"Brilliant. . . . A shimmering meditation on the ebb and flow of love." -- New York Times
"In her elegant, sophisticated prose, Dillard tells a tale of intimacy, loss and extraordinary friendship and maturity against a background of nature in its glorious color and caprice. The Maytrees is an intelligent, exquisite novel." -- The Washington Times
Toby Maytree first sees Lou Bigelow on her bicycle in postwar Provincetown, Massachusetts. Her laughter and loveliness catch his breath. Maytree is a Provincetown native, an educated poet of thirty. As he courts Lou, just out of college, her stillness draws him. He hides his serious wooing, and idly shows her his poems. In spare, elegant prose, Dillard traces the Maytrees' decades of loving and longing. They live cheaply among the nonconformist artists and writers that the bare tip of Cape Cod attracts. When their son Petie appears, their innocent Bohemian friend Deary helps care for him. But years later it is Deary who causes the town to talk. In this moving novel, Dillard intimately depicts willed bonds of loyalty, friendship, and abiding love. She presents nature's vastness and nearness. Warm and hopeful, The Maytrees is the surprising capstone of Dillard's original body of work.
"Packed with superb writing." -- New York Newsday
"One of the most distinctive voices in American letters today." -- Boston Globe
"In this amazing novel, Dillard has combined her Thoreau-like nature writing with her philisophical/theological way of looking at the world to create a beautiful story of life and love and ultimately death. . . . This is the kind of novel in which you want to linger over the beauty of each sentence and along with Dillard's characters, contemplate topics like why we love or what are we meant to do with our lives. While the outer story seems so simple, the inner story is incredibly profound." -- Cathy Schornstein
"Dillard calls on her erudition as a naturalist and her grace as a poet to create an enthralling story of marriage--particular and universal, larky and monumental." -- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"A superbly written novel. . . . The compact, elliptical narrative will continue to pervade the reader's consciousness long after the novel ends." -- Kirkus (starred review)
"A rhapsodic novel of our times. . . . In this mythic and transfixing tale, Dillard wryly questions notions of love, exalts in life's metamorphoses, and celebrates goodness. She casts a spell sensuous and metaphysical." -- Booklist (starred review)
"Annie Dillard is best known her for lyrical observations on nature and philosophy, and she puts those talents to marevelous use in her new novel The Maytrees, a love story that spans four decades and is set on Cape Cod....Dillard takes the most amazing facts and lays them bare for all to see." -- BookPage
"Dillard, a naturalist at heart, poignantly tracks the relationships between Lou and Toby Maytree across 50 years." -- More Magazine
Annie Dillard is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, An American Childhood, The Writing Life, The Living and The Maytrees. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Harper Perennial
Pub Date: June 10, 2008
0.64" H x 8.04" L x 5.54" W
240 Pages
Paperback