evil.”
“Some of the books that provided the richest fare were hidden under unrevealing names, like a rare soul behind a drab face.”
“It had been so brief a sojourn, not even a full century. He had been a guest in a mansion and he was not ungrateful. He was at once exhausted and refreshed. His stay was ended. Now he must gather up the shabby impedimenta of his mind and body and be on his way again.”
The first sentence was arresting to me: "Three crows flew low over the fresh mound in the Linden burying-ground, dark as the thoughts of the three unmourning mourners." I had no idea what this book was about at all, but after that first sentence, I was hooked. The story has some dialog, just enough to carry the characters along, and most of the sentences are written in the simple noun-verb-direct object form, yet the form does not make a simple story. The descriptions are some of the best -- "Then a wind keened far off in the west, nosed across the hills and leaped into the clearing, snapping its fangs at the limbs of the oak trees." If I marked every description that evoked a I-need-to-remember-this-one response, I would be recopying half of the book.
This is Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings' final book. In fact, she died just months after it was published in 1953 after she struggled with it for a decade.
I came to this title through a mention of it by Pat Conroy in his My Reading Life where he notes a plethora of book titles. In his chapter about Norm Berg, a publisher representative who befriended and advised the young author Conroy, he writes that Norm had violently disapproved with Rawling's book The Sojourner. Since Conroy read many of the books Berg mentioned to him, I thought it was likely he read this Rawlings book, and my goal is to read, or attempt to, as many of the books Conroy references.
"Living close to the land as she was growing up 'planted deep in [her] a love of the soil, the crops, the seasons and a sense of kinship with men and women everywhere who live close to the soil.'" This quote from Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society is why Rawlings could write The Sojourner with such understanding and description. Every day I worked outside digging in the dirt during my time with this book and saw the new spring growth, the clouds, the rain, the trees, and the birds, I found a deeper appreciation for the natural wonders of the world.
Although I am in the age of moving books on to others after I read them, this is one that will remain on my shelves. Maybe it is my seasoned age that tightens my grip around this story, but I think you may find this a surprisingly edifying read and one that will linger in your thoughts.
A few quotes I marked:
"Yet it was . . . Asahel who knew those books secretly by heart, and read, as laboriously as he did everything else, any scrap of paper with printing on it, poring hungrily over the magic of words."
“His father had never planted an orchard. No growing thing was graceless, but that scowling, snarling man, Hiram Linden, had seemed purposely to avoid all crops that flowered in beauty. All were utilitarian, sown with surliness and harvested with oaths. Ase was the first Linden of three generations to consider the earth and its bounty with reverence and affection, to long to adorn it as best he might during his tenure.”
“She was not unattractive until she focused her eyes on a human being, when their unblinking coldness gave the effect of the stare of an adder.”
“I’ll walk off the rest of my mad.”
“He set down the milk pails to rest and stared at the bright house. This was a man’s great joy, to come at nightfall after his day’s work to a lighted house. . . . and his beloved was waiting for him with food and warmth and comfort.”
“Life is a difficult matter, and the more a simple man may learn of what greater men have thought, and taught, have spoken and have written, the better can he cope with any sort of life.”
“It occurred to him that the increasing patience of age was as great a myth as the unalloyed joy of youth. The longer he lived, the less tolerance he had for the patently evil.”
“Some of the books that provided the richest fare were hidden under unrevealing names, like a rare soul behind a drab face.”
“It had been so brief a sojourn, not even a full century. He had been a guest in a mansion and he was not ungrateful. He was at once exhausted and refreshed. His stay was ended. Now he must gather up the shabby impedimenta of his mind and body and be on his way again.”
July 21, 2012
I take back what I said about Blood of My Blood. The Sojourner is easily my favorite novel by Marjorie Rawlings. The writing is so sophisticated. The details are masterfully rendered. The novel consistently surprises and makes you uncomfortable and frustrated in one part and full of joy and peace the next. This novel was inspired, in part, by Rawlings's desire to understand the Michigan farm lifestyle that produced her mother, with whom she shared a strained relationship. What she tries to express in the novel is the desire to work the land for the sake of living without need of material possession or external reward beyond the sustenance you are given, however temporarily. The novel begins like a prodigal son tale but ends somewhere completely different. I savored every last page. Beware, her descriptions of Nellie's dishes will leave you hungrier than any of the Cross Creek food descriptions!
October 6, 2015
The other reviews on this site already do this book justice, so I'll just add my two cents' worth: This just might be the best book I've ever read. It's certainly in the top 5, and it's one of the few books I plan on reading again some day.
June 22, 2021
“But a good man would never choose the evil.” “No. He compromises, Jan. Or he does nothing. Sometimes he only says nothing. He could have put up a small barrier, but he leaves the way clear for the evil to move in.” The boy nodded. ...
