The Maytrees: A Novel
by Annie Dillard
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Book Summary Information
Author: Annie DillardEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-06-10
ISBN: 0061239542
Number of pages: 240
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of The Maytrees: A Novel
Book Review: A Poetic Essay on Love
Summary: 4 Stars
I have long considered Annie Dillard as one of the finest American essayists, right up there with E. B. White. Her description in TEACHING A STONE TO TALK of watching a total eclipse of the sun on a hilltop in Washington State is one of the most remarkable short pieces of writing I can think of, for its combination of everyday detail, scientific observation, and sheer awe at the smallness of man in the transcendental scale of the cosmos. Dillard's poetry, her awareness of the totality of the natural world, also shines through almost every page of her novel, THE MAYTREES, about the long marriage of a couple in Provincetown, Cape Cod. As an extreme example, take this almost baroque incantation to the stars: "They were Arabic: Enif, Markab, Achernar, Hamal, Alfirk, Scheat, Rasalhague. They moved evenly over the black desert. They spread and kept their places as searchers sweep a field. Algenib and Denebola had gone before. Fomalhaut kept alone. Alpheratz and Saiph trailed out of sight."
Contrast this, from near the beginning of the book, when Lou Bigelow takes her first walk in the sand dunes with her future husband, Toby Maytree: "From the high dune Maytree was trying to show her his shack on the horizon. Where could he mean? Would he touch her shoulder with his hand, or even arm, as he pointed? She had not let a man this close in years. Against blue sea she saw sand crests trace catenary curves against sky. Knee-high pines marked some hollows." Simple, simple writing, with just that one word "catenary," astounding in its precision, articulating the skilful balance of the sentence on which it rides, energizing the entire passage. Dillard's subject is love. She occasionally describes it in sentimental terms, more often in an objective mode as though marriage were merely another subject for natural history, and most frequently (as in the dunes passage above) by a kind of poetic analogy between the inner and outer worlds. So long as this works, the book is a marvel, but I don't feel that it is enough to sustain the needs of a novel.
Besides being a carpenter, Maytree is a poet. Every few years, he publishes book-length poems, but regrets that the only things of his to get wider attention are shorter pieces that have nothing of the scope of his bolder concepts. But I suspect that his gift, like Annie Dillard's, may have been more lyrical than epic. Open this book almost at random, and you will find magnificent writing. But despite the author's attempt to give it a bold arch spanning many decades, buttressed at the one end by courtship and at the other by death, the structure loses integrity in the middle. Dillard is quite skilful in her use of brief forward leaps in time to set up deceptive expectations, so I should not give away those aspects of the plot that are a surprise. But suffice it to say that when something truly unexpected does happen, it seems both unprepared and inexplicable. For a while, the burden of the story falls more on the shoulders of more minor characters who have not been established with the depth and sympathy of the Maytrees themselves. And when the novel moves back towards emotional resolution, everything seems to happen too easily. Yes, it is beautiful, but the lives involved lack some of the harsher edges, the pain, grit, and texture needed to validate beauty. Dillard's magnificent poetry needs to be balanced with more plain old prose.
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