Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Shadows on the Rock July 26, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nothing much happens in this novel, but, it stays with you after reading it. Glad I read it.
 A Novel of Old Quebec June 21, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
Willa Cather wrote "Shadows on the Rock"(1931) late in her novelistic career following her more famous book, "Death Comes for the Archbishop."(1927). As is the earlier book, "Shadows on the Rock" is influenced heavily by Cather's fascination with Catholicism (a religion she did not practice), her love of French civilization, and her interest in frontier places.
Cather's novel is set in the remote world of "New France", in French Quebec of 1697. The story tells of the early French settlers and of the reasons which impelled them to leave France in search of a new life in a difficult, harsh land. Located on a forbidding cliff on the St. Lawrence River, Quebec was inaccessible to incoming ships from France or elsewhere for all but the summer months.
The main characters in the novel are Cecile Aubade, a girl of twelve, and her father Euclide, an apothecary who came to Quebec together with its governor, Frontenac. Euclide's wife had died in Quebec two years before the story begins in 1697 and Cecile is showing as caring for her father, preparing his meals, cleaning the house, and tending the apothecary in has absence. The book is a coming-of-age story for Cecile, but it differs from the usual form of coming-of-age books in its quiet flow, stress on the ordinary world of everyday, and domesticity.
Cather gives the reader a picture of the life of old Quebec through the interactions of its people with Cecile and Euclide. We meet Frontenac and two rival bishops, the pious aged Bishop Laval, the much more worldy Bishop Saint-Vallier, and a host of clergy and nuns, some devoted to mysticism and solitude. Cather also shows the reader the more secular side of Quebec in many humble people, sellers at outdoor markets, sailors, refugees from France, and fur trappers, especially a man named Pierre Charron, whose heart was broken when his sweetheart took up the life of the cloister and rigorous spirituality. Cecile befriends a seven-year old boy named Jacques, the son of a prostitute. The friendship between Jacques and Cecile receives much attention in the book. Jacques is invited to the family's Christmas celebration and places a toy beaver, made for him by a sailor, in the family creche, symbolizing the coming of Christianity to the New World.
With the exception of a short epilogue, the book is told over the course of one year of Cecile's life in Quebec. This timeframe affords Cather the opportunity of describing Quebec and its environs in beautiful detail throughout the course of the year and to watch the maturation of Cecile and her increased devotion to Quebec. The story celebrates place, rootedness, religion, domesticity, and the value of living life in the everyday. Events in Quebec are contrasted with life in France with its wars and corruption. The even flow of Cather's book tends to mask some of the instances of torture and death practiced in the Old Regime that she describes.
This novel has always been recognized as static and unexciting. But Cather's recent biographer, Janis Stout, aptly describes the book as "luminous and significant." "Shadows on the Rock" was a best-seller when it appeared, even though the book received a poor critical reception. The critics found the book showed a tendency towards escapism from the modern world and its difficulties and an attitude of sentimentality and romanticism. The book has an underlying tone of irony. The world of old Quebec is portrayed with an aura of stability and permanence while the reader knows, as Cather knows, that fifty years after the time that the book ends, France will lose Quebec forever together with its possessions in the New World.
Although this book does not rank with Cather's best work, I was moved by it and found the criticisms overdone. In its emphasis on contentment, finding joy in the everyday, and the virtues of family life, "Shadows on the Rock" has something to teach today's world.
Robin Friedman
 Sacramental Ordinariness March 26, 2008
I loved this book. It is detail and description based rather than plot based, and that is why it is so beautiful. Cather creates a compelling portrait of the sacramentality that it is possible to create in an otherwise ordinary existence, and the ways in which a sense of sacredness pervades and enlivens what would otherwise be a torturous and barbaric life. The interesting details of frontier life in the seventeenth century, specifically the ones relating to food (mysterious chocolate for breakfast, growing lettuce in the cellar in the winter, etc.) were fascinating, as were many of the tangential characters introduced through each of the novel's six books.
I found her idealized description of a Catholic/Christian society frustrating, not from narrowness or inaccuracy, but from my own sense that such a society is impossible now and was probably impossible then as well, as much as I wish that it had really existed and still exists somewhere in the world. I cannot recommend this book enough. Please read.
Beautiful December 2, 2007
I agree with the person who mentioned that this is not the book to purchase if you are looking for action or adventure, but if you are looking for beauty and personality then this is the book for you.
Being about Quebec three hundred years ago it goes into detail about people from all the various ways of life, including the very poor and disabled to the Govenor of the state and Bishops who knew the King.
I laughed, I cried, and I just finished the book moments ago and am having a difficult time not hugging it constantly.
Fabulous Story by the Great Willa Cather June 16, 2004
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
This book is like a wonderful trip back in time with endearing characters and the backdrop of old Quebec as it's setting. A central character named "Cecile" introduces us to many interesting people like poor Blinker who is sort of a Hunchback of Notre Dame type but who is really gentle and kind. And then there is Jacques whose mother is sort of the village harlot but he is full of love and wonder and is a great companion for Cecile.This book will inspire you to travel to Quebec City which is one of my favorite places to visit. The architecture, the culture of the French-Canadians is a real delight.
|