When I first started reading this book I wasn't sure if I would be able to finish it. I too had a mother who adored my older sister and treated me like a nothing. It was as if I went through life wearing a badge (that I didn't earn) that announced that I was unlovable and an irritation. So I commiserated with Ase. But I must say I think he perservered in the best way he knew how. He learned and coped, yet there were deep heartaches that he reflected on towards the end of his life.
Good people came into his life and helped guide and mold him. Although, he didn't quite learn to verbalize what he needed to express - especially as a father. I couldn't quite figure out Nellie (although I wish I could cook and keep house the way she did). She was a good wife to Ase but I don't think she really loved him.
I don't want to write too much and give away the story. So much of it seems allegorical but I don't know that I'm smart enough to decipher it all. This would be a great book to read for Book Club... so much to discuss. The writing was superb - the story flowed and the setting and the characters came to life for me. I even dreamed about Uncle Benjamin one night (note to self: get a Real Life). I would highly recommend reading this.
This old hymn kept going through my mind as I read this story:
This world is not my home
I'm just a passin' through
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue.
Somehow I think Ase has found his treasures.
When I first started reading this book I wasn't sure if I would be able to finish it. I too had a mother who adored my older sister and treated me like a nothing. It was as if I went through life wearing a badge (that I didn't earn) that announced that I was unlovable and an irritation. So I commiserated with Ase. But I must say I think he perservered in the best way he knew how. He learned and coped, yet there were deep heartaches that he reflected on towards the end of his life.
Good people came into his life and helped guide and mold him. Although, he didn't quite learn to verbalize what he needed to express - especially as a father. I couldn't quite figure out Nellie (although I wish I could cook and keep house the way she did). She was a good wife to Ase but I don't think she really loved him.
I don't want to write too much and give away the story. So much of it seems allegorical but I don't know that I'm smart enough to decipher it all. This would be a great book to read for Book Club... so much to discuss. The writing was superb - the story flowed and the setting and the characters came to life for me. I even dreamed about Uncle Benjamin one night (note to self: get a Real Life). I would highly recommend reading this.
This old hymn kept going through my mind as I read this story:
This world is not my home
I'm just a passin' through
My treasures are laid up
Somewhere beyond the blue.
Somehow I think Ase has found his treasures.
June 13, 2024
I love this book so much. It is out of print and can be hard to find but I do have one that I will loan out. It is written by the same lady who wrote The Yearling and has much the same tone but addresses more of the marriage relationship in family dynamics. Very powerful!
Well, that review above was from many years ago and now I am going to give this novel the proper review it deserves! This is truly one of my favorite books of all time and certainly my favorite of all that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote, and she wrote some powerful stuff! It breaks my heart that it was not well received in her time. I am grateful that it is back in print and that more people are finding their way to Ase's story. This was my suggested reading for our book group for this year and, while not all enjoyed it, it did make for a great discussion. I was so grateful that I did finally get to discuss this book with people after many years of knowing only a handful of people who have read it. There are a lot of quotes to share from this one...
"Benjamin had had four years, while Asahel, after the simple schooling of the one-room schoolhouse two miles down the road, had been kept at home to work. Yet it was Benjamin who remembered nothing from his textbooks, scarcely read the weekly county paper, and Asahel who knew those books secretly by heart, and read, as laboriously as he did everything else, any scrap of paper with printing on it, poring hungrily over the magic of words. It seemed to him, who was all but inarticulate, that if he could read enough of them he would know the answers to the questions that tormented him. He had no way of knowing that wiser men had asked those questions, which never had been, perhaps never would be, answered."
"Yet it seemed to young Ase that the greater the injustice that came to one, the deeper would be the desire to give justice and warmth to one's children."
"Ase was stirred and touched by the generosity of his three friends, taking their affection as a gift past his deserving. He did not guess that they recognized in him imagination and spirit like their own, a bigness of mind, a rare understanding and tenderness that warmed them, too, made them feel valued, as they valued him. He knew only that he was a stranger and they took him in. They spoke to him and he was a little able to speak with them. He found his voice fully in his flute alone."
"She was almost as pretty as he thought her."
"There were still late apples to be picked that needed the touch of frost, the Northern spies and russets. These would be the tangiest of all, and would keep all winter long in the stone cellar. The easy summer apples had been sweet but insipid. He wondered, if strength and goodness needed a touch of hardship to come to true maturity. No, he decided, this was not necessarily so. His mother had been subjected to the frosts and they had only made her acid."
"As always, the majestic language moved him; the talk of shepherds, abiding in the field. It seemed to him that a man might meet God, if ever, in the fields, for so much of creation was there."
"He was always anxious for his crops, not so much for their money value, as because they were a part of him, something like his children. He had brought them into being, nursed and tended them, and it seemed to him a betrayal of them, of the land, when they did not thrive. Their failure was his failure. He thought of Nat. Somehow, he was failing with him, and he could not put his fingers on the reasons."
"She was a fragment of himself. Their edges were raw with recognition, so that they must constantly be fitted together, else in the separation there was pain."
"He stood off at a distance and saw his remotest ancestors side by side with his farthest descendants. He wondered if he had an unnatural point of view. Time for him was not marked off in jumps, as Nellie expressed it. It was not clearly marked and definite, it was all one, sometimes relative but forever whole. All life seemed to him contained in the beginning and the end, if there had ever been a beginning and if there ever would be an end. Time was, must be, timeless. As from a great enough height a landscape would show no detail, so from a far enough distance all time would be seen to exist simultaneously. He felt this in his inner mind and spirit."
"In any case, the truth had always seemed to him more vital than happiness."
"He could not speak the truth to this woman, his mother. Doll was as close to him as his own skin. She lay as deep as his very seed. With her, he felt himself complete, often actually articulate. He puzzled over this relationship of parent to child, of human to human, so that one spoke to another with understanding and in turn was understood. It seemed to have nothing to do with the blood relation, but only with some spark that flashed rarely, that said, 'You and I together share a bright secret flame. Perhaps, as one, we may find the answer to all that torments us and is hidden.' It seemed to him that no man could it for himself, alone."
"He heard and read much these days of giving the younger generation 'advantages' and 'opportunities'. Where this concerned a better education, he agreed, with the deep yearning of his own to know the things he had never known, to learn not only facts and wisdom, but the truth, and beyond that, the very nature of truth. Where it seemed to mean a blind leaving of the farms for the cities, a seeking of less arduous labor, the going into the businesses and industries that were making great fortunes, for the sole purpose of making a fortune, he could not see advantage, but loss."
"Children came into the world with characters infinitely more unpredictable than those of the creatures, from whose breeding and bloodlines much could be prophesied. Well, he thought, that was part of the glory of human beings, that each was only himself."
"Amelia's sly greed for food was indeed a puzzling thing. It was as though, feeling cheated by life, she would compensate herself in this fashion. Surprisingly, too, she remained lean, where Aunt Jess the midwife, who ate half as much, grew yearly vaster. The consuming flame in Amelia seemed to burn up the aliment as fast as she took it."
"His Shakespeare was of course beyond her, but he looked forward to the time when she would read aloud to him the rolling rhythms, where his own tongue could only stammer."
"It seemed to Ase that snow resembled human beings, after a fashion, with an equal capacity for good or evil. It was necessary for covering the winter wheat, tiw as needed for winter moisture, to supplement the spring and summer and autumn rains, for without water neither man nor stock nor vegetation could survive. Yet when it came, as now, it was malevolent. He recognized in the same instant that he was being injust in his conception of the snow, for it was a casual, an indifferent, force of nature, where mankind, surely, had a choice."
"It was asking too much of the physician, too, he thought, to pass judgment on a human soul. That was a function of God. Or was each soul supposed to judge itself, was that the ladder by which it climbed toward godhood? And if so, where and whose was the responsibility when a soul like Amelia's had lost, apparently, all power of judgment? Did it then lie in the opaque and timeless hands of time?"
"It came to him that the one strong family bond was Nellie's food...The breaking of bread together, the sharing of salt, the eating of meat, was a sacred thing, one small community against the outer darkness."
"He wanted to say, 'Life is a difficult matter, and the more a simple man may learn of what greater men have thought, and taught, have spoken and have written, the better can he cope with any sort of life.'"
"He did not know whether Mink's breath ceased to come or whether he ceased to draw it. There was an instant when he sensed an unheard thunder and an unseen lightning. Then the room was filled with a vast calm."
"Nothing could have satisfied Amelia but complete possession of her son, to all intents and purposes returning him to the dark slyness of her womb."
"Nellie had called the gypsies 'strangers'. They were less of strangers to him than his own."
"But the danger, Ase knew, had never been that Nat might now succeed, but that he would."
"Ase picked up eagerly each new volume that Willis brought home, but for all the warmth the Dickens gave him, he was still unsatisfied. Surely there must be other books that told of larger worlds, books more like his Shakespeare and his Bible, to carry a man's mind and spirit soaring, to stab him with questions, and having drawn blood, to staunch with answerings. It was the great thinkers for whose words he longed, unknowingly what he longed for."
"Something in Willis had been waylaid and destroyed. He had taken the easy road instead of the hard one, but it was the easy road that had proved dark and tortuous."
"It occurred to him that the increasing patience of age was as great a myth as the unalloyed joy of youth"
"The old cabin was more nearly his home than his own. It was here he found meat for the teeth of his spirit."
"He wondered if he could explain his sense of timelessness. He did not think of it as another life, nor yet quite an immortality of the same one. It was only, he felt that individual lives could no more be separated from life itself than drops of water from the mass of ocean. He was willing to give to life the name of 'God' since men knew no other large enough with which to speak of the ineffable, the Word made Life. He supposed men were not yet fit or ready to be entrusted, desperately as they needed it, with the secret of the Word. No, he could not explain."
"Some of the books that provided the richest fare were hidden under unrevealing names, like a rare soul behind a drab face."
"He had been a stubborn man, he thought, about the wrong things."
"There is good and there is evil, and every man has to throw his weight on one side or the other."
"In the last hours across the thousands of miles of the beautiful, the fabulous nation, he understood that he had been watching so eagerly in the hope that he might recognize his home. It was not here. Neither had he left it behind him."
"He, too, he recognized, had sought to find the unfindable. He had lost and sought a brother, and it was in the faces of all men he should have peered. He had been homeless, and knew that for such men as he there was no home; only an endless journey. He had sought to know the unknowable. He and his whole race, great, slow, groping, God-touched children, would have to wait a long time, he supposed, for all that, learning one lesson a millennium, sometimes forgetting it and having to begin all over. He himself, he thought humbly, had learned far too little. He had done much harm. He had known good from evil, and he had sat miserable and mute when the fight was called for. He had carried his standards into battle perhaps not quite too late. He could not know whether his good had been greater than his evil. No man could balance the delicate scales, for himself weighted one end and could not reach across to weight the other. An invisible hand would add or subtract. An unheard voice would speak the answer."
Well, that review above was from many years ago and now I am going to give this novel the proper review it deserves! This is truly one of my favorite books of all time and certainly my favorite of all that Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings wrote, and she wrote some powerful stuff! It breaks my heart that it was not well received in her time. I am grateful that it is back in print and that more people are finding their way to Ase's story. This was my suggested reading for our book group for this year and, while not all enjoyed it, it did make for a great discussion. I was so grateful that I did finally get to discuss this book with people after many years of knowing only a handful of people who have read it. There are a lot of quotes to share from this one...
"Benjamin had had four years, while Asahel, after the simple schooling of the one-room schoolhouse two miles down the road, had been kept at home to work. Yet it was Benjamin who remembered nothing from his textbooks, scarcely read the weekly county paper, and Asahel who knew those books secretly by heart, and read, as laboriously as he did everything else, any scrap of paper with printing on it, poring hungrily over the magic of words. It seemed to him, who was all but inarticulate, that if he could read enough of them he would know the answers to the questions that tormented him. He had no way of knowing that wiser men had asked those questions, which never had been, perhaps never would be, answered."
"Yet it seemed to young Ase that the greater the injustice that came to one, the deeper would be the desire to give justice and warmth to one's children."
"Ase was stirred and touched by the generosity of his three friends, taking their affection as a gift past his deserving. He did not guess that they recognized in him imagination and spirit like their own, a bigness of mind, a rare understanding and tenderness that warmed them, too, made them feel valued, as they valued him. He knew only that he was a stranger and they took him in. They spoke to him and he was a little able to speak with them. He found his voice fully in his flute alone."
"She was almost as pretty as he thought her."
"There were still late apples to be picked that needed the touch of frost, the Northern spies and russets. These would be the tangiest of all, and would keep all winter long in the stone cellar. The easy summer apples had been sweet but insipid. He wondered, if strength and goodness needed a touch of hardship to come to true maturity. No, he decided, this was not necessarily so. His mother had been subjected to the frosts and they had only made her acid."
"As always, the majestic language moved him; the talk of shepherds, abiding in the field. It seemed to him that a man might meet God, if ever, in the fields, for so much of creation was there."
"He was always anxious for his crops, not so much for their money value, as because they were a part of him, something like his children. He had brought them into being, nursed and tended them, and it seemed to him a betrayal of them, of the land, when they did not thrive. Their failure was his failure. He thought of Nat. Somehow, he was failing with him, and he could not put his fingers on the reasons."
"She was a fragment of himself. Their edges were raw with recognition, so that they must constantly be fitted together, else in the separation there was pain."
"He stood off at a distance and saw his remotest ancestors side by side with his farthest descendants. He wondered if he had an unnatural point of view. Time for him was not marked off in jumps, as Nellie expressed it. It was not clearly marked and definite, it was all one, sometimes relative but forever whole. All life seemed to him contained in the beginning and the end, if there had ever been a beginning and if there ever would be an end. Time was, must be, timeless. As from a great enough height a landscape would show no detail, so from a far enough distance all time would be seen to exist simultaneously. He felt this in his inner mind and spirit."
"In any case, the truth had always seemed to him more vital than happiness."
"He could not speak the truth to this woman, his mother. Doll was as close to him as his own skin. She lay as deep as his very seed. With her, he felt himself complete, often actually articulate. He puzzled over this relationship of parent to child, of human to human, so that one spoke to another with understanding and in turn was understood. It seemed to have nothing to do with the blood relation, but only with some spark that flashed rarely, that said, 'You and I together share a bright secret flame. Perhaps, as one, we may find the answer to all that torments us and is hidden.' It seemed to him that no man could it for himself, alone."
"He heard and read much these days of giving the younger generation 'advantages' and 'opportunities'. Where this concerned a better education, he agreed, with the deep yearning of his own to know the things he had never known, to learn not only facts and wisdom, but the truth, and beyond that, the very nature of truth. Where it seemed to mean a blind leaving of the farms for the cities, a seeking of less arduous labor, the going into the businesses and industries that were making great fortunes, for the sole purpose of making a fortune, he could not see advantage, but loss."
"Children came into the world with characters infinitely more unpredictable than those of the creatures, from whose breeding and bloodlines much could be prophesied. Well, he thought, that was part of the glory of human beings, that each was only himself."
"Amelia's sly greed for food was indeed a puzzling thing. It was as though, feeling cheated by life, she would compensate herself in this fashion. Surprisingly, too, she remained lean, where Aunt Jess the midwife, who ate half as much, grew yearly vaster. The consuming flame in Amelia seemed to burn up the aliment as fast as she took it."
"His Shakespeare was of course beyond her, but he looked forward to the time when she would read aloud to him the rolling rhythms, where his own tongue could only stammer."
"It seemed to Ase that snow resembled human beings, after a fashion, with an equal capacity for good or evil. It was necessary for covering the winter wheat, tiw as needed for winter moisture, to supplement the spring and summer and autumn rains, for without water neither man nor stock nor vegetation could survive. Yet when it came, as now, it was malevolent. He recognized in the same instant that he was being injust in his conception of the snow, for it was a casual, an indifferent, force of nature, where mankind, surely, had a choice."
"It was asking too much of the physician, too, he thought, to pass judgment on a human soul. That was a function of God. Or was each soul supposed to judge itself, was that the ladder by which it climbed toward godhood? And if so, where and whose was the responsibility when a soul like Amelia's had lost, apparently, all power of judgment? Did it then lie in the opaque and timeless hands of time?"
"It came to him that the one strong family bond was Nellie's food...The breaking of bread together, the sharing of salt, the eating of meat, was a sacred thing, one small community against the outer darkness."
"He wanted to say, 'Life is a difficult matter, and the more a simple man may learn of what greater men have thought, and taught, have spoken and have written, the better can he cope with any sort of life.'"
"He did not know whether Mink's breath ceased to come or whether he ceased to draw it. There was an instant when he sensed an unheard thunder and an unseen lightning. Then the room was filled with a vast calm."
"Nothing could have satisfied Amelia but complete possession of her son, to all intents and purposes returning him to the dark slyness of her womb."
"Nellie had called the gypsies 'strangers'. They were less of strangers to him than his own."
"But the danger, Ase knew, had never been that Nat might now succeed, but that he would."
"Ase picked up eagerly each new volume that Willis brought home, but for all the warmth the Dickens gave him, he was still unsatisfied. Surely there must be other books that told of larger worlds, books more like his Shakespeare and his Bible, to carry a man's mind and spirit soaring, to stab him with questions, and having drawn blood, to staunch with answerings. It was the great thinkers for whose words he longed, unknowingly what he longed for."
"Something in Willis had been waylaid and destroyed. He had taken the easy road instead of the hard one, but it was the easy road that had proved dark and tortuous."
"It occurred to him that the increasing patience of age was as great a myth as the unalloyed joy of youth"
"The old cabin was more nearly his home than his own. It was here he found meat for the teeth of his spirit."
"He wondered if he could explain his sense of timelessness. He did not think of it as another life, nor yet quite an immortality of the same one. It was only, he felt that individual lives could no more be separated from life itself than drops of water from the mass of ocean. He was willing to give to life the name of 'God' since men knew no other large enough with which to speak of the ineffable, the Word made Life. He supposed men were not yet fit or ready to be entrusted, desperately as they needed it, with the secret of the Word. No, he could not explain."
"Some of the books that provided the richest fare were hidden under unrevealing names, like a rare soul behind a drab face."
"He had been a stubborn man, he thought, about the wrong things."
"There is good and there is evil, and every man has to throw his weight on one side or the other."
"In the last hours across the thousands of miles of the beautiful, the fabulous nation, he understood that he had been watching so eagerly in the hope that he might recognize his home. It was not here. Neither had he left it behind him."
"He, too, he recognized, had sought to find the unfindable. He had lost and sought a brother, and it was in the faces of all men he should have peered. He had been homeless, and knew that for such men as he there was no home; only an endless journey. He had sought to know the unknowable. He and his whole race, great, slow, groping, God-touched children, would have to wait a long time, he supposed, for all that, learning one lesson a millennium, sometimes forgetting it and having to begin all over. He himself, he thought humbly, had learned far too little. He had done much harm. He had known good from evil, and he had sat miserable and mute when the fight was called for. He had carried his standards into battle perhaps not quite too late. He could not know whether his good had been greater than his evil. No man could balance the delicate scales, for himself weighted one end and could not reach across to weight the other. An invisible hand would add or subtract. An unheard voice would speak the answer."
December 18, 2020
This is the lifelong tale of Asahel Linden, the Sojourner. It is probably my 4th or 5th time reading it. I love it even more. An outsider in his own tribe, he finds friends outside of the usual parameters. They are not his age, not his ethnicity, each from far off countries bringing to his lonely heart foreign but welcome comforts.
His father is newly dead. Mother is a tyrant. Brother Benjamin has an escape plan prepared, with no return included. All Asa wants is to be with his brother. At their poignant parting Asa says:
"I'll never be done missing you."
Asa is left behind to make a life out of limited opportunity and a parent who hates him, and ever waits for the return of the good son, Benjamin. Set between 1860 through WWII, in a central Atlantic state (never is quite identified - all community is from very local perspectives). From there on, Asa's life unfolds.
For anyone left behind to take care of what remains, this book is a perfect read. For me the ending satisfies and comforts my soul. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings writing is evocative, whispering to all of my ancestral DNA - the ones who stayed put.
His father is newly dead. Mother is a tyrant. Brother Benjamin has an escape plan prepared, with no return included. All Asa wants is to be with his brother. At their poignant parting Asa says:
"I'll never be done missing you."
Asa is left behind to make a life out of limited opportunity and a parent who hates him, and ever waits for the return of the good son, Benjamin. Set between 1860 through WWII, in a central Atlantic state (never is quite identified - all community is from very local perspectives). From there on, Asa's life unfolds.
For anyone left behind to take care of what remains, this book is a perfect read. For me the ending satisfies and comforts my soul. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings writing is evocative, whispering to all of my ancestral DNA - the ones who stayed put.
September 29, 2008
Emotionally brutal but instantly one of my favorite books. The characters and landscape are authentic, giving a stark view of humanity simultaneously tragic and beautiful. How's that for a cliche review? Seriously though, everything about this book was real. The pain and joy I felt were intense and often prompted by the same event. The duality of life's experiences and the importance of embracing the pain and love 'cause they're pretty much joined at the hip.
August 30, 2010
I love Rawlings' writing style. This novel set in 1860 up to the second World War is a history of the Linden family, whose patriarch was a farmer all his life. He was one of my favorites; though he is quiet and slow to speak, he is a deep thinker and open to loving the people and beauty around him. He is "the sojourner" of the title. His best friends are colorful characters-- Mink Fisher, an Indian, "fathers" and teaches him about planting , hunting, and how to live on the earth--Tim O'Brien, a drunken Irishman makes music with him--the gypsies camp on the farm each summer and consider him one of their family. Rawlings is skilled at describing the natural world and at developing characters. And she can be quite poetic. In an early chapter she writes, "The early morning mist filled the valley. The willow trees along the stream lifted through it like cloaked and long-armed travelers rising from a night of sleep beside the water." It is an epic that reads easily and brings much pleasure--and tears.
March 29, 2013
I read this before, but lately, I got a yearning to read it again, and I'm so glad I did. Rawlings lyrical descriptions are so beautifully crafted. The word magic is strong in this book, making me wish I could cut out sentences to adorn my walls. So poignant. I think I'm enjoying it even more this time than the first time I read it, as I'm coming to it older and having experienced more disappointments myself.
I was originally drawn to this book by the tattered jacket with the beautiful illustration of Ase standing against the night sky. It is such a perfect illustration of the feel of this book, the solitary man, nature, strength, and pathos.
I was originally drawn to this book by the tattered jacket with the beautiful illustration of Ase standing against the night sky. It is such a perfect illustration of the feel of this book, the solitary man, nature, strength, and pathos.
December 15, 2009
Written back in 1953, this is the story of a life and the lives intertwined with it, the tale very evocatively set in rural New York state. The novelty for me was seeing lives unfold, joys and adversities alternating, from the viewpoint of a man rather than a woman. I felt it was masterfully written and well worth reading.
November 14, 2017
This is one of my favorite books ever. I read it over and over.
June 13, 2024
Beautiful story, exquisite writing.
March 19, 2022
This book is probably the best book I’ve ever read. Full of insights onto what life is all about. The struggles the joys and sorrows.
April 1, 2024
Sad, but so rich. This Farmer/poet/philosopher describes farmlands in the 5 senses, helping the reader feel love for the land as well as the complex and varied personalities in the book.
September 1, 2024
I read The Yearling a couple of months ago, and fell in love with it immediately. I then vowed to read every book by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.
I'm happy to say that I've just read my second book of hers (though, it was the last one released before she died), and, like The Yearling before it, I fell in love.
Asahel Linden is my new favorite character. I adore him so much, and I hate a lot of his family so much. 😅
Rawlings has such a beautiful way with words. She presents a lot of questions and themes through Asahel that leaves me mulling over everything I read, while also wanting to dive right back into the beginning and start it over again.
I could go on and on about The Sojourner, but for whoever's-reading-this's sake, I'll keep it short.
Read it. It's incredible. I love it.
I'm happy to say that I've just read my second book of hers (though, it was the last one released before she died), and, like The Yearling before it, I fell in love.
Asahel Linden is my new favorite character. I adore him so much, and I hate a lot of his family so much. 😅
Rawlings has such a beautiful way with words. She presents a lot of questions and themes through Asahel that leaves me mulling over everything I read, while also wanting to dive right back into the beginning and start it over again.
I could go on and on about The Sojourner, but for whoever's-reading-this's sake, I'll keep it short.
Read it. It's incredible. I love it.
January 21, 2023
I chose this book completely at random, and that proved to be one of life's happy accidents. This is the story of a good man, but because he is loyal and trusting he often does not see Bad qualities when they are manifested by others. He is filled with deep thoughts, but so shy and in articulate that he misses many opportunities to share them, and even misses the chance to be a significant figure informing the minds of his children as they grow. This is the story of faith in human nature both well placed and misplaced. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys the slower rhythms of older novels, and particularly to those who enjoyed books like The Good Earth or my Antonia. I will definitely be seeking out the authors other books, including The Yearling which I've known about since I was a kid but somehow never got around to reading.
July 26, 2019
Gloriously descriptive language and wonderfully narrated story of one man's life. While the jumps forward in time were welcome, I think the story could have been a little shorter. So glad (spoiler alert!) he met a peaceful end and the farm was saved from the conniving son.
August 28, 2014
I picked this up off of my "To Be Read" stack, not sure what to expect. The author drew me into the story of Asahel Linden, beginning with his childhood in the 1800s. Where I initially thought I'd have difficulty sticking with a story that wasn't brimming with action and adventure, I found myself invested in Asahel and his family. The author does a fantastic job balancing the hardness of his life (which is sometimes quite harsh) with his character--allowing him to retain an innocence that sometimes serves as a contrast to the world and people around him. This balance keeps the book from dragging--offering the reader little bits of lightness when the events of the plot might have otherwise been too heavy to bear.
The book also offers a window into the changes that a generation experienced in just one lifetime at the turn of the last century. I highly recommend the book to grown-ups. I wouldn't give this book to younger readers--partly because I'm not sure parents would want them reading the marriage chapter, but mostly because the character's sense of time, family, and aging are more likely to resonate with readers who are over 30.
The book also offers a window into the changes that a generation experienced in just one lifetime at the turn of the last century. I highly recommend the book to grown-ups. I wouldn't give this book to younger readers--partly because I'm not sure parents would want them reading the marriage chapter, but mostly because the character's sense of time, family, and aging are more likely to resonate with readers who are over 30.
December 11, 2015
المغترب..اخر ما اقتنيته من سوريه وطني الحبيب ان كان يحق لي ان اعتبر تلك البلاد الجميله وطنا اخر لي
استغرقت في قراءة هذه الروايه مايقارب الثلاثه اساييع وتعمدت ان اتباطأ في قراءتها لانني شعرت انني جزء منها وان شخصياتها وابطالها تمت لي بصله..
تدور احداث هذه الروايه حول آل لندن تحديدا ابنهم (ايس) الذي لم يحظ بحب والدته وعطفها بل كانت تفضل ابنها البكر (بن) عليه ...
نشأ ايس فلاحا بسيطا محبا لارضه يوليه جل اهتمامه ورعايته نشا وتزوج وانجب اولاده في تلك المزرعه..لم يبتعد عنها ولم يسافر بخلاف بن الذي هجر امه رغبة بجمع المال مما حدا بها الى الجنون
ايس اخذ طباعه من تلك الارض فقد كان مثالا للعطاء والبذل دون مقابل كان متسامحا لم يعتب على والدته التى قتلت ابنته ولم يقابل اساءتها له بالمثل
كان باختصار فلاحا بسيطا تحلى بكل القيم والمبادئ شعرت وانا اقرا سطور هذه الروايه انه لا يزال هناك قلوب وضمائر نقيه بين كل هذا السواد الذي يلتف حولنا وان الطمع والاستغلال ليست مفاهيم حديثه وليدة هذا العصر بل هي قديمه قدم التاريخ...
رولنجز قولب كل هذه الاحداث بقالب البساطه والسلاسه اذ تشعر وانت تنتقل من حدث لاخر انك اصبحت ضمن هذه الشخصيات..المغترب روايه نشرت قبل بضع وستين عاما لكنها تصلح لاعاده القيم والمبادئ في كل زمان ...
استغرقت في قراءة هذه الروايه مايقارب الثلاثه اساييع وتعمدت ان اتباطأ في قراءتها لانني شعرت انني جزء منها وان شخصياتها وابطالها تمت لي بصله..
تدور احداث هذه الروايه حول آل لندن تحديدا ابنهم (ايس) الذي لم يحظ بحب والدته وعطفها بل كانت تفضل ابنها البكر (بن) عليه ...
نشأ ايس فلاحا بسيطا محبا لارضه يوليه جل اهتمامه ورعايته نشا وتزوج وانجب اولاده في تلك المزرعه..لم يبتعد عنها ولم يسافر بخلاف بن الذي هجر امه رغبة بجمع المال مما حدا بها الى الجنون
ايس اخذ طباعه من تلك الارض فقد كان مثالا للعطاء والبذل دون مقابل كان متسامحا لم يعتب على والدته التى قتلت ابنته ولم يقابل اساءتها له بالمثل
كان باختصار فلاحا بسيطا تحلى بكل القيم والمبادئ شعرت وانا اقرا سطور هذه الروايه انه لا يزال هناك قلوب وضمائر نقيه بين كل هذا السواد الذي يلتف حولنا وان الطمع والاستغلال ليست مفاهيم حديثه وليدة هذا العصر بل هي قديمه قدم التاريخ...
رولنجز قولب كل هذه الاحداث بقالب البساطه والسلاسه اذ تشعر وانت تنتقل من حدث لاخر انك اصبحت ضمن هذه الشخصيات..المغترب روايه نشرت قبل بضع وستين عاما لكنها تصلح لاعاده القيم والمبادئ في كل زمان ...
February 10, 2013
Excellent book that inspires conflicting feelings about the protagonist. You have to love Ase for his goodness and 'complicated simplicity' but there were times when I wanted to shake him for his seeming indifference (more accurately his inaction). But I came to understand that was his nature, and maybe you don't really understand that until the very end of the book. It's a wonderful study in human nature where all characters are concerned, especially in the interactions. Rawlings' character development is extraordinary, as are her depictions. This book has a lot of detail regarding surroundings and every day life -- a plus for those who enjoy such things, a minus for those who can do without and just want to 'get on with the story.'
I'm somewhere in between, although I think the many descriptors only help to understand the depths of Ase.
I'm somewhere in between, although I think the many descriptors only help to understand the depths of Ase.
September 29, 2016
This story moved me incredibly, although there were times that it tore at my heart. The main character, Asahel Linden, was The Sojourner, traveling through life immersed in his heart and in his philosophical thoughts. Some of this, I identified with, but when the cruel actions of those close to him had impact, I thought to myself, "I would have fought back with actions just as heartless." Asahel was incapable of fighting, although he stood his ground firmly. I felt angry, sometimes not sure that I wanted to continue reading, so frustrated was I with someone whose values were close to my own. A moving tale, indeed, it will go on my permanent shelf. How grateful I am that I came across it on a thrift store shelf, because it is out of print and I would never have even known about it.
March 15, 2016
Though Rawlings can write well, I am certain, the plot of this book was a snooze fest. I am not kidding. I have been reading this book, a couple pages at a time for almost a year. I can generally crack out a 300 page fiction book in a day or day and a half. A week at most if I have no time to read. This book was just uninspiring and I never did start to enjoy it. Asa, as a character, was easy to despise even though you are supposed to sympathize with him. That made the book challenging.
For a full review visit http://ireadalotofbooks.com/the-sojou...
For a full review visit http://ireadalotofbooks.com/the-sojou...
September 16, 2015
I read this for the first time 20 years ago. It touched my soul then, and has touched it the other few times I read it. Interestingly, the book was important to my father as well. Neither of us is like Ase but we somehow connect to him. This is the best book I've ever read. But, if you're looking for a fast-paced modern book, stay away. Read this in a beautiful, quiet place, and go to another world.
May 17, 2019
Started out slow, but got better as it went along. The main character, was, at times, sensitive, ethical, loving, indecisive, weak, strong, and stuck. Throughout the story I was very ambivalent about him. Unfortunately, he was surrounded by some people who were less than pillars of virtue and the characters who were healthy, loyal, and loving were only in his.life.sporadically. A story of personal growth, love, and redemption.
March 4, 2010
Rawlings books remind me of Steinbeck, and they are nearly as good. I'm not sure why her works haven't received much attention lately, although her novel The Yearling won the pulitzer prize for fiction the year before Steinbeck won for The Grapes of Wrath. This book was somewhat slow moving but never boring. I recommend it.
May 16, 2016
There were times when I just wanted to smack Ase. Speak up, man! He is so often misunderstood b/c he simply can't express himself. I completely disliked Amelia and the two oldest children. Sometimes I resented Nellie's criticism.
The prose is beautiful, though heavy on description - esp. regarding crops and food.
The prose is beautiful, though heavy on description - esp. regarding crops and food.
Shelved as 'decided-not-to-read-it'
May 27, 2015Added 5/12/12.
The Sojourner by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (first published 1951) Recommended to me by Goodreads ("Based on Your Aging Shelf")
I couldn't get into it. Too many details and too much description at the start. I found the first pages too uninteresting to continue.
The Sojourner by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (first published 1951) Recommended to me by Goodreads ("Based on Your Aging Shelf")
I couldn't get into it. Too many details and too much description at the start. I found the first pages too uninteresting to continue.
January 26, 2014
I enjoyed this interesting study of Ase Linden. This novel addresses the question as to whether we aren't all just sojourners in this world; and if we can ever really know someone, be connected in a meaningful way.
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